Go-To-Market

Scaling your ABM with a 1 to few approach

23 October 2024 · Go-To-Market

Defining growth marketing with Scott Vaughan, Integrate’s chief growth officer

With growth marketing being the #1 trend on this year’s 2021 Trend Tracker, this week’s episode features Scott Vaughan, chief growth officer at Integrate. Editor for B2B Marketing, David Rowlands, sat down with Scott to talk about what growth marketing is, what a chief growth officer does and how marketers can make growth central to what they do. DR: You may or may not have seen our 2021 Trend Tracker. Essentially, this was a survey we conducted with hundreds of B2B marketers to see what core topics they’re focused on this year. Growth marketing, which was a completely new entry in this year’s Trend Tracker, was the number one focus area amongst both agency-side and client-side B2B marketers. However, there seems to be a huge amount of debate around what growth marketing even is! As chief growth officer at Integrate, what is growth marketing to you, and why do you think it’s such a core focus area for marketers this year? SV: I don’t think there is a business-to-business focused organisation on the planet who is not focused on growth in one fashion or another. Growth is a company-wide mission, requirement and responsibility. Ideally, all employees have this mindset. Marketing has taken more of a central role because of a change in the buying and selling process. In B2B, Gartner states that sales are only involved 7-9% of the initial purchase process. Buyers have also taken control of their purchase process and have gone digital first not engaging with companies until late in the process. This is where marketing has the opportunity to step in and step up. The move to apply 'growth' in marketing is a clear mission to up level the thinking from marketing-driven demand, which can often equal generating leads or sales pipeline, to a more holistic view of driving revenue growth and company growth. For example, a growth executive thinks about: Which markets are the best to compete in? What are the right solutions required to compete? What is the optimal go to market strategy? Not just leads and pipeline. In my role at Integrate, the opportunity for a growth executive was recognition by the CEO that we are driving a new category in a dynamic technology market. We needed to think about driving growth in new ways and faster to capitalise on market opportunity. For us, thinking beyond traditional 'demand generation' capabilities in marketing and sales are essential. Growth executives work across functions – marketing, sales, finance, product, customer success and alliances - to identify the right growth market segments, align products and solutions with markets you serve, to properly position your company and solutions to the right audiences and accounts, and to exploit market shifts and differentiation. With this in place, your organisation has a greater likelihood of sustained growth success and Marketing can more effectively and efficiently create demand for the company’s solutions.

12 April 2021 · Go-To-Market

how to link sales and marketing

Optimising the way sales and marketing teams work together and collaborate for go-to-market (GTM) success has long been a key consideration for B2B businesses. Aligning these two departments is vital to building a more powerful business engine and removing inconsistencies across the GTM process. However, achieving the desired level of symbiosis can be easier said than done – often having a direct impact on business success. For example, IDC suggests that the misalignment of sales and marketing can cost companies an average of 10% or more of annual revenue. Another recent report suggests that companies are 70% more likely to see revenues grow year over year if their sales and marketing teams collaborate effectively, with cooperation around strategic and tactical initiatives and KPIs being particularly beneficial. With employees working remotely and the pressure to drive sales higher than ever as a result of the disruption caused by Covid-19, empowering these two teams to work together more efficiently and effectively has taken on a newfound importance. And there are plenty of opportunities available for those businesses that are prepared to rethink the way they foster these internal relationships. Now is the time to break down any internal silos that may still exist once and for all. But how can B2B businesses successfully bridge the gap between sales and marketing and start driving GTM effectiveness? Cultivate a collaborative mindset The first step any business must take is to actively promote and encourage the idea of collaboration across the organisation. Internal alignment won’t just happen by itself; it must be nurtured from the very top of the organisation, all the way down to the bottom. Sales and marketing leaders should implement frequent and direct communication between their teams and define common goals to ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction. As joint workshops and informal in-person gatherings aren’t possible at the moment, team leads must find other ways to share key information. Virtual meetups offer an effective alternative. Also, be sure to establish performance metrics and track against them. Although sales and marketing may be on different teams, everyone involved has the same objective – completing sales to drive business growth. This can all go a long way towards breaking down the barriers and misconceptions that sales and marketing may have about each other. With 46% of marketers feeling that sellers don’t understand what’s important to the marketing team, and 31% of sellers perceiving a disconnect between the two departments, overcoming these attitudes is vital to creating one cohesive unit. Amidst such ongoing disruption, cultivating a collaborative mindset across the organisation represents a vital first step towards true sales and marketing alignment.

30 March 2021 · Go-To-Market

EI’s Go-To-Market Strategy Barometer 2020

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, marketers have been constantly challenged on many fronts, and have had to pivot quickly in redirecting their efforts around new business pressures. The uncertainty during this period combined with industry volatility meant that many marketers had to brave the storm alone.

19 November 2020 · Go-To-Market

5 ways to boost your channel partner recruitment strategy

James Taylor, Kingpin's commercial director, gives B2B marketers top tips to boosting your partner recruitment strategy.1. Competency > Quantity when recruitingWhile having a lot of partners can have its benefits for some organisations, it is not the top end goal. Essentially, prioritise doing your research before you even begin the recruitment process. This is the one piece of advice I almost always give to our partners.Before you even start recruiting, have a good long think about what would make a company a suitable fit for yours. Set out official partner standards for your organisation and aim to engage those partners. Always keep your audience front of mind.Effectively, a channel partner programme is a sales network, so vendors must be providing a solid value offering from their partnership. By being focused on your audience and the goals you hope to achieve through partnering with resellers, service providers and ISVs, your organisation is far more likely to be making the right connections (which complement your go-to-market strategy).Trying to recruit as many partners as possible can end up messy and is an unmanageable and unsustainable strategy for most companies.  A blanket approach can work for larger companies, however, smaller companies often don’t have the time, workforce or funding to maintain a high number of new partnerships. In my job, I see a lot of small companies focused on recruiting high numbers of companies (and they are often un-willing to reduce), unfortunately, the relationships they do have can suffer as a result.This does not mean your company will never have lots of partners. Once you have an effective network set-up, you can build your partners up. Focus on a few partners with the highest competency; the rest will follow.

2 November 2020 · Go-To-Market

A primer on B2B go-to-market (GTM) strategy

Success in a new B2B venture or product release requires vast confidence and passion for the technology. This is particularly important in securing funding. In most cases, however, customers do not immediately grasp the need for your product. At the same time, buying decisions require approval from a diverse group of individuals, and there is uniform resistance to being “sold”. The solution to this daunting challenge is to abandon the traditional product-centric framework and resist the temptation to lead with product in favor of a more customer-centric GTM strategy. What does customer-centric mean? The optimal approach involves targeting the right accounts and contacts as precisely as possible, creating awareness, and successfully nurturing the buyer’s journey. Essentially, the goal is to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. By employing a one-to-one versus one-to-many methodology, you will reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) and minimise the sales cycle.

19 October 2020 · Go-To-Market

Why demand generation and marketing operations should be united – but distinct – teams

The relationship between demand generation and marketing operations recurs as a topic of conversation with surprising frequency. Percassity's Simon Daniels discusses why these two functions need to be united but still separate with their unique goals.On the face of it they are entirely separate components of the marketing function, with distinct objectives, skillsets and dispositions, yet they often seem to be conflated or referred to in one breath. This is disingenuous, as those contrasting characteristics point to the need to keep them separate and focused on their unique goals. Marketing operations should be a centre of excellence, enabling and driving go-to-market strategy and execution, focused on developing and maintaining marketing infrastructure and capability rather than front line activity. Marketing operations should encourage the demand generation team’s adoption of leading practice in terms of data-driven programmes, marketing automation adoption and analytics. In turn, demand generation itself should look to marketing operations, plus the provision of tools and infrastructure crucial to its success.

17 February 2020 · Go-To-Market

Don’t Plan A Go-To-Market Strategy For 2016; Create Your Go-To-Customer Plan

Forrester has introduced a new method to help B2B organizations focus and scale their plans across their myriad products, services, and buyers. Contact me for a copy of the cited report.

16 September 2015 · Go-To-Market

AI won’t fix your GTM: Why you need a systems-thinking CMO, with Marketbridge

In this week’s episode of the B2B Marketing Podcast, Richard O’Connor, CEO, B2B Marketing is joined by Fiona McKenzie, President, Europe, Marketbridge to tease her upcoming keynote session at B2B Ignite.

26 May 2026 · Go-To-Market

Robert Norum on using the full-stack ABM model as the basis for your GTM strategy

All too often, ABM becomes a bolt-on strategy reserved for a handful of accounts, and which doesn’t have any clear connection with broader business strategy. In this podcast episode, Robert Norum, our Propolis Expert for ABM & Demand Strategy, outlines a new vision for ABM, using his full-stack model.

6 June 2024 · Go-To-Market

How to transform your go-to-market strategy

15 May 2023 · Go-To-Market

Mastering Insight Skills for Commercial Growth

Insight is more than just data. You need to have a deep understanding of your target market while analyzing customer strategies in order to understand and inform your own strategy.

22 September 2025 · Go-To-Market

From Insight to Impact: The Commercial Marketer’s GTM Playbook

In today’s B2B landscape, growth isn’t just about launching campaigns — it’s about building a commercially-driven Go-to-Market strategy that delivers real business impact. In this exclusive webinar, B2B Marketing and The Think Tank reveal key findings from their latest research, Unlocking B2B Growth, and explore how leading marketers are turning GTM into a core driver of commercial success.

28 July 2025 · Data and Insights

A CMO Briefing: Serving the Self-Educating Buyer—AI Content, Real-Time Pipeline Insight

Learn how to meet today’s B2B buyers on their terms with AI-driven content, smarter buyer data, and tighter sales alignment—without overhauling GTM.

9 July 2025 · Data and Insights

Why Defining and Activating Your Go-to-Market Strategy Is a Must in 2025

Discover the true meaning of GTM strategy in our B2B Marketing webinar with The Think Tank.

12 March 2025 · Data and Insights