Turning one happy product into a platform story—without confusing customers or bloating your funnel.
This week: AI transforms from tactical tool to strategic partner, marketing strategy needs a reality check, and data-driven alignment gets a new playbook. And the future of SaaS might be "vibe-based," plus a cautious thaw in the B2B market.
Your Marketing Strategy Needs a Reality Check
Too many marketing strategies are just a collection of activities in search of a goal. A real strategy doesn’t start with channels or tactics; it starts with a deep understanding of the business model and how the company creates value for a specific customer.
Liam Moroney argues that marketing strategy should flow directly from the business strategy, focusing on how to best acquire and retain the customers that drive the business forward. This requires a clear-eyed view of your market. As positioning expert April Dunford explains, you might even need different positioning for different use cases of the same product, because you’re competing against different alternatives in each scenario.
This strategic alignment is critical for moving beyond vanity metrics and focusing on what truly matters: revenue. By connecting marketing activities to the customer journey as defined by the Bowtie Funnel, leaders can ensure their teams are working on initiatives that directly support customer acquisition and expansion. It’s about making deliberate choices to win a specific market, not just being busy.
BIG IDEA: A winning marketing strategy is a direct extension of the business model, not a list of channels to fill or activities to complete.
WHY IT MATTERS: In a competitive environment, a coherent strategy focused on a well-defined market segment is your best defense against being outspent or outmaneuvered.
- Gaetano DiNardi points out that when marketing operates as a support function, it often gets blamed for poor results stemming from a flawed GTM strategy.
Is your team using AI for more than just writing ad copy? While many marketing teams are still focused on top-of-funnel efficiencies, leading companies are integrating AI into the core of their business operations, transforming it from a simple tool into a strategic partner.
A recent HSBC report on OpenAI’s impact highlights how AI is becoming integral to complex workflows, not just a bolt-on for simple tasks. For example, Jason Lemkin notes that AI agents are already capable of handling 50% of customer support tickets, freeing up human agents for higher-value interactions. This isn’t about replacing humans but augmenting them to create a more efficient and responsive customer experience.
For CMOs, this means the scope of AI’s role must expand beyond the marketing department. The opportunity is to champion AI-driven initiatives that improve the entire customer lifecycle, from initial contact to post-sale support. By focusing on practical applications like AI-powered support, you can drive measurable results in efficiency and customer satisfaction, proving marketing’s strategic value far beyond lead generation.
BIG IDEA: The most impactful AI use cases are not about marketing tasks, but about fundamentally re-architecting how the business serves its customers.
WHY IT MATTERS: As AI automates more of the customer journey, marketing's role will be to design, manage, and optimize these AI-driven systems for a superior experience.
- Jason Yoelin notes that the next step is AI agents that can take action on behalf of users, not just provide information.
- Jason Lemkin clarifies that while AI can handle half of support tickets, it still requires significant human oversight and training to be effective.
From Sales vs. Engineering to Data-Driven Alignment
The age-old conflict between sales and product is a familiar one. Sales asks engineering to "build what we need to sell," while engineering tells sales to "sell what we have."
Jason Lemkin highlights this classic tension, but a modern, data-centric approach offers a path to alignment where marketing can serve as the translator. The key is to move beyond anecdotes and prioritize based on objective data. Oren Greenberg suggests focusing on "smart signals"—data points that indicate genuine buyer intent or product gaps—rather than noisy metrics.
This allows teams to make informed decisions about which feature requests or sales objections represent a true market need versus a one-off complaint. Marketing’s role is to capture, analyze, and present this data in a way that bridges the gap between what sales is hearing and what product can build. This data-driven mindset also applies to proving marketing’s own value. Instead of just tracking surface-level metrics, teams need to implement more sophisticated account-based marketing attribution to show how their efforts influence target accounts throughout a long sales cycle.
BIG IDEA: Data is the universal language that can finally align sales, marketing, and product around a shared set of priorities.
WHY IT MATTERS: Companies that use data to resolve internal conflicts and guide their strategy will out-execute competitors who are still operating on opinions and departmental silos.
- Jason Lemkin adds that a great VP of Product can act as a "benevolent dictator," using data and market insight to make the final call between competing priorities.
The Future of SaaS Is Dynamic and "Vibe-Based"
What if your users could customize your software just by describing what they want it to do? This idea is moving from science fiction to reality, signaling a profound shift in how software is built and used.
Intercom co-founder Des Traynor calls this "vibe-based coding," where AI interprets a user’s natural language request to modify an application’s functionality on the fly. This concept is echoed by HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah, who envisions a future where AI can build "micro-apps" to solve specific user problems instantly. Instead of waiting for a feature to be added to the roadmap, users will simply ask for it.
This move toward a more composable and intelligent software layer has massive implications for marketing leaders. As Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, points out, AI will create new workflows by connecting disparate systems in novel ways. Marketing a product will no longer be about selling a fixed set of features. It will be about selling a platform of possibilities—a dynamic tool that adapts to each customer’s unique needs, effectively turning every user into a developer.
BIG IDEA: The next generation of software will be defined by its ability to adapt to the user in real-time, driven by natural language and AI.
WHY IT MATTERS: Marketing will need to shift from promoting static features to communicating the transformative potential of a product that can be endlessly customized by the user.
- Des Traynor suggests this will lead to "emergent software," where the final product is a collaboration between the user’s intent and the AI’s interpretation.
- Rajiv Appana comments that the value will shift from the pre-built application to the underlying platform and the unique data it can access.
A Cautious Thaw in the B2B Market
After two years of budget cuts, hiring freezes, and intense pressure on efficiency, there are tangible signs that the worst may be over for many B2B tech companies. While the boom times of 2021 are not returning, the market is showing signs of stabilization and a cautious return to growth.
SaaS investor Jason Lemkin has observed that for many, "the worst is over," with the extreme headwinds of the past 18-24 months beginning to subside. He notes that ACVs are slowly ticking up again from their recent lows, and even a modest 10-20% improvement in market conditions can feel like a significant tailwind after a prolonged downturn. This isn’t a universal recovery, but the trend is positive.
For marketing leaders, this signals a critical moment to reassess strategy and spending. The hyper-conservative, "do more with less" mindset of the past two years can now be balanced with strategic investments in growth. This doesn’t mean a return to wasteful spending, but it does mean that well-planned campaigns and headcount additions are more likely to find fertile ground. The focus should be on capitalizing on this thaw with efficient, data-driven initiatives that can capture the returning demand.
BIG IDEA: The B2B tech market is slowly stabilizing, creating an opportunity for leaders to shift from a purely defensive posture to one of cautious, strategic investment.
WHY IT MATTERS: Marketing teams that recognize this shift early and advocate for smart budget increases will be best positioned to gain market share as conditions improve.
- Brian Halligan agrees, noting that HubSpot is seeing a similar "thaw" and that now is a good time to "press on the gas a bit."
- Jason Lemkin tempers the optimism by stating that while things are better, we are still far from the peak, and efficiency remains paramount.
Sound Bites
- 🎥 Aaron Levie on AI’s Impact: Box’s CEO discusses how AI will fundamentally change enterprise software and the nature of knowledge work in a conversation with investor Jason Calacanis.
- 🎥 The State of B2B Buying: Joanna Wiebe and an expert panel break down how B2B buyer behavior has changed and what it means for copywriters and marketers.
The shift from tactical to strategic AI, combined with a stabilizing market, presents a unique opportunity. It’s a chance to build a more resilient, data-driven marketing function that is deeply aligned with the entire business.
What is the one strategic, AI-driven initiative you could champion that would impact the business far beyond the marketing department?
