The New GTM Motion Guide

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Marketing leaders are under more scrutiny in the 2024 economy.

While there is a place for paid spend, it’s no longer feasible to just “throw money at the problem” to drive your ABM strategy and customer acquisition. 

The playbook has changed: the future of GTM is inbound, and you need to stay ahead of the curve. 

How Companies Approach GTM Today 

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Most companies start with cold outbound. It’s the simplest and lowest-effort means of customer acquisition. 

They make use of software like Apollo.io to:

• Look for triggers
• Speak to specific problems 
• Share resources (such as a guide)

They also start to run ads — demand gen on social channels and demand capture on search. 

But that’s where they stop. And the cost is higher than the ROI. 

Why This Old GTM Playbook No Longer Works

It Has Never Been More Challenging to Stand Out

Prospects are inundated with outreach already, which is only getting worse with the proliferation of AI. 

Our own BDR, Ryan Patel‎, recently confirmed that our lowest ROI channel is cold email. 

I myself wake up to an average of 80 new emails in my inbox every morning, 42 of which are cold. All of them get deleted. 

Paid Is Not Efficient At Scale

Paid ads get you in front of prospects, but it’s expensive and inefficient at scale. It’s not affordable to keep paying for ads and hiring more SDRs. 

Suffice to say outbound alone as an acquisition strategy is no longer working. 

Here's Nicholas Chan, founder and CEO of GTM Social, speaking on the matter.

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How To Build an Efficient GTM Flywheel in 3 Steps

1. Layer On Organic Marketing to Paid

Ads and cold outbound are invasive to prospects on their own.

Content, on the other hand, is a much softer approach that lets you educate rather than sell. It lets you build relationships with prospects who end up coming to you on their own, or being far more receptive to a pitch down the line.

Pair content and paid to create a more natural, affordable, and scalable strategy of demand gen and capture across channels.

This means:

• Paid search ads x SEO (specifically bottom of funnel keywords)
• Paid ads (sponsorships and display ads) x educational content, customer stories

This leads to higher numbers of warmer leads.

1.1 Solid Product Marketing Leads to Solid Content Marketing

You need to go back to basics and understand that shaky product marketing will produce equally shaky and thin content.

Understand:

• who your customer is
• what their top problems are
• what the cost of these problems is
• what the status quo or default state of things are
• why they need to solve these problems
• what the triggers that make these problems important to solve
• what possible solutions are
• why you are the best fit versus alternative solutions and how you're different

Use content to answer these questions.

2. Cut Down on SDRs and Turn Them Into Social Sellers

Your buyers are out there on social platforms. This is particularly true for B2B buyers and LinkedIn. Your SDRs (as well as your execs) should be sharing helpful experiences, insights, and content on social media.

Social selling gives your brand a recognizable human face. People prefer to buy from people, not faceless entities, and social humanizes a company.

Ryan had his first record week of eight booked outbound demo calls largely thanks to his presence on LinkedIn.

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You don't need an unsustainably large sales team. SDRs should become the final human touch for warm or in orbit opportunities who are already engaging with your marketing content.

3. Gather Intent Data on Content

Your content is effectively a lure and creates sales triggers. You want to understand who is engaging with what content at any given time. This is where intent data comes in.

And first-party intent data is king, according to fractional CMO Alon Waks. He believes sellers should leave cold accounts for marketing to warm up.

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One of the major culprits behind wasted marketing spend is targeting prospects who are not in market to buy.

AI-powered intent data tools can can de-anonymize this data so that you know which content best drives business for you. Invest in software like Clearbit or even Letterdrop, which shows a blow-by-blow history of account engagement on your site as well as your LinkedIn content.

Use this intent data to retarget in-market buyers with ads.

By coordinating all these strategies, brands can create a flywheel effect. The interest that marketing generates can inform sales conversations while sales data improves marketing optimization and targeting. This is key to scalable, efficient growth.

Cultivate a Future-Proof Go-to-Market Strategy

By taking an integrated, layered approach across paid, organic, social selling, and intent data strategies, brands can break through the noise to deliver relevant, personalized messaging and experiences. This creates a compounding flywheel effect that delivers outsized results and growth.

We can help you de-anonymize the accounts visiting your content across LinkedIn and your site. Reach out to us if you're interested.