PLG still needs sales: your 2025 GTM & ad bets
This week: The pivot from SEO to AEO, proving marketing’s revenue impact, and why PLG demands better sales. And why honesty is your best GTM strategy, plus where to place your ad bets in 2025.
The Future of Search Is Citation, Not Clicks
The search landscape is undergoing its most significant change in a decade. With the rise of Google’s AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT, users are getting synthesized answers directly, not a list of links to click.
This is leading to a surge in zero-click searches, and publishers are already reporting that AI search referrals replace only a fraction of the lost Google traffic. The strategic pivot is from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). The goal is no longer just to rank for a keyword but to be cited as the authoritative source within an AI-generated response.
To adapt, marketers must rethink their content strategy. Focus on building topical authority with high-quality, structured information that AI models can easily parse and trust. Sam Dunning emphasizes targeting high-intent, bottom-of-funnel keywords where you can still win. As AI becomes the new discovery channel, your content needs to be so valuable and unique that it becomes the definitive answer, earning you a direct citation.
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BIG IDEA: Your new SEO goal isn't to be on the list; it's to be the answer.
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WHY IT MATTERS: If your content isn't being cited by AI, you will become invisible to a growing portion of your addressable market.
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Rethinking Measurement: Proving Marketing’s Revenue Impact
Misaligned marketing spend is quietly crushing many B2B tech companies. The problem isn’t always the budget size but a persistent focus on vanity metrics instead of pipeline impact.
As fractional CMO Aaron Hassen points out, startups often pour money into shiny tactics without a clear strategy, only to wonder why their pipeline remains empty. The solution is to move from correlation to causality. Instead of just tracking clicks and impressions, leading marketers are adopting more rigorous methods. Summit Partners advises against focusing solely on volume or efficiency, advocating for a balanced approach that drives revenue without overwhelming sales with low-quality leads.
For CMOs, this means instilling a new discipline. Start by defining your ideal customer and their buying journey, then run small, controlled experiments in just two or three channels. The gold standard is proving incremental lift through methods like randomized geo-experiments, which measure the true impact of your ad spend independent of platform-provided attribution.
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BIG IDEA: Stop chasing vanity metrics and start running experiments that prove marketing's contribution to revenue.
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WHY IT MATTERS: In a tight market, the ability to prove marketing-driven revenue is the difference between securing budget and facing cuts.
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- Aaron Hassen recommends defining your ICP, testing channels before scaling, and tracking metrics that directly connect to revenue.
The New GTM Playbook: AI Agents, PLG, and Removing Friction
What if you could scale to eight-figure revenue with a single-digit headcount? That’s the reality SaaStr is building with its AI Agent Playbook.
The company deployed over 20 AI agents in six months to handle everything from warm outbound campaigns to inbound lead qualification. One AI SDR sent 15,000 hyper-personalized messages, achieving a 5-7% response rate. This shift aligns with a more nuanced view of product-led growth (PLG). As founder TK Kader argues, the lie is that PLG replaces sales; the truth is that PLG demands better sales.
The fastest path to growth is combining a self-serve product with precise human intervention to remove friction where documentation or a slick UX cannot. Use AI agents to automate repetitive, low-value tasks, and deploy your human team for high-impact, consultative selling. Jason M. Lemkin puts it best: when you ask a customer to switch from an existing vendor, do you offer to do all the work? The migration, the integrations, the data mapping.
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BIG IDEA: The future of GTM is a hybrid model where AI agents handle scale and humans eliminate friction.
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WHY IT MATTERS: Your competitors are already using AI to build leaner, faster, and more efficient sales motions; falling behind is not an option.
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- TK Kader notes that layering light-touch sales on top of self-serve boosts conversion by removing friction that a product alone cannot.
- Jason M. Lemkin asks: when customers switch vendors, do you offer to handle the migration, integrations, and data mapping?
The Trust Deficit: Why Honesty Is Your Best Marketing Strategy
Growth Union founder Adam Goyette shares a joke from his wife: whenever she sees a shady brand tactic, she blames "marketing scumbags." It’s a funny but painful indictment of an industry that too often prioritizes short-term gains over long-term trust.
Deceptive practices—like hiding pricing, complicating free trials, or using fake end-of-month discounts—actively erode the single most important factor in a buyer’s decision. This isn’t just about ethics; it’s about effective strategy. In a world where buyers are deeply skeptical, honesty cuts through the noise. As founder Shiv Narayanan notes, your brand’s strength has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with the value and experience you deliver.
The fastest-growing SaaS teams are leaning into radical transparency. They publish a public roadmap to show customers where they’re headed, building credibility and managing expectations. Goyette is honest with prospects when his agency isn’t a fit, and the result is that 75% of his new business comes from referrals—including from the people he turned away.
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BIG IDEA: In a skeptical market, transparency isn't a vulnerability; it's your most powerful differentiator.
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WHY IT MATTERS: Your buyers are tired of marketing jargon and deceptive tactics; the brand that tells the truth is the brand that wins.
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- Adam Goyette points out that if you make it hard to cancel, hide pricing, or crush prospects with calls after they engage with content, you are losing their trust.
Navigating the Ad Market: Where to Place Your Bets in 2025
The B2B advertising market is sending mixed signals. While some operators report softness, the data shows money is shifting, not disappearing.
The IAB recently trimmed its 2025 U.S. ad growth forecast to a still-healthy 5.7%. The real story is the reallocation of budgets away from channels like linear TV (-14.4%) and toward performance-driven digital formats like social (+14.3%) and CTV (+11.4%). At the same time, B2B events are roaring back. Major exhibition organizers like Informa and Emerald are posting strong revenue growth, confirming that in-person engagement remains a core lever for demand generation.
On the digital front, expect more competition. HockeyStack’s 2025 benchmarks show rising CPCs and longer sales cycles on LinkedIn, meaning creative and offer quality must improve to protect CAC. The winning strategy for 2025 is a diversified portfolio that balances the scale of digital with the high-intent engagement of in-person events.
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BIG IDEA: Ad budgets are flowing toward measurable performance, with digital channels and live events capturing the lion's share of the growth.
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WHY IT MATTERS: A "set it and forget it" channel strategy will fail in 2025; you must actively reallocate budget to the channels delivering the highest-quality pipeline.
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Sound Bites
That’s all for this week. The common thread is a return to first principles: create real value, prove your impact, be honest, and meet your customers where they are. The tools and channels may change, but the fundamentals of good marketing remain the same.
What’s one "marketing scumbag" tactic you’re committed to eliminating from your GTM strategy?
