The Ground is Shifting Beneath Our Feet
The pace of change in B2B marketing has reached a fever pitch. What took years to evolve now transforms in months. In 2024 alone, AI adoption in marketing jumped from 61.4% to 69.1% of marketers¹, while 72% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function—up from just 55% the year before².
But here’s what the headlines miss: this isn’t just about new tools. It’s a fundamental reshaping of how marketing works, who does what, and what skills matter most.
At Forabilis, we’ve been living in this transformation for the past year. We’ve seen our processes evolve, our output multiply, and our team become more efficient than ever. Yet paradoxically, our core value proposition has never been stronger. Here’s why.
The Great Consulting Disruption
The writing is on the wall across professional services. McKinsey deployed 12,000 AI agents and cut 5,000 jobs, reducing their workforce from 45,000 to 40,000³. The Big Four consulting firms are slashing entry-level positions while maintaining senior strategy roles⁴.
The pattern is clear: AI is eliminating the “doers” while amplifying the value of the “thinkers.”
This transformation mirrors what we’re seeing in marketing. The tactical execution—the data entry, the basic research, the template-based content creation—is being automated away. But the strategic thinking, creative conceptualization, and business acumen? Those skills are more valuable than ever.
Enter the GTM Engineer
Clay, the data enrichment platform that recently reached a $3.1B valuation, has popularized the role of the “GTM Engineer”—professionals who sit at the intersection of technical skills, high emotional intelligence, and sales ability⁵. These specialists can build complex automation workflows, integrate multiple data sources, and execute sophisticated outreach campaigns.
The median GTM Engineer salary? $160,000⁶. Companies are paying premium rates for technical execution talent.
But here’s the critical insight: GTM Engineers are phenomenal at building what you tell them to build. They excel at technical implementation. What they can’t do—what no AI can do—is determine what to build in the first place.
Someone still needs to:
- Define the ideal customer profile and messaging strategy
- Set campaign objectives and success metrics
- Bring creative ideas and strategic direction
- Ensure brand consistency and quality control
- Navigate complex business decisions and tradeoffs
That someone is us. That someone is the strategic marketing leader.
How Marketing Actually Works Now
Let us paint a picture with real examples from our work at Forabilis:
Traditional Prospecting vs. AI-Powered Research
Before: A team member would manually research each prospect—visiting their LinkedIn, company website, recent news, looking for conversation starters. Time per prospect: 15-20 minutes.
Now: We use Clay to automatically gather company funding news, recent executive hires, technology stack changes, and competitive intelligence for hundreds of prospects simultaneously. Time per prospect: 30 seconds.
But the strategy behind which prospects to research, what signals matter most, and how to use that intelligence in our messaging? That’s pure strategic thinking.
Content Creation at Scale
Before: Writing personalized emails meant crafting each one individually, maybe using a basic template.
Now: We create AI-powered workflows that generate hundreds of personalized variations based on prospect characteristics—company size, industry, recent news, technology stack—while maintaining our brand voice and strategic messaging.
The AI handles the variation and personalization. We define the core value proposition, messaging hierarchy, and brand personality that makes those variations work.
Account-Based Marketing 2.0
Before: ABM meant creating a few custom assets for top-tier accounts.
Now: We leverage AI to create personalized landing pages, custom content, and tailored ad creative for each target account. Companies using AI-powered personalized landing pages are seeing 202% lifts in engagement.
But the account selection strategy, messaging positioning, and campaign orchestration? That requires deep business understanding and creative strategy.
The Human-AI Partnership That Actually Works
The most successful marketing teams in 2025 aren’t replacing humans with AI—they’re amplifying human capabilities with AI tools⁷. The magic happens when strategic thinkers leverage AI for execution while maintaining control over direction and quality.
At Forabilis, this looks like:
Strategic Layer (Human-Led, AI-Amplified):
- Market analysis and competitive positioning
- Messaging strategy and brand voice development
- Campaign conceptualization and creative direction
- Performance analysis and strategic optimization
- Client relationship management and business consulting
Execution Layer (AI-led automation, Human-supervised):
- Prospect research and data enrichment
- Content variation and personalization
- Automated outreach sequences and follow-ups
- Performance tracking and basic reporting
- Initial lead qualification and scoring
The result? We’re delivering more value, faster, with higher quality than ever before. Our clients get the strategic thinking they need to compete, powered by execution capabilities that were impossible just two years ago.
Why This is Perfect for Forabilis
This transformation isn’t threatening our business model—it’s revealing our true competitive advantage.
We’ve always been the agency that thinks first and executes second. Our strength has never been in having the most people or the cheapest rates. It’s been in understanding positioning, crafting compelling narratives, and developing go-to-market strategies that actually work.
Now, AI allows us to execute those strategies with unprecedented speed and precision, while our strategic expertise becomes the key differentiator in a world flooded with AI-generated mediocrity.
We spend significant time exploring new AI tools, understanding their capabilities, and figuring out how to integrate them into our processes. We understand the GTM Engineer role because we work with them daily. But we also understand that someone needs to define the specifications, set the goals, and bring the creative vision that makes those technical capabilities meaningful.
The Future Belongs to Strategic Thinkers
As AI continues to automate tactical execution, the premium will increasingly go to those who can:
- Think strategically about market positioning and competitive advantage
- Create compelling narratives that cut through increasing noise
- Navigate complex business decisions with incomplete information
- Maintain quality and brand consistency across automated touchpoints
- Build relationships with key stakeholders and decision-makers
These capabilities can’t be automated because they require judgment, creativity, empathy, and business acumen that only comes from experience and strategic thinking.
What This Means for You
If you’re a founder, CMO, or marketing leader, the question isn’t whether AI will transform your marketing—it already has. The question is whether you have the strategic expertise to harness that transformation effectively.
The companies winning in this new era aren’t just adopting AI tools. They’re combining AI capabilities with deep strategic thinking, creative vision, and business expertise. They’re working with partners who understand both the technology and the strategy.
At Forabilis, we’ve embraced this new world not by abandoning what made us valuable, but by amplifying it. Our service is evolving, not disappearing. And in a world where anyone can access powerful AI tools, the ability to use them strategically has never been more valuable.
This new world isn’t just perfect for us—it brings out the best in us. It allows us to focus on what we do best: thinking, strategizing, and creating marketing that actually moves the needle.
The ground may be shifting, but we’re not just keeping up. We’re leading the way.
Sources
¹ Influencer Marketing Hub, “AI Marketing Benchmark Report 2024” – https://influencermarketinghub.com/ai-marketing-benchmark-report/
² McKinsey, “AI in the workplace: A report for 2025” – https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/superagency-in-the-workplace-empowering-people-to-unlock-ais-full-potential-at-work
³ The Finance Story, “McKinsey’s AI Agents replace 5000 consultants” – https://thefinancestory.com/mckinsey-deploys-12000-ai-agents
⁴ People Matters, “Big Four cut entry-level jobs amid AI and cost pressures” – https://www.peoplematters.in/news/recruiting-and-onboarding/big-four-cut-entry-level-jobs-amid-ai-and-cost-pressures-42164
⁵ Full Umbrella, “The Rise of the GTM Engineer” – https://www.full-umbrella.com/post/the-rise-of-the-gtm-engineer-redefining-go-to-market-in-the-modern-era
⁶ LinkedIn, “Clay raises $100M, creates new AI-native career paths” – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidmoreira_clay-just-raised-100m-at-a-31b-valuation-activity-7358598129316749312-Q-xQ
⁷ Aprimo, “The Future of Marketing Teams with AI Agents” – https://www.aprimo.com/blog/the-future-of-marketing-teams-with-ai-agents