Maren Hogan

Title rebrand or a legit "new way?" No doubt GTM Ops is evolving. I don't have a crystal ball. But the clues are lining up. When I saw xAI's "Head of GTM Systems & Agents," it felt different. Then came across Asana, Black Forest Labs, Databricks, and 30+ others with the pattern: Traditional GTM Ops → AI-Native GTM Ops. I track 210 AI & SaaS companies. 83% already have AI mandates in their ops JDs. ~15% have new world titles. We see it in the tools of the trade too. Process Docs --> Claude Code ZoomInfo --> Clay Marketo --> Inflection.io New Categories (eg Vibe Coding, AEO) Leaders are aligning with GTM domain experts who can build (with agents, MCPs, AI orchestration, etc). Worth watching IMO. There will be exciting opportunities and probably some pain. Examples, full analysis, and open questions → adamGTM(dot)com Curious how others see it. "just a rebrand" or something more? #gtm

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I did a competitor analysis recently and spent an hour on their blog. 50+ posts. Every single one was a variation of "Our Services," "Why Choose Us," "The Benefits of Our Product." Not one article answered a genuine, painful question their customers were asking. Their content wasn't a resource; it was a digital billboard. Content marketing shouldn't be a brochure. It should be a helpful guide, a friendly hand in the dark, the answer to a silent prayer typed into a search bar at 2 AM. My biggest advice? Stop talking about your brand. Start solving problems. Who agrees?

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I recently had a chat with a SaaS founder who built a white-label AI voice agent platform for agencies that could answer phone calls like a real receptionist, respond to text messages, and handle Instagram DMs. All three channels remembered previous conversations so customers never had to repeat themselves. It could also call old leads who went cold and try to book them back in. And his team would set up everything for you. Pretty solid platform!!! However, his white-label partners still weren’t closing any deals for the platform. And before you blame it on product-market-fit or pricing, I’ll be the first person to tell you it has nothing to do with either. In fact, his main bottleneck was that he handed his partners a $297/month white-label platform and just expected them to figure out how to sell it themselves. His partners had no clue how to: - Identify their ICP - Run outbound that gets replies - Handle objections on calls - Close deals consistently As a result, a lot of people ended up churning after month two. So rather than him partnering with agency owners, we decided to partner with course creators like Liam Ottley who teach agency sales. Then we'd give their students exclusive $97/month access to his platform. Now they have the product AND the sales training in one community. No brainer offer.

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I had the privilege of co-hosting a CMO roundtable today with a world-class marketing leader Shanel Vandergriff for the Elsewhere Partners portfolio of marketing leaders. We're all navigating the same question: how do you scale marketing like a machine and not a hustle? A few things stuck with me that every B2B marketing leader scaling through the messy middle needs to hear: 🔹 Stop thinking like a marketer. Start thinking like a business owner. Own a number, not an MQL target. Learn to speak the financial language that matters to the business, not just the language of marketers. That's what earns you the trust and credibility to scale. 🔹 AI doesn't make leadership easier - it makes clarity unavoidable. If you're not adopting AI and pushing the limits of what's possible, don't expect your team to do it for you. If your point of view isn't unique, AI will scale mediocrity. If your team can't adapt, AI exposes it faster. The gap isn't skills - it's mindset. 🔹 It's not about building an empire. It's about building an operating system that can scale. Versatile people + AI as a force multiplier > specialists in every lane. Every role has to earn its place when efficient growth is the game. 🔹 Your digital presence is now training data and it's shaping your future pipeline. AI can either work for you or against you. Distribution is no longer just a channel play - it's your people, your community, it's how you show up before anyone knows to look for you. (And if you're still gating content, you've already lost.) The throughline: at every stage of scaling, the thing that got you there becomes the thing holding you back. AI doesn't change that pattern - it accelerates it. Thom Everett, Kristen Ortwerth, Harrison Yeager, Kimberly Falk

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💡 3 Tips to Keep Your Google Ad Grant Compliant Every month, nonprofits lose their $10k Google Ad Grant because of simple compliance issues. Avoid these pitfalls: ✅ Maintain a 5% click-through rate. 🧩 Use geo-targeting to focus on your service area. 🔁 Keep at least 2 ads per ad group and update them regularly. Follow these and you’ll protect that $120,000/year asset. Need a hand? We’re here to help. #NonprofitMarketing #GoogleAds #DigitalMarketing #GrantManagement

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Go-to-market 2026 guiding light #7 in our Practical Pivots podcast on the Top 12 insights for GTM success in the AI-era comes from both Adam Burrows of Range Ventures & Rachael Shayne of R&D B2B Marketing | Branding | Comms for EnergyTech & CleanTech Clarity beats brilliance It takes deep work and focus to convey your message clearly. -If prospects don’t instantly get it, they won’t buy it. Even if you follow up with dozens of slides of proof. -If investors don't get it instantly, they'll tell you they love your vision and never get back to you. Much of my startup consulting work is spent cutting through all of the tangential value options to get to the core. And saying it in a way that resonates quickly and clearly. It takes much longer than any client anticipates. It's worth it every time. https://lnkd.in/g_QigcmR We're more than halfway there! Check out the GTM highlights full episode in the comments, and all of Adam and Rachael's insights from their full interviews.

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More content doesn’t equal more pipeline. Building content like product does. That’s what gets you citations, human shares, and real revenue, says Emily Kramer (MKT1 co-founder, ex-Asana & Carta). This Thursday, join us in our next webinar as she breaks down: ✅ How to spot the system-level issues stalling your content engine ✅ The “fuel vs. engine” model to scale creation and distribution ✅ GACCS and other frameworks for content that compounds ✅ What today’s lean, high-leverage content teams actually look like ✅ The metrics that predict pipeline, not just pageviews When structured right, content connects marketing, product, and sales—this equals revenue. Register today for the content playbook that ships like product, not random assets. Link in the comments👇🏻

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Last week I joined a group of folks in Salt Lake to discuss the impact of AI on the workforce. The event, hosted by White Label Advisors, Christine Wzorek, CEO, SPHR and Jake Rushton had an incredible lunch & panel session to start. The questions were pointed, provocative, and the panel included leaders from Legal, Finance, Org Design and Tech so the responses allowed for nuance and interpretation. I also had a wonderful table of new friends who made the whole experience really fun. One of my favorite things - which I'd recommend to many conference organizers - is post-panel, Jennifer Sorensen led a workshop where attendees then discussed and debated the takeaways together. Often you leave inspired, but this time I left feeling in community with a new group of people who were all experimenting, creating standards and charting the next path of growth, development and organizational health utilizing AI powered tools. And as all post-event posts should have, here are a few of my favorite notable takeaways: - Colby Litnak - learn to harness the tools, don't let them get in the way of growth, but rather let them elevate our thinking - Alexander Chang - AI is not lazy (like humans), keep honing your craft, especially around persuasive writing or whatever is most pertinent in your field. - Jennifer Sorensen - cognitive processing speed goes down when using AI as a thought partner, be sure to keep sharp & human connections to round things out (and dont forget to smell the bacon!) - Chris Lake - pay attention to mentorship and succession planning, as leaders are being asked (or choosing) to utilize tools where they used to coach and grow junior talent What else are you seeing - both positive and challenging? And if you were there and we didn't get to chat, let's connect here!

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Most websites don’t fail because they’re ugly. They fail because they’re aimless. Adding more pages to a broken strategy is like adding lanes to a road that goes nowhere. In our newest post, You Don’t Need More Pages. You Need a Plan., I break down how bloat kills clarity—and why a conversion-driven roadmap matters more than another “About Us” rewrite. Real examples Cold-hard stats Strategy that scales Read it now and burn the brochure mentality. https://lnkd.in/gZaiSw8R

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This week, I read an article that mirrors my personal experience. The real competitor to hiring a fractional executive isn’t a full-time hire or an agency; it’s inertia. After years of stepping into B2B companies as a fractional CMO, I’ve seen the same four patterns over and over: “We’re not ready yet.” Companies delay bringing in strategic leadership because they think they need to fix a few things first. In reality, waiting usually compounds the problem. “Let’s try one more campaign.” Instead of stepping back and building a strategy, teams double down on tactics. More ads. More content. More activity. But activity ≠ progress. “We’ll revisit this next quarter.” Growth stalls, but the urgency fades once the immediate fire is out. Strategic marketing becomes a future problem. “It’s working… kind of.” Pipeline isn’t predictable. Sales and marketing aren’t aligned. Messaging feels generic, but because revenue hasn’t collapsed, no one acts decisively. In my experience, companies don’t fail because they made a bold move; they stall because they didn’t. Strategic leadership isn’t about doing more marketing; it’s about creating clarity, alignment, and momentum. That momentum only happens when someone decides to move. #4OnFriday #FractionalCMO #B2BMarketing #Leadership #GrowthStrategy

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Website traffic is about to get squeezed. Jaime Gastelle H., Senior Director of Marketing at LandGate, broke down what this means for digital teams navigating the shift from SEO to generative engines. A practical framework she shared for staying visible: 🟢 Structure content for machines first. Clear sections, bullet points, tables, and fact-dense writing make it easier for LLMs to extract and cite you. 🟢 Build brand mentions beyond backlinks. 🟢 Generative engines reward recognized brands — even unlinked citations strengthen authority. 🟢 Use expert stats and credible sources. 🟢 If your content references trusted data, it’s more likely to be surfaced in AI-generated answers. 🟢 Optimize for engagement, not just ranking. 🟢 Lower bounce rates and stronger interaction signals still matter — the algorithms are watching. 🟢 Think platform consolidation, not just search traffic. If users stay inside AI interfaces, you need to be the brand those systems recommend. The shift isn’t subtle. From 97% traditional organic traffic today to a projected 50/50 split with LLM-driven discovery by 2027. The teams that adapt early will own visibility in the next phase of search. Watch the full episode. Link in the comments.

Advisory Boards are often treated as a late-stage move. The strongest founders I work with see them differently. They invest in perspective early—before scale, before pressure, before the cost of a wrong decision compounds. Today’s advantage isn’t speed alone. It’s informed speed. Founder instincts are powerful, but they don’t scale in isolation. The best CEOs don’t outsource thinking—they expand it. #AdvisoryBoards aren’t about prestige. They’re about seeing around corners sooner. If you’re thinking about what that kind of perspective could unlock for your company, it’s worth exploring sooner than later.

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We built Untitled’s Agency Partner Program for one reason: to help agencies move up-market, increase margins, and own the data layer, not rent it. Stop reselling the same tools everyone else has. Untitled lets agencies: → Provide SaaS revenue alongside their service retainers → Build exclusive audiences for their customers → Activate media more efficiently for their customers → White-label our entire product experience This video breaks down how our Agency Partner Program actually works 👇 🔗 Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gPaP-kRh

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I'm sitting at Anthropic's Startup event for Tech Week and really appreciating what their product is able to accomplish. What's more important is the realization that what we're doing at mktg.ai will unlock an agentic era that marketers have been craving for years if not decades. Marketers have been trained to look at performance after the media is placed. The lens has been fixed on impressions, CPMs, and attribution models that prioritize delivery over impact. The real power, and the real story isn’t in the placement at all it’s in the creative. And today, we have started testing our Chatbot agent. At first glance it's rudimentary. But as our clients embrace "Nolan Swift" analyzing their data (creative first) they will realize marketing gains like we have never seen.

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a16z has made a claim about a new technology category that's been on my mind for a while. Having worked within the a16z portfolio before, it's bringing me back to some stellar discussions around the big picture (not to say they weren't happening at the awesome firms backing other ventures). In short, AI agents are becoming the next software layer. Orchestration is already a hot topic, but it's going to be THE topic that defines the next evolution of SaaS. I think a lot of ppl can relate on a common pain point: so many point solutions that a ton of time is spent moving information between systems, interpreting signals, and triggering next steps. On the marketing side, getting the pieces to talk to each other has been mind-numbing. An agentic orchestration layer addresses this at the core, enabling each of these solutions to have the impact they were designed for.

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What happens to your community when a platform shuts down overnight? Today's episode covers why creators need owned channels—email lists, contact forms, newsletters—to reach their audience no matter what happens to social platforms. We discuss WordPress tools that automate this process. Sponsored by the Crew Collective Podcast from Rocketgenius, Inc. Editing by Megan Bagala. Music is by Marcus Bagala. Find us everywhere at https://lnkd.in/eNXysrWG. #personaldevelopment #creativity #DailyTipsPod #TipOfTheDay #DailyTips #LifeHack #CreatorEconomy #AudienceBuilding #ContentCreators

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