Author: Roni Dagan

Ask a B2B founder what’s broken in their GTM right now, and you’ll hear the same things:

“Pipeline’s there, but deals aren’t closing.”
“We’re running campaigns, but nothing’s moving.”
“We added AI tools, but we’re not actually faster.”

Your 2024 GTM plan is probably already outdated. Not because you built it wrong—but because the fundamentals shifted while you were executing it.

By 2026, B2B go-to-market won’t just feel a bit more AI-driven. The underlying operating model—how you decide where to play, what to say, and how to execute—will look different.

Budgets are tighter. Buying committees are larger and more risk-averse. AI isn’t a side project anymore; it sits inside the tools your teams already use. For B2B tech companies selling complex products to multi-stakeholder buyers, this isn’t a trend cycle.

It’s a reset.

Here are the five shifts that’ll define GTM in 2026—and what winning teams will do differently.

5 GTM Shifts to Watch in 2026:

1. ICPs get narrower and data-driven

2. AI orchestrates GTM, not just content

3. Martech stacks shrink and consolidate

4. Content is built for GenAI discovery

5. GTM becomes an experiment system, not a plan

1. From Broad Demand Gen to Focused, Evidence-Led ICPs

The old playbook of “widen the top of the funnel and let sales sort it out” is running out of road.

Boards and investors are already pushing harder on efficiency: shorter payback periods, better pipeline conversion, tighter links between GTM spend and revenue. Analyst work over the last two years has consistently highlighted this pivot to efficiency-first growth in B2B SaaS and cloud software.[¹]

That pressure will only increase into 2026.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your ICP is probably wrong. Or at least, it’s wishful.

What changes in practice:

ICPs become narrower and data-led.
Not “we sell to mid-market and enterprise”—but “we win fastest and expand most in X-vertical, Y-tech environment, Z-buyer configuration,” backed by win/loss, sales cycle, and expansion data.

One Series B cybersecurity company we worked with thought their ICP was “financial services, 500+ employees.” The data told a different story: they closed deals 40% faster in payment processors with specific compliance requirements and stalled everywhere else.

Fewer campaigns, more depth.
Instead of 10 lightly personalized plays, leading teams will run a small number of highly focused motions aligned to segments and buying committees they know they can win.

Marketing thinks like RevOps.
GTM leaders will treat ICP as a living model, not a slide. They’ll continuously test which segments, triggers, and narratives actually produce efficient pipeline—and be willing to walk away from segments that don’t.

Many teams will struggle here. It’s hard to let go of “big numbers” and broad reach.

The ones who win in 2026 will trade volume for precision and be able to prove, with data, where their GTM engine truly works.

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Tightening your ICP is step one. But even the sharpest ICP won’t help if your GTM engine is running on manual. That’s where AI comes in—not as a writer, but as an operator.

2. How Generative AI Will Orchestrate B2B GTM in 2026

In 2024-2025, most B2B teams used generative AI as a productivity tool: drafts of emails, ads, blog posts, enablement.

Helpful, but not transformative.

By 2026, GenAI will be embedded directly in the systems that run GTM—CRM, marketing automation, sales engagement, analytics—and will start to orchestrate parts of the motion:

– Recommending which accounts and contacts to prioritize, based on intent signals, historical performance, and product usage data.
– Suggesting next best actions across channels: outreach, content touches, retargeting, event invites.
– Auto-adjusting sequences and campaigns based on real-time engagement and pipeline impact, not just opens and clicks.

Major platforms are already building this direction into their roadmaps (Salesforce Einstein, HubSpot AI, Microsoft Copilot).[³][⁴] By 2026, this’ll be mainstream, not experimental.

This raises the bar for GTM leaders:

Your job shifts from “how do we do more?” to “what should we be doing at all—and what strategy should AI execute against?”

You’ll need clear guardrails: ICP definitions, messaging frameworks, and rules of engagement that keep AI from spamming or diluting your positioning.

The risk won’t be “we don’t use AI.” It’ll be “we let AI generate noise at scale without a point of view.”

One AI startup we know had a messaging doc that was 47 slides long. Their sales team used none of it. When they fed that into their AI-powered outreach tool, it produced perfectly formatted nonsense—at scale.

The teams that’ll win here aren’t the ones with the most AI tools. They’re the ones with the sharpest strategy and clearest constraints.

3. Martech and Sales Tech: Smaller Stack, Smarter Core

Most martech audits reveal the same thing: half your stack is paid shelfware.

The B2B martech landscape exploded over the past decade. Most growth-stage companies now run overlapping tools for intent, ABM, automation, enrichment, attribution, and engagement. The famous martech landscape map crossed 11,000 solutions.[⁵]

By 2026, that sprawl becomes a liability.

Why consolidation is coming:

Core systems ship with embedded GenAI as standard.
Your CRM, MAP, and sales engagement tools will have AI baked in. Point solutions will survive only if they deliver clear incremental value beyond what the main platforms offer.

Data fragmentation hurts more.
Bad or incomplete data will fuel bad AI decisions, not just bad reports.[⁶]

Stack decisions become operating model decisions.
Which workflows do we standardize and automate (from lead routing to sales sequences to renewals)? Where do we accept manual, high-touch effort because it truly moves the needle (complex deals, strategic accounts)? Which tools are truly essential to those workflows—and which are only there because no one turned them off?

How sales prospecting will shift:

SDRs will have AI-assisted lists, scoring, and personalized draft outreach. Their value will move from raw output to judgment: selecting the right plays, refining the message, reading context, and building relationships.

A Series B data infrastructure company we worked with had 8 ABM tools and couldn’t tell which one was actually driving pipeline. When they consolidated to three core systems with clear handoffs, their sales cycle dropped by 23%.

The high-performing GTM stacks in 2026 won’t be the biggest. They’ll be the few systems that define how decisions get made and how work gets done.

4. Why B2B Content Strategy Must Change for AI-Driven Search

B2B buying has been self-serve and research-heavy for years. The next turn of the wheel is who does the synthesizing—and increasingly, it’s GenAI systems, not just the buyer alone.

We’re already seeing:

– Buyers using conversational search (Google’s Search Generative Experience, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot, and vertical tools) to ask multi-step questions: architecture choices, cost trade-offs, integration risks, vendor comparisons. [⁷]
– GenAI summarizing vendor content, documentation, case studies, and public reviews into answers and shortlists.

In 2026, “showing up” will mean more than ranking for keywords.

If your content strategy is “publish 3 blogs a week,” you’re optimizing for 2017.

What content needs to do now:

Depth beats volume.
Shallow keyword-first posts won’t cut it. You need deep, specific, problem-centric resources:
– How your ICP thinks about the problem.
– Architecture patterns and trade-offs.
– Implementation paths and risks.
– ROI and business cases supported by real numbers.

Structure for machines and humans.
Content that GenAI can confidently reuse and cite will be:
– Well structured (clear headings, logical flow).
– Explicit about audience, use cases, and outcomes.
– Rich in concrete examples, data, and named concepts.

This aligns with Google’s E‑E‑A‑T guidance and what SEO practitioners now call “Generative Engine Optimization.”[⁸][⁹]

Have a point of view.
As more content is generated by AI, what stands out is a coherent perspective. Teams that codify their GTM theses—how they see the market, where they disagree with conventional wisdom, what they believe actually works—give both humans and AI something to latch onto.

In other words, being “the answer GenAI cites” becomes the new version of being on page one.

5. GTM as an Operating System of Experiments, Not a Static Plan

Static annual GTM plans are becoming harder to defend. Markets, competitors, regulations, and buyer behavior shift too quickly for a once-a-year plan to stay relevant.

The most effective GTM organizations in 2026 will behave more like strong product teams.

What this looks like:

Clear definitions of success.
GTM metrics anchored in pipeline quality, win rates, sales cycle, expansion, and payback—not just activity. Surveys of B2B CMOs already show a move away from pure lead volume toward revenue and efficiency metrics.

A portfolio of experiments.
At any given time, a small set of structured tests around:
– New ICP slices or verticals.
– Alternative narratives or pricing/packaging.
– New channels or motions (e.g., partner-led, community-led).

Rituals and governance.
Regular cadences where marketing, sales, and product review what’s working, what’s not, and decide what to scale, refine, or kill.

 Culturally, this demands:

Willingness to retire legacy motions that no longer earn their keep, even if they’re comfortable.

Shared ownership across teams: GTM as a company system, not a marketing plan plus a sales plan.

The shift isn’t to “do more experiments.” It’s to treat GTM *as* an experiment engine—with structure, clarity, and accountability.

What This Means for Startups vs. Mid-Sized Scale-Ups

These shifts land differently depending on your stage.

If you’re a founder or CEO at a startup (Seed–Series A):

Ask yourself:
– Do I actually know which customer segments close fast and expand? Or am I guessing?
– Can a prospect understand what we do and why it matters in under 2 minutes?
– If I lost my head of sales tomorrow, would marketing be able to generate pipeline on its own?

You can’t import enterprise GTM. You need a minimal, sharp engine: tight ICP, clear value story, a handful of repeatable plays.

GenAI can make you look bigger than your headcount—but only if you have the foundations: messaging that’s easy to understand, content that shows you know the problem space, and a basic stack that captures and uses data.

If you’re a CMO or CRO at a mid-sized company (Series B–D / pre-IPO):

Ask yourself:
– If I shut off half my campaigns tomorrow, would anyone notice? Would pipeline drop?
– Do product, marketing, and sales share the same definition of our ICP and our value story?
– Can we measure which GTM motions actually produce efficient growth—or are we just tracking activity?

Your problem is rarely “no activity.” It’s misaligned, unfocused activity spread across teams and tools.

The opportunity is to re-unify GTM around a single thesis:
– Who you’re really built for now.
– What story you need to tell them.
– Which motions actually produce efficient growth—and should be scaled, automated, or supported by AI.

For both, the question is the same: how do you design a growth engine that’s fit for 2026, not 2019?

Preparing Your GTM Engine for 2026

Let’s recap the five shifts:

1. From broad demand gen to focused, evidence-led ICPs.
2. From GenAI as a writer to GenAI as a GTM orchestrator.
3. From sprawling stacks to a smaller, smarter core.
4. From keyword stuffing to GenAI-first, problem-centric content.
5. From static plans to GTM as an operating system of experiments.

Teams that treat 2024–2025 as the “build phase”—tightening ICP, cleaning data, clarifying narratives, simplifying stacks, and putting experiment rhythms in place—will have a compound advantage by 2026.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “We need to run this audit on ourselves”—you’re not alone. Most of the teams we work with start there.

If you want a second set of eyes or a structured way to work through it, we’re here. That’s what we do. At Forabilis, we run your GTM with you—strategy, execution, and measurable growth.

But whether you work with us or not, the work itself can’t wait for 2026.

References:

1. Bain & Company – The B2B Growth Divide: What Sets Winners Apart

2. BCG – Winning Strategies for B2B SaaS Companies

3. Salesforce – Einstein 1: The future of AI CRM

4. HubSpot – AI roadmap and product announcements (HubSpot AI)

5. ChiefMartec – 2024 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic

6. McKinsey – The data dividend: Fueling AI and analytics

7. Google – Supercharging Search with generative AI

8. Google – Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content

9. Search Engine Land – Meta’s new partnership with Amazon streamlines conversion process for advertisers

 

 

 

Introducing Real Stories from Behind the Scenes of Revenue Growth

Go-to-market strategy is how companies reach customers and generate revenue—but most get it fundamentally wrong. They confuse marketing campaigns with comprehensive GTM execution, focus on the wrong metrics, or misalign their sales and marketing efforts entirely.

A SaaS company increased qualified leads by 340% with one simple messaging change. An enterprise software provider cracked a new market and added $50M in ARR within 18 months. A B2B services firm transformed from competing on price to commanding premium rates.

These aren’t hypothetical case studies. They’re real stories from The Bold Guy, a new Substack from our CEO Natan Chosnek that goes behind the scenes of go-to-market successes and failures.

What Makes The Bold Guy Different

Most business content gives you frameworks and theory. The Bold Guy gives you what actually happened—the messy reality of companies figuring out how to grow.

Real Stories from Real Companies

The Startup That Dropped the Sexy Story

Everyone loved their product demos. Prospects nodded enthusiastically. They called the technology “innovative” and “game-changing.”

But nobody was buying.

The startup had a compelling vision and cutting-edge tech. Their pitch was polished, their story exciting. On paper, everything worked. Then they made one counterintuitive decision that changed everything.

Discover what shifted their sales momentum in The Bold Guy: “The startup that started winning by dropping the sexy story”

Moving Upmarket When Success Stops Being Enough

The company was winning with consistent six-figure deals, happy customers, and predictable revenue. But the board wanted more—they wanted seven-figure enterprise deals, the kind that transform growth trajectories.

Moving upmarket seemed straightforward: same great product, just bigger customers. Instead, everything broke. Sales cycles stretched endlessly, their proven messaging fell completely flat, and the buying committees operated in ways they’d never encountered before.

The breakthrough came when they discovered what enterprise customers actually care about, and it wasn’t what they expected.

See how they cracked the enterprise code in The Bold Guy: “Transforming sales from six-figure to seven-figure deals: the upmarket pivot”

Stories from Companies at Every Stage

The Bold Guy doesn’t just cover startups. The most interesting go-to-market challenges happen across company stages:

• Early-stage companies figuring out product-market fit and finding their first scalable acquisition channels.
• Growth-stage companies optimizing what works while expanding into adjacent markets or launching new products.
• Established enterprises innovating within existing markets or successfully competing against more agile competitors.

Each stage has different challenges, different resources, and different definitions of success. The Bold Guy explores all of them.

Go-to-Market Beyond Marketing Campaigns

Most people think go-to-market strategy is about marketing campaigns and lead generation. The companies featured in The Bold Guy know better. True go-to-market strategy includes:

• Market positioning that differentiates against all alternatives (not just competitors)
• Customer journey design that guides prospects from awareness to advocacy
• Sales and marketing alignment that turns leads into revenue efficiently
• Pricing and packaging that maximizes both adoption and profitability
• Channel strategy that reaches customers where and how they want to buy

Common Go-to-Market Strategy Mistakes (That The Bold Guy Stories Reveal)

After working with hundreds of companies on their go-to-market strategies, we see the same patterns repeat. The Bold Guy stories demonstrate how real companies recognized and solved these challenges:

Mistake 1: Leading with Product Features Instead of Customer Problems

Companies get excited about what their product does instead of focusing on the problems customers actually need solved. As revealed in “The startup that started winning by dropping the sexy story,” prospects often care more about boring, immediate problems than innovative capabilities.

Mistake 2: Targeting Everyone (Which Means Reaching No One)

Broad go-to-market strategies dilute messaging and waste resources. The most successful GTM approaches start with a narrow, well-defined target market and expand systematically based on what works.

Mistake 3: Misreading What Customers Actually Value

Companies assume they understand their customers’ priorities without validating those assumptions. The Bold Guy story “Transforming sales from six-figure to seven-figure deals” shows how C-level buyers value completely different things than mid-level buyers—and how costly that misunderstanding can be.

Mistake 4: Separating Marketing and Sales Instead of Aligning Them

Go-to-market success requires tight coordination between marketing and sales. When these teams operate independently with different goals and metrics, companies generate activity without revenue.

Mistake 5: Copying Competitors’ GTM Strategies

What works for one company won’t necessarily work for another, even in the same market. Effective go-to-market strategy considers your unique positioning, resources, and customer relationships—not just what competitors are doing.

The Bold Guy reveals how companies identified these patterns in their own execution and made the strategic shifts that unlocked growth.

Why The Bold Guy Reveals What Case Studies Hide

Every company faces go-to-market challenges, but the underlying patterns repeat: positioning confusion that makes prospects unsure why they should care, channel strategies that waste resources on audiences who don’t buy, messaging that generates activity but not revenue, and disconnects between what marketing promises and what sales can actually deliver.

The Bold Guy shows how real companies navigate these challenges—not the sanitized, success-only version you see in polished case studies, but the complete story including what didn’t work and why.

What The Bold Guy Delivers

Each story in The Bold Guy follows real companies through their go-to-market challenges, including the industry context, what they tried first, where they got stuck, and what finally worked. The stories end with practical founder takeaways you can apply to your own situation.

These aren’t polished success stories—they’re honest accounts of companies figuring out what resonates with their market, often after their initial approach failed.

The Forabilis Approach to Go-to-Market

At Forabilis, we help companies develop and execute go-to-market strategies that actually work. The stories in The Bold Guy come from our direct experience working with companies across industries and growth stages.
Our integrated approach includes:

• Strategic foundation: Market research, competitive positioning, and customer development
• Execution excellence: Marketing program development, sales enablement, and performance optimization
• Organizational alignment: Cross-functional coordination and scalable systems

We don’t just create marketing campaigns. We help companies think strategically about how they reach customers, differentiate in the market, and build sustainable competitive advantages.

Get the Stories First

The Bold Guy launches with stories that will change how you think about go-to-market strategy. From the startup that discovered their real competition wasn’t other products but spreadsheets and manual processes, to the enterprise company that successfully launched a new product by treating it like a startup within the larger organization.

Subscribe to The Bold Guy for behind-the-scenes stories and actionable insights.

Explore how Forabilis can help with your own go-to-market challenges.

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.

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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

This is a series about a recent ABM challenge and campaign we had with a client. If you just landed here, I recommend you start with Part 1 where I explain the challenge, the ABM Framework and the process plan.

Building The ABM Target Account List and Tech Stack

Building the target account list is one of the most important foundations of a successful ABM campaign. There are different ways to achieve this. Using your CRM or popular data providers are the most common. In our project, since we were targeting customers of competing solutions, this was not enough. Our client’s CRM could not be the main source of target accounts as, while they may have accounts that overlap, it would not provide a comprehensive source of the customers of competitors. 

We also found that the most common data providers rarely had what we needed: In-depth technographics data. Technographics data is the analysis of the technology stack a company uses, and in our case, we were looking for Threat Identification and Access Management solutions. We had to check various data providers before we found one that had the data we were looking for. One last comment regarding using intent data to build account lists — yes, intent data is super important and there are some very good data providers for intent data (Bambora, to name one), but in our case this was not necessary since we were dealing with accounts that had a competing solution, and that was more than enough to establish intent.

Pro Tip: For targeting competing solutions, first identify a list of 5-6 competitors, and then start testing different technographics data providers. You should aim to have at least 800 accounts to target, with at least 2-3 roles in each account.

ABM Setup: How we Chose Our Tech Stack, Platforms and Tools

Each pillar requires different tools and services. Pillar 1 requires technographic and intent data tools for list building and accounts prioritization, paid media, and content syndication platforms (for target accounts outreach). Pillar 2 and 3 require data providers for leads enrichment, marketing automation, and SDR service (which, in some cases, have their own tools).

There are some highly advanced tools that will handle an ABM campaign end-to-end. Demandbase is one such solution, but after looking into it, we felt it is geared towards long-term campaigns and, hence, requires a high level of commitment and the need to rely on their paid media capabilities. So, it’s not right for every ABM campaign. In our case, as it was this company’s first ABM campaign, we decided it was too early to commit to.

We put lots of effort into finding the right technographic tools. Some solutions are able to provide insights only for major products and technologies of known brands like Salesforce, Microsoft and others. They fail when it comes to less common technologies — which are the majority. You should check and test each tool you’re considering, if the products and technologies you’re looking for are actually covered.

In our search to build the right tech stack, we found that some ABM platforms have a minimum ad-budget spend, which was too high for us and not needed in this campaign. Instead, we invested our budget in content syndication, where we believed we would get more and quicker exposure.

Pro Tip: In a campaign targeting competitors, make sure you check where your competitors spend their marketing budget — there are many tools that provide this kind of data. You should consider a similar approach to their channels to attract the same customers.

 

Interested in learning how we manage, qualify and monitor accounts? Stay tuned for Part 3

Approaching the ABM Challenge

We received an intriguing challenge from one of our clients, a leading Threat Identification company — generate sales-qualified leads targeting the customers of our competitors. This was a dream project for us. We’ve done ABM campaigns in the past, but this one allowed us to hone our skills even further.

Since ABM is a term widely used, here’s how Forabilis defines it: ABM is account-based targeting for sales, focusing purely on accounts — not on individuals. To achieve this marketing and sales have to work closely together. Using ABM, we zone in on the quality of the accounts we target, instead of the traditional marketing approach which focuses on the number of leads. Essentially, what we try to do is to focus on accounts that have displayed interest in the solution category (in this case, through usage of competing solutions) rather than simply delivering MQLs.

Now, here’s what’s cool about targeting competitors’ accounts: These accounts have the budget, they know what they’re looking for in a solution, and what’s not working for them in the solution they are already using. So, they are well past the awareness phase. Because they are unique in that sense, we knew we had to rethink our channels, our messaging, and the content we serve them.

How We Look at the ABM Framework and Why

We look at ABM holistically, as a 3-Pillar process. It starts with marketing as the sole owner, then transitions to marketing playing the leading role while working with sales, and, finally, with marketing moving to support sales in their efforts to generate opportunities. Each phase is aimed at driving the accounts down the funnel. Each phase has its own goals, targets, tactics, and KPIs.

Sample ABM 3-Pillar Framework

Pro Tip: Shortcuts don’t work. While there is lots of pressure from management and from sales to deliver the accounts faster, and skip, for example, Pillar 2, your role as a marketing leader is to push back. Remember, you should deliver quality, not quantity. 

What an ABM Process Plan Looks Like

An ABM campaign takes a while to plan. We started with a short discovery process to be able to better define our target personas and target accounts, as well as understand the competition. We were looking for “hooks” that would enable us to create specific messaging, based on unique value compared to the competition. Together with the planning phase, we’re looking at 4-6 weeks.

Setting up Pillar 1 would take 4-6 weeks, and that would include finding the right tech stack for the project, building the account lists, defining the content and creating it. You need to run the awareness campaign, which is Pillar 1, for at least 12 weeks to get the results you need to move to Pillar 2. And while it’s running, in parallel, you can prepare for Pillar 2. The same goes for Pillar 3 — you prepare it while running Pillar 2. At some point, all three pillars run in parallel, with continuous optimization. Pending budget, of course.

General ABM Process Plan

#1 Discovery: Target audience, definition of target accounts, personas, messaging, marketing and sales content audit (2-3 weeks)

#2 Planning: Funnel, KPIs, channels, martech stack, tools, timeline and budget (2-3 weeks)

#3 Execution Pillar 1: Setup, execution and optimization (12 weeks)

#4 Execution Pillar 2: Setup, execution and optimization (*12 weeks)

#5 Execution Pillar 3: Setup, execution and optimization (*12 weeks)

#6 Campaign summary: Evaluation, post mortem

*Partially in parallel with previous phase

Pro Tip: Don’t be afraid to toss aside existing marketing and sales content for fresher, more appropriate content for each pillar. Remember, you have a highly targeted account list that has a competing solution already implemented. Tailor the content per the competition’s weak points. Tell them a new story, based on what they are lacking in their current solution.

Interested in learning how we built the target account list and the tech stack for an ABM campaign? Read on Part 2 

Let’s do a quick and dirty exercise: Go to your office’s kitchen. Wait for the first person on your team to come along. While he or she innocently make coffee, ask them:

What does our product do?

Then ask – if our customers buy and use our product, how do their lives change? What do we promise them?

Got your answers? Great. Now, repeat this process with two more people.

Our guess is that you got three different answers. Surprised? We’re not. It is very common, especially for startups, to have messaging misalignment. We have watched three co-founders, who have been sharing the same desk for over a year, wrestle with disbelief as they realize each of them is actually working in a completely different startup.

Reaching consistent messaging is difficult

The way you communicate about your product is critical to your success. Eventually it’s about sales and how you project your value to your potential customers. But there’s no way you can conquer marketing and sales without internalizing your messaging. Your team should be speaking in one succinct voice before they can project it. That voice is unique not only to your product, but to your company’s DNA. Achieving this voice, and having it shared across the company, is not easy, to say the least. In this article, we’d like to offer a methodology we developed that helps startups define messaging. It’s called the Messaging Hierarchy.

What is a Messaging Hierarchy?

Essentially, a Messaging Hierarchy is a method that helps crystallize the company’s positioning. The Messaging Hierarchy is the foundation for all content written – whether a website, a brochure, or a sales presentation. If you get the Messaging Hierarchy right, you have a document that supports any marketing or sales effort. It is your true north.

Here’s the structure – and an example – of a basic Messaging Hierarchy:

Why is it a hierarchy? The idea is that the more you move up the pyramid, components are more flexible and tend to change. At the bottom, there is the product or service description. In some cases, below the product description, there is a company description and the company’s values. But for startups, the product description is usually a good place to start.

What’s a good product description? Here’s one for a product most of us know well:

Cloud-based applications for sales, service, marketing, and more.

That is Salesforce’s product description, taken straight from the Salesforce website. The interesting thing is that this description hasn’t changed for years.While the product evolved tremendously, the core and purpose haven’t changed. That’s how you should strive to define your product. It sounds easy, but in truth – it rarely is.

Defining Your Value Proof

Next, you define your value proof. Value proof is what makes your customers trust you. For a startup in seed, this is a bit harder. But you can talk about the great team you’ve assembled, patents pending, or the testimonial from your design partner. You would use this section for all your marketing and sales. And don’t be shy.

Back to the Salesforce example, here’s what they say as their value proof:

The world’s #1 CRM platform with 150,000+ like-minded companies and a massive community of experts and evangelists committed to your company’s growth.

You can’t really argue with 150,000+ customers. If they trust them, you can too.

Finding Your Differentiator

Now, that’s a bit tricker. Startups, especially the more technological ones, tend to talk about product features instead of talking about a real differentiator. Ask yourself – what do I have that my competitors will have a hard time replicating? That’s why your customer will pick you over the competition. It’s rarely about the technology. It’s something that touches your customer’s pain or need.

Salesforce say: We don’t require IT experts to set up or manage.

Overtime we get to know our customers really well. And as we get to know them, we understand what troubles them – and how we can support them. And our answer to “why us?” may change. We should be able to convey the answer to where we are right now based on what we know.

The Elusive Value Proposition

So much has been talked about the term “value proposition.” We want to simplify what it means. The value proposition is your promise to your customers. It should essentially answer one question: If your customer uses your product, how would their lives change?

It’s a big question, and not lightly answered.

What the value proposition is NOT is a tagline.

Before everything else, it is a clear explanation for your reason to be. We help our customers discover new trails to success using the #1 CRM platform is how Salesforce project their value proposition in their marketing materials. Two years ago, it was:

We empower companies to connect to their customers in a whole new way. What made sense then, does not make sense today.

What the Messaging Hierarchy is and is not

It’s not copy – or it doesn’t have to be. It’s the documentation on which great copy can be developed.
It’s a marketing brief. Give it to anyone who writes for you, and you make their job easier and more effective.
It can be tailored and adjusted per product, or per persona. The initial work is just the basics.

And what’s most important: It should be created by your entire team – and then shared with them. It’s not a painless process, but it’s worth it. We’ve seen many startups thrive on their messaging hierarchy. Oh, and the right time to create it – was yesterday.

Need a hand getting started? We should meet.

In the search for product-market fit, for a repeatable and scalable business model, for traction, start-ups need to be open to the option of a complete detour. Call it Plan B turning to be Plan A; Pivot; or a significant shift. Sometimes it is the only way.

Take Instagram, for example. Before Instagram launched in October 2010, the founders had built a location-based social network called Burbn. It was a very early example of a browser-based mobile app, developed using the then experimental new markup language HTML5. Instagram, based on Burbn, was mostly about mobile phone photos. That feature, uploading photos, turned out to be the most-used feature in Burbn. The location part proved to be a secondary appeal led the founders to the pivot: the creation of an iPhone app exclusively focused on photo-sharing.
And so, a $1 billion acquisition was actually based on Plan B. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom explained at Disrupt 2010:
“I’ve heard that Plan A is never the product entrepreneurs actually end up with. I didn’t believe it…in many ways Burbn was getting a bunch of press, but it wasn’t taking off the way we thought it would. We found people loved posting pictures, and that photos the the thing that stuck. Mike, my co-founder, and I, sat down and thought about the one thing that made the product unique and interesting, and photos kept coming up”.

According to Eric Reis in “The Lean Startup”, a pivot is  defined as a “structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.” Other great examples of successful pivotsare flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Paypal. Each of these successful companies started as something else, and successfully shifted.

We were fortunate enough to be part of three start-ups and their pivots. The first one had to switch from a vision of a complex, expensive, and on-premise deployed product, to a lighter, consumer-facing, affordable online product. Six months into the process, the new product is getting real traction with investors and customers, in a way the old product never did. Another founder had to admit that there is no real problem to solve behind its platform, and together we are now defining a direction that is a better fit both for the market and for the entrepreneur’s core strengths. And another start-up brought us to consult on sales infrastructure, only to discover that in order to get there, there needs to be a complete shift in the offering to be able to reach product-market fit. After a product change was made, this start-up is now having for the first time successful discussions with venture capital firms on raising Round A.

These three CEOs showed courage and strength to be able to go through the humbling experience of admitting they were wrong, and seek a new direction, which proved to be successful.

But how do you know if it’s time to pivot? entrepreneur Bernard Moon, recommends you watch for these four signs:
1. You are constantly in a need to educate the market: You may have a great idea, but if you constantly in a need to educate your target audience and trying to create a market, you may be too early, and you should consider a pivot.
2. Your Beta users don’t like your product: Only Steve Jobs can say that focus groups and user feedback are not important. And you are not Steve Jobs. So listen carefully to what your users are saying, or what they are not saying.
3. Investors you meet aren’t buying it: If it’s repeated feedback that your product is not compelling, you should consider a pivot.
4. You’re being everything to everyone: Some startups develop products that are bigger than they should, instead of focusing on one core competency that is a problem solver to a specific market. Going after everyone might confuse your users, and will burn expensive  R&D resources.

Do you balance your vision and execution with flexibility and the ability to listen? check with yourself and with people that know you well.

Have thoughts on how to successful pivot a start-up? we’d love to hear them.

Congratulations! Your cybersecurity startup just got funded. You’re as excited as you are probably stressed. And rightfully so: You have about 18 months to make enough progress to get to your round A funding. That’s a blink of an eye. Now – what do you do with marketing?

In this blog post we will focus on the first six months. Whether you or another founder take ownership of the marketing, you bring someone in-house, or outsource it, here’s a plan to help drive the first six months of your marketing efforts.

Step #1- week 1-4

You need to move fast, but you must cover the basics first. That means aligning product, marketing, and sales to make sure you all talk about the product in the same language. It’s a fast positioning process that involves the key people in the company, with an end-result of a written document that describes the following:

Product Description – what does the product do?
Company Value Proof – why should you be trusted?
Differentiators – what your product has over the competition?
Value Proposition – what is your promise to the world?

For more information about creating a messaging hierarchy, check out our blog post about it.

Step #2- week 2-4

Understanding what your competitors are doing is crucial for building your marketing plan. Keep in mind that your competitors are (probably) established companies, and you really cannot compare a young startup to a competitor that’s been around for 5-10 years; you can easily check what they are up to lately, but not what they did when they just started. Don’t get discouraged – they were once just like you. Still, there’s a lot that you can learn:

• How they position themselves – what they say about the company and product, and who are they targeting?
• What are their most important marketing channels – what do they invest their marketing budget in?
• Keywords
• If and how do they use analyst firms?
• Is press relations an important factor in their mix?
• How are they using content?
• What events do they attend and sponsor?

Tip: There are many tools that can help you do the research, some are free and some have free trials. Similarweb and SpyFu are good places to start, but there are others.

Step #3 – week 5-8

Start with the goals. Ensure you are in line with sales and management, and be realistic. Ideally, there is a marketing budget frame. Marketing can become very expensive, so it is better to know in advance the budget you need to work with.

The marketing plan should include a detailed 6-month plan, and then a high-level plan for the following months.

Here’s a sample marketing plan structure we work with:

• Goals
• Competitive research – insights and conclusions
• Plan overview – aligning each goal with main marketing activities
• Month-by-month detailed plan
• Events calendar (link to events folder with additional information)
• High-level editorial calendar (link to a detailed content plan)
• KPIs
• Budget

 

Want more on what should be delivered in the first 6 months of marketing?  Check out our blog or talk to us  

We are witnessing a dramatic restructure of the business and social order in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is increasingly clear our era will be defined by a fundamental schism: the period before COVID-19 and the new normal that will emerge in the post-viral era: the ‘next normal’”, says a recent report by McKinsey & Co.

The next normal is here. It’s not only Travel, Healthcare, Education and the Retail industries. We are seeing the shift across the board for technology products and companies – cybersecurity, AI applications, and Cloud infrastructure and services.

Business and cultural changes that have been established during the COVID-19 pandemic will remain. This presents opportunities for companies that will adapt and realize how to manage the consequences and the effects on the markets.

How can startups seize this opportunity and quickly make the transition? By having an actionable roadmap that realigns their positioning.

Forabilis is offering startups “THE NEXT NORMAL WORKSHOP” , with the goal of enabling startups to define alternative GTM strategies aligned with various market change scenarios.

What you will get out of the workshop:

• How Your Market Has Already Shifted
  Reevaluation of the market you’re operating in
• Possible Scenarios for Long-Term Effects
  Formulating alternatives for how your market will shift
• GTM Strategies for Each Scenario
  Go-To-Market plans to accommodate the market shift

To schedule a workshop click here, or drop us an email at info@forabilis.com

It’s not easy letting go of Segasec, a cybersecurity startup acquired by Mimecast after only two and a half years of existence. I’m thrilled for the founders, Elad and Gad, but for me it’s mixed feelings – it’s time to say goodbye.

For the past year, I served as Segasec’s VP marketing in a part-time position, a service we at Forabilis provide to startups. There are only few startups I can handle in this position. The level of involvement and responsibility it requires makes me very picky about where I choose to place my effort. Putting my face on a startup’s website as VP marketing makes it about me rather than about a service my agency provides. It is totally personal.

The funny thing is that if I do my job well enough, I can count on being replaced – either by a full-time, in-house VP marketing, or by an acquiring company with its own marketing leadership. Which is what happened in the case of Segasec. And while this is the business model that we created and it’s working well – it is still making me sad. Because for me it’s all about the people, the personal connections, and the cool things I get to do and learn. Earning the stripes of “it ended with an exit” is just a bonus.

It’s been a short and sweet ride. Here’s a bit of what I learned while leading marketing in a cybersecurity startup that had a fast exit:

• It’s a play of “from nothing to something” – it needs to be good enough, not perfect. Marketing has a certain pace, even when it moves fast. As a marketing leader, you are constantly going to be pushed and sometimes compared to the competition, expected to perform as well as they are. You can’t, because they’ve been around for eight years and you’re around for a year, and you’re small. So focus on creating and executing as much as possible, even if the results are not perfect. Get something out and then optimize.
• Marketing leaders must get close to the product, because no one will do product marketing aside from you at the beginning. It will be painful. There will be endless revisions for each collateral, hours spent with the product people (in my case Elad Schulman, the CEO). And at the beginning, no one can do it but the marketing leader. Bringing in a writer is a waste of time at this point – save it for later.
• To be fully accountable, marketing leaders must own the marketing budget. I owned the marketing plan and the marketing budget. It may sound obvious, but it doesn’t always work like this, and founders have a hard time letting go – even after approving the overall marketing budget. The result is that marketing needs budget approval on every activity that requires a spend. The fact that I could build a plan that ties different channels and campaigns, and move the budget around without constantly seeking approval, made me think broader, be more strategic, and more accountable for the results.
• Startups don’t really need a full time VP Marketing in the first two years. At the beginning, startups need fractions of different marketing skills. The first hire should be not a VP marketing but a full-stack marketing manager (and if you’re lucky enough you get someone amazing as Orly Bar-Lev).
• Marketing’s top priority in the beginning is to provide sales with what they need in order to sell. It’s that simple, and in marketing we don’t like hearing it. Because as marketers we think about our goals in a different way, and there is a tendency to spread across too many different efforts. Sales need tools, and marketing should provide them before attending to other tasks.
• The “Aha!” moment. Marketing can be very generic, there’s a playbook and it can be followed and be somewhat successful. For marketing to be both exciting and effective, you need to crack the code of the specific product and company. I felt we cracked it at Segasec when we learned how to utilize the product to generate data we can use for marketing, which turned into valuable content marketing and press opportunities. Having only one year, we only scratched the surface of what can be done with it.
• “Not enough leads”. Really, are there ever enough? Never. There’s so much to write about this constant complaint from sales, but I am going to try to be quick about it: Marketing can create “workarounds” to bring leads fast, just to take the pressure off. But the chance that these “fast leads” are ready to buy is close to zero, and warming them takes time. The ways to bring qualified leads that are ready to buy before there’s a fully-running marketing machine is either through direct sales outreach, or through conferences’ sponsorships and speaking opportunities. This may sound a bit depressing, but there is really no magic way to do this. We have only started seeing marketing leads become qualified and move down the funnel in the last month or so, after about 4-5 months of lead nurture. How I wish I had 6 more months to really be able to optimize the lead nurture process.
• Differentiation is tough, especially in cybersecurity, and as a result, the messaging suffers. So much competition, so many products. Everyone sounds just about the same. Once sales got in front of a potential customer, it was easy to show value. But what works well in a sales pitch, doesn’t necessarily translate into a marketing message. And while our messaging did change and improve, I must say that I feel we were far from done. My plan was to do a serious branding process this coming year to really make a leap in the messaging.

There is so much more to think about, such as – what’s the right timing to start marketing (hint: as soon as possible, no need to wait until there’s a working product), when is the right time to bring PR into the mix, what’s the role of social media in the cybersecurity space and when do you decide to pay the big bucks for Gartner.

There were so many things that were on the marketing plan for 2020 that I never did before – and was looking forward to experiment with Segasec in the coming year. I am really grateful for all that I learned this past year, and the trust of Segasec founders, Elad and Gad, for letting me hop in and join their awesome ride. I am sure this is not the last time we share a journey. Farewell, Segasec!