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11 Apr

How to do SEO right in 2025 (hint: most companies get it wrong)

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Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter by GTMnow – read by 50,000+ to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies.

Over the years we’ve seen too many startups spin their wheels on SEO – hiring agencies, creating tons of content, building backlinks – only to see… nothing.

So we brought in someone who’s seen it all: Eli Schwartz. He’s helped scale SEO for companies like WordPress, Quora, and Coinbase. Plus, he literally wrote the book on it (check it out here).

✅ Recommendations

ZoomInfo’s GTM25 virtual conference on May 7th.

The future of GTM is AI-powered. Join us and thousands of revenue leaders at ZoomInfo’s GTM25 virtual conference on May 7th to explore how high-performing teams are leveraging Go-to-Market Intelligence and AI to fuel their GTM strategies that help top teams crush their revenue goals. You’ll hear from industry experts, connect with peers, and learn about the latest AI advancements. Beyond insights, you’ll walk away with proven AI tactics that you can directly implement for your GTM team.

Save Your Spot – see you (virtually) there!

How to do SEO right in 2025 (hint: most companies get it wrong)

What high-performing teams do differently with SEO

1. Start with the hardest question: Should we even be doing SEO?

Not every company should invest in SEO. If people aren’t actively searching for what you sell, you’re shouting into the void.

“SEO isn’t mandatory. Just like billboards or paid social, it’s one tool, not the tool. You don’t have to do SEO. You have to understand your users and find them where they are.”

One founder Eli worked with was spending $15K/month on SEO for a QA tool, without realizing that every big customer had come through personal connections. Eli’s advice? Take that same $15K and host more dinners.

Another team building payroll software poured money into SEO. But when digging in, all the traffic came from employee-related searches, not the actual buyers. Right strategy, wrong audience.

2. People are the moat.

SEO isn’t about hacks, it’s about talent. The best outcomes come from teams who deeply understand their users and treat SEO like product development.

“If you don’t understand how buyers evaluate your product, SEO won’t just be ineffective, it might actively mislead you. If you don’t know your buyer’s journey, you don’t have product-market fit. SEO won’t help with that.”

Some companies waste time with generic content and shady backlinks. Others win by embedding SEO into cross-functional teams. At SurveyMonkey, Eli moved from marketing into product and built an internal SEO “team” made up of engineers, writers, and designers. It wasn’t about more blog posts, it was about crafting user-first experiences. That’s when growth took off.

3. Measure SEO like you measure paid channels.

Traffic is a vanity metric. Rankings don’t pay the bills. Great SEO shows up in CAC, leads, pipeline, and revenue.

Everyone talks about SEO’s excellent ROI compared to paid channels, but they rarely quantify their timing, investment, and returns assumptions. When you put real numbers down, the picture becomes much more interesting.

One company was spending $10K/month on SEO… until they asked customers where they came from. Every deal? Referrals. Not a single one from search.

SEO isn’t “free.” Hiring a top-tier SEO lead? ~$120K+. A full program with content, dev, and design? Potentially millions. It only makes sense if the ROI is there.

Eli has a simple rule: if a startup isn’t already running paid marketing, he won’t take them on for SEO. Why? Because without benchmarks, there’s no way to calculate ROI.

4. AI is your copilot, not your enemy.

Google doesn’t care if content is written by a human or a language model. It cares whether users find it helpful.

“Great AI content beats bad human content every time.”

Eli remembers when people tried gaming Google with auto-generated pages using RSS mashups. Didn’t work then, doesn’t work now. But when a client started pairing AI-generated drafts with human editors, and writing for intent not just keywords, results skyrocketed.

5. Want to win? Target the middle of the funnel.

Top-of-funnel content is saturated (and now AI-generated!). Bottom-of-funnel is pay-to-play. But the middle? That’s the goldmine.

Here’s an example:

Eli helped a Latin American e-commerce company move away from fluffy posts like “What is a sink?” and into focused content like “Best compact garage sinks with wide spouts.” Traffic quality improved. So did conversions.

It’s the same principle behind searches like “difference between South Beach and Miami Beach.” That’s a middle-funnel query. It’s not obvious, but it directly impacts a purchase decision, and it’s where SEO still shines.

6. Link building still matters, just not the way you think.

Forget blog comment spam and shady backlinks. The real value is in earned authority: PR, partnerships, and content people actually want to share.

At SurveyMonkey, Eli discovered that the White House had linked to a now-dead page. They revived it, turned it into a landing page, and watched the traffic roll in. That’s the kind of backlink Google respects.

Compare that to a client who had backlinks from domains that used to be massage parlors, now repurposed as “tech blogs.” Yeah… Google sees right through that. And now, so does AI.

7. SEO isn’t dying, it’s evolving.

Google’s algorithm updates and the rise of AI aren’t killing SEO. They’re weeding out garbage and forcing companies to level up.

Take Google’s “site reputation abuse” update – it tanked traffic for publishers like CNN who were ranking for things like “best blender” despite having no authority in kitchen appliances. You can’t fake relevance anymore. You actually have to be useful.

For Coinbase, the real SEO wins came not from more blog posts, but from scalable, search-driven pricing pages. Because that’s what users were looking for.

TL;DR key mental models for SEO:

SEO isn’t mandatory.

Just like billboards or paid search, it’s one tool. Not the tool.

“You don’t have to do SEO, just like you don’t have to buy billboards. You have to understand your users and find them where they are.”

No buyer journey = no SEO opportunity.

If you haven’t nailed PMF or don’t understand how users evaluate your product, SEO won’t help. It’ll just amplify confusion.

“If you don’t know your buyer’s journey, you don’t have product-market fit. SEO won’t help with that.”

Quality > origin.

Doesn’t matter who—or what—wrote it. If it’s helpful, it works.

“AI isn’t the issue, it’s whether the content is actually useful. Great AI content beats bad human content every time.”

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👂 More for your eardrums

What does it take to scale revenue from $20M to $450M – and stay in the CRO seat for over 6 years while doing it? Jeff Perry is a truly iconic revenue leader and the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Carta where he scaled these revenue numbers, responsible for core software revenue across New Business, Upsell, Cross Sell, and Customer Success. Prior to Carta, Jeff led SMB Sales at DocuSign, and started his career at Oracle, where he rose from Strategic Account Manager to VP of Sales over a decade. Read some of the key takeaways from the conversation here.

GTM 141: Timeless Growth Tips From a $7.4B Oracle Exit and Scaling Carta to $450M in Revenue | Jeff Perry

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts by searching “The GTM Podcast.”

🚀 Startup to watch

Writer – CEO May Habib is making bold moves, recently featured on the cover of Forbes for helping companies save millions in labor costs with AI. The company has opened four new offices and plans to grow the team to 600. Investors call her “the time traveler” and it’s easy to see why.

👀 More for your eyeballs

Customer Marketing Technology Landscape Report. Maps the core subcategories of Customer Marketing and Advocacy platforms, as well as adjacent technology categories that customer marketing leaders must at least be conversant in. In this first-of-its-kind report, you’ll get clear, unbiased data from 200+ real-world practitioners on exactly what these tools do best (and worst) —so you can confidently build a tech stack that works.

5 ways to build brand awareness by Sydney Sloan. An exclusive fireside conversation with the CMO of G2 highlighting the new and evergreen strategies to build brand — including AI optimization, strategies for showing up in AI-generated answers, the rise of B2B influencers and the impact of referral programs.

Udi Ledergor’s new book, Courageous Marketing, is a marketing masterclass. You’ll learn how to grab attention, build loyal fans, and craft messaging that truly connects. A little hint on next week’s podcast episode is that you’ll get to hear directly from Udi himself.

🔥 Hottest GTM jobs of the week

  1. Customer Success Manager at Closinglock (Austin)
  2. Account Executive at Fastbreak AI (Charlotte)
  3. Partner Customer Success Manager at Vanta (Remote – US)
  4. Sr. Customer Success Manager at Northbeam (Remote – US)
  5. ABM Manager at Document Crunch (Hybrid – Atlanta)

See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.

If you’re looking to scale your sales and marketing teams with top talent, we couldn’t recommend our partner Pursuit more. We work closely together to be able to provide the top go-to-market talent for companies on a non-retainer basis.

🗓 GTM industry events

Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:

Subscribe now

This newsletter was written and edited by Sophie Buonassisi, Max Altschuler, Paul Irving and the GTMnow team (not AI!).

The post How to do SEO right in 2025 (hint: most companies get it wrong) appeared first on GTMnow.

4 Apr

The GTM AI Operating System

By . Blog No Comments

Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter by GTMnow – read by 50,000+ to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies.

The best companies are building leverage. They’re redesigning their go-to-market architecture from the ground up to scale with systems, not just people.

What’s emerging isn’t just another AI point solution (well, actually, yes – there are many of those!). This goes beyond tools though and refers to the shift behind them. The shift to a new operating model: the GTM AI Operating System.

We’re calling this the rise of the “GTM AI OS” – a coordinated, AI-driven backbone that connects marketing, sales, CS, and product into a single motion.
It’s about working smarter across the entire GTM organization. Embedding AI across workflows to:

  • Share context between teams
  • Reduce manual work and friction
  • Accelerate signal-to-action loops
  • Unlock efficiency at scale

Instead of reacting to insights, companies are wiring intelligence directly into their GTM stack, so that actions are triggered in real time, not after the fact.

It’s not about adding more tools. It’s about asking one key question:
“How do we turn our GTM data into coordinated action across the buyer journey?”

The companies that figure this out will build a real, lasting advantage.
Not through more software, but through system design.

In this newsletter:

  • The GTM AI Operating System (GTM AI OS): A new architecture emerging across sales, marketing, CS, and product.
  • 4 models for building your GTM OS: How top teams are operationalizing AI, from internal tiger teams to hybrid “AI + GTM” roles.

✅ Recommendations

ZoomInfo’s GTM25 virtual conference on May 7th.

The future of GTM is AI-powered. Join us and thousands of revenue leaders at ZoomInfo’s GTM25 virtual conference on May 7th to explore how high-performing teams are leveraging Go-to-Market Intelligence and AI to fuel their GTM strategies that help top teams crush their revenue goals. You’ll hear from industry experts, connect with peers, and learn about the latest AI advancements. Beyond insights, you’ll walk away with proven AI tactics that you can directly implement for your GTM team.

Save Your Spot – see you (virtually) there!

The GTM AI Operating System

The GTM AI Operating System (GTM AI OS) is about building a revenue engine that’s faster, leaner, and smarter. Companies are redesigning their operating models around automation, data orchestration, and system-level thinking to unlock efficiency, reduce manual work, and scale without adding headcount.

There are four primary ways that teams have been building their GTM AI OS systems:

1. Internal operators as system designers

At data-fluent and product-led companies, RevOps teams are often stepping up as the system designers. They’re owning the entire GTM data layer and enabling AI across the stack.

2. Cross-functional tiger teams

Some companies are taking a “two-pizza” team approach to GTM transformation – creating small, cross-functional pods focused on automation and system enablement.

This might include:

  • A GTM-aware engineer
  • A RevOps or DataOps lead
  • A senior revenue stakeholder

3. Hiring someone to build it out internally

The rise of hybrid “AI + GTM” roles is real. Common titles include:

  • AI Architect
  • GTM Engineer
  • AI Workflow Designer
  • AI Ops Lead

Here are a few companies actively hiring:

Semrush – GTM Engineer (Sales Ops)

Fleetio – GTM Architect

EarnIn – Senior AI Solutions Engineer

Vanta – Founder in Residence

4. External agencies

Some companies are opting to outsource the first version of their GTM OS.

The winners won’t be the ones with the most AI tools, they’ll be the ones who design the smartest systems and empower the right people to run them.

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👂 More for your eardrums

Ray Smith is the VP of AI Agents at Microsoft. Previously, he was the Global VP of Product for SAP, CRM and Sales Cloud. Before that, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of DataHug, which was acquired by Calidus Cloud in 2016.

Ray breaks down why the rise of AI agents is a tectonic shift, how businesses are already seeing ROI, and what it means for SaaS, team structure, and go-to-market strategies. He also shares real-world use cases from inside Microsoft and partner companies, plus how founders and operators can build or adapt in this new AI-native era.

Get the top takeaways from the conversation, including how incentives need to be reworked to scale enterprise, in this post.

GTM 140: How Microsoft Scaled from $600M to $5B: The Enterprise Playbook with Hayden Stafford

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts by searching “The GTM Podcast.”

🚀 Startup to watch

Lindy – announced agent swarms, a huge update to the AI agent creation platform. With agent swarms, Lindy can now “divide and conquer,” creating hundreds of copies of itself — one for each task — and perform them reliably, all at once. You can also check out one of the agents that supports The GTM Podcast in my post here.

Paid – Manny Medina officially launched his new company, a business engine for AI agents, along with €10M raised. This marks the second pre-seed investment into Manny’s companies that GTMfund GP, Max Altschuler, has made – first into Outreach in 2015 and now into Paid in 2025.

OfferFit – has been acquired by Braze. The AI decisioning platform transforms customer interactions with automation and machine learning, now scaling its impact as part of Braze.

👀 More for your eyeballs

OpenAI closes a $40B round at a $300B post-money valuation. This is one of the largest private funding rounds in history, with SoftBank leading.

Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has acquired his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) in an all-stock deal.The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt).

Breaking the Mold: The Power of GTMfund’s Operator-Led Model. Scott Barker and Paul Irving share how hands-on expertise gives founders an edge.

The State of Sales & Marketing Alignment Report by Mutiny: Discover how top companies are using personalization to drive higher growth.

🔥 Hottest GTM jobs of the week

  1. Account Executive at Stotles (London)
  2. Revenue Enablement Program Manager at Amper (Hybrid – Chicago)
  3. Sales Enablement Manager – Ramp & Onboarding at Writer (Hybrid – New York)
  4. Government Account Executive – West at Esper (Remote – CA / AZ / NV / UT / CO)
  5. Senior Customer Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Owner (Remote – US)

See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.

If you’re looking to scale your sales and marketing teams with top talent, we couldn’t recommend our partner Pursuit more. We work closely together to be able to provide the top go-to-market talent for companies on a non-retainer basis.

🗓 GTM industry events

Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:

Subscribe now

This newsletter was entirely written and edited by Sophie Buonassisi and Scott Barker (not AI!).

The post The GTM AI Operating System appeared first on GTMnow.

30 Mar

Cold Calling Playbook Tips: 10 Proven Tactics for Sales Leaders and Reps

By . Blog No Comments

Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter by GTMnow – read by 50,000+ to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies.

GTMfund hosted an inaugural event called The GTM Workshop x Founders this week (some photos here). One theme was clear: AI is touching every part of go-to-market. We’ll be sharing more content soon on how AI is reshaping GTM, and this week’s podcast dives deep into what you need to know about AI agents.

But one unassuming topic that kept coming up? Cold calling. Despite all the AI buzz, the phones are still ringing — and still driving pipeline. Seemed like the perfect time to share some proven cold calling tips that are working right now.

Tips for sales leaders

  1. Set clear expectations.Establish minimum viable activity metrics, such as 150-200 cold calls per week, to ensure consistent engagement without overwhelming your reps. The magic formula is finding the activity metrics that balances both quality with quantity.
  2. Cultivate a cold calling culture and lead by example.Normalize rejection as a step toward success. Rejection is a data point that provides feedback so you can iterate. Lead by example – when leaders actively engage in cold calling, it reinforces its importance to the team. Anyone who has made a cold call can certainly agree that it’s not only a humbling exercise, but a great feedback loop from your ICP.
  3. Equip your team with the right tools (and training!).Invest in platforms and tools that streamline cold calling efforts. For example, consolidating standalone tools into one platformand parallel dialers.
  4. Motivate with gamification and incentives.Create healthy competition within your team using leaderboards and contests. Reward both the quantity of calls and the quality of engagements.
  5. Align cold calling with broader sales strategies.Integrate cold calling into a multi-channel outreach strategy, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints, including email campaigns and social selling.

Tips for sales reps

1. Tackle cold calling first thing in the morning. Make cold calling your first task of the day when connect rates are highest. Use tactics like the “10 dials, no pee” rule to overcome reluctance and build momentum.

2. Perfect your opener. Avoid generic openers. Instead, lead with a context-specific statement that shows you’ve done your research. Example opener:
“Hey [Prospect], I just finished reading your latest report on [specific topic]. This is a cold call, but it’s well-researched. Can I get 30 seconds to tell you why I called?”

3. Focus on the problem, not the product. When pitching, emphasize the specific problem your product solves rather than its features.

4. Handle objections by agreeing then asking a trap question. When faced with objections, agree with the prospect first to lower their defenses. Then, ask a “trap question” that subtly highlights a gap in their current solution. Example objection handling:
“Prospect: “We’re already working with [Competitor].”
You: “Great choice, [Competitor] is solid. That must mean you’re not dealing with [specific problem your solution addresses], right?”

5. Integrate cold calling with email outreach. Use a multi-touch approach by following up cold calls with personalized emails.

Share

Tag GTMnow so we can see your takeaways and help amplify them.

👂 More for your eardrums

Ray Smith is the VP of AI Agents at Microsoft. Previously, he was the Global VP of Product for SAP, CRM and Sales Cloud. Before that, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of DataHug, which was acquired by Calidus Cloud in 2016.

Ray breaks down why the rise of AI agents is a tectonic shift, how businesses are already seeing ROI, and what it means for SaaS, team structure, and go-to-market strategies. He also shares real-world use cases from inside Microsoft and partner companies, plus how founders and operators can build or adapt in this new AI-native era.

GTM 139: AI Agents Are Changing Everything — Microsoft’s VP of AI Agents on the New Era of Work and Software | Ray Smith

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts by searching “The GTM Podcast.”

🚀 Startup to watch

Paid – Manny Medina officially launched his new company, a business engine for AI agents, along with €10M raised. This marks the second pre-seed investment into Manny’s companies that GTMfund GP, Max Altschuler, has made – first into Outreach in 2015 and now into Paid in 2025.

OfferFit – has been acquired by Braze. The AI decisioning platform transforms customer interactions with automation and machine learning, now scaling its impact as part of Braze.

👀 More for your eyeballs

If you can’t delegate, you can’t scale. Delegation isn’t just about offloading tasks, it’s about building a scalable team that can achieve more together.

Lessons in product scaling and storytelling from Figma’s CPO. The playbook behind the gnarly phase of product building that arrives after a startup achieves product-market fit.

🔥 Hottest GTM jobs of the week

See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.

If you’re looking to scale your sales and marketing teams with top talent, we couldn’t recommend our partner Pursuit more. We work closely together to be able to provide the top go-to-market talent for companies on a non-retainer basis.

🗓 GTM industry events

Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:

Subscribe now

This newsletter was entirely written and edited by Sophie Buonassisi and Scott Barker (not AI!).

The post Cold Calling Playbook Tips: 10 Proven Tactics for Sales Leaders and Reps appeared first on GTMnow.

13 Oct

Mashable Mornings ft. Vaibhav Jain | EP1

By . Blog No Comments

Let your lessons begin!

Introducing Mashable Morning, a groundbreaking show by Mashable Middle East aiming to empower aspiring entrepreneurs with insights from India’s top influencers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.

Partnering with Elite magazine, our parent company Fork Media will host an exclusive event on November 19th, 2023, in New York, honoring the region’s …

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