The multiple marketing skill sets every organization needs
Marketing gets talked about like it’s one thing:
“Marketing should drive pipeline.”
“Marketing should own the narrative.”
“Marketing should do brand.”
“Marketing should run paid, fix the website, launch the product, build community, and also somehow become best friends with Sales by Thursday.”
When I hear this, I have the same reaction:
That’s not one job or one skill set. That’s multiple skill sets - and usually more than one person.
When you rely on one person to do all of it, you’ll eventually land in the same place: feeling like marketing isn’t working.
There are three type of marketers most organizations need
I’ll caveat this up front: marketing includes a lot of functions, and many marketers own multiple skills. But in most organizations, marketing success comes down to whether you have coverage across three distinct capabilities:
Marketing Communications: Create demand through narrative and trust
Growth Marketing: Convert demand into pipeline and revenue.
Go-to-Market Strategist: Design the system that makes the engines work together.
You may be wondering - what about Product Marketing or Marketing Operations? Product marketing often overlaps with both Comms and GTM through positioning, launches, and enablement. Marketing Ops who is managing the CRM hygiene, definitions (MQL, SQL), reporting, attributions, and dashboards is the backbone that measures marketing results. If you have a large org, you have this expert on staff. If not, this falls into the GTM strategist position for reporting results of the plan.
Marketing Communications: Create demand through narrative and trust
Marketing Comms is the part of marketing that creates meaning. It’s the brand, narrative, positioning, and messaging and then delivering that story through:
PR and thought leadership
Content and editorial
Social and engagement
Events and visibility
Community, advocacy, and ecosystem programs
Sales enablement: talk tracks, pitch decks, battlecards, onboarding support
Marketing communications is brand marketing and awareness and it naturally feeds inbound marketing. It's what makes your product understandable, memorable, and trusted especially in technical markets where buyers don’t want hype, they want proof, clarity, and credibility.
Comms is the long game and the activities that make everything else convert faster later.
If you don’t have strong comms:
You don’t have the awareness in the market
Your message sounds like everyone else
Sales spends half their time doing explanation work
The market and users don’t understand why you matters
Comms can be measured, but it’s a softer measurement and not immediately tied to pipeline math. You measure the results of these activities through share of voice, market visibility, engagement quality, search lift and branded search growth, inbound momentum, net new names in your database, and your sales team saying “These conversations are getting easier”.
Growth Marketing: Convert demand into pipeline and revenue
Growth marketers are the people who turn demand into outcomes. They think about pipeline, revenue attribution, conversion, funnels, lifecycle stages, activation, and measurement.
They drive:
Paid campaigns
Emails
SEO conversion strategy
Landing page optimization and A/B testing
Onboarding flows and activation
Growth marketing takes demand (inbound or outbound) and converts it into measurable pipeline and revenue. Growth is incredibly valuable and any organization selling something needs it. It’s also incredibly specific.
Growth marketing is measured by net new names in your database, marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, and contributions to the sales pipeline.
Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategist: The blueprint
The GTM Strategist is not the same thing as growth marketing, and it’s not product marketing that the Marketing Comms person typically does. The GTM strategist is the person who architects the marketing motion to revenue. It’s how the company goes to market in a way that makes sense.
Imagine this: If your Comms is the engine that creates pull and trust, and growth is the engine that converts attention into pipeline, then, GTM strategy is the blueprint.
GTM answers questions like:
Who are we really selling to and breaking this into ICP and segments
What motion are we running - PLG, sales-led, partner, hybrid
What channels match this audience and this stage
Where do we need Sales involved and where should Product do the lifting
What should we build versus what should we message better
How do we package, price, and position offers so they’re easy to buy?
GTM strategy is the connective tissue between Product, Marketing, and Sales. It’s what prevents teams from spinning in circles doing “a bunch of marketing” without a coherent path to revenue.
Without GTM, Comms creates a great narrative that isn’t attached to a conversion path, Growth runs campaigns that are efficient but not differentiated, Sales improvises their own story because marketing hasn’t made the motion clear, and Product keeps shipping without clarity on what the market actually needs
You know your GTM person is working when:
Everyone understands where you are selling and how you are going to market
Your funnel is more effective and there is faster velocity through the funnel stages
Your win rate in target segments is higher and maybe you have a reduction in sales cycle length.
Your pipeline quality is higher - you are reaching the right targets.
GTM + Comms + Growth = Strong Marketing
GTM, Comms and Growth do not exist in a vacuum. They work together to drive the overall goals of the organization. All are strategic and pipeline-aware - coming at the work from their unique angles of strength. All contribute to the strategic marketing plan, product launches, sales enablement, and continuous market learning and iteration. Comms creates pull and trust. Growth creates conversion and revenue. GTM makes sure those pieces align - not perfectly, but intentionally.
Marketing isn’t a single lane - it’s a system.
I’m a GTM Strategist and Comms marketer
I am a GTM strategist and marketing communications expert. I’m not a growth marketer!
I see the big picture and build connective tissue. I bring together branding, awareness, messaging and positioning, content that scales, executive storytelling and thought leadership, ecosystem visibility, partnerships, community trust and advocacy, sales enablement that makes selling easier, and GTM clarity that makes sales and growth efforts work better.
I work with growth marketers to get them what they need for sharper targeting, cleaner messaging, better stories, better enablement, and clearer GTM plans for campaigns.
Companies selling into technology teams need credibility and message that is true, not just clever. It’s making complicated technology understandable, compelling, and trusted. It’s about creating market pull and reducing friction across the entire GTM motion.
What marketing do you need?
Are you wondering what your organization needs? Well, all three. Do you need to have multiple people on staff to accomplish this - not necessarily. In smaller organizations, one strong marketer might cover one area and then bring in contractors or partners for other strengths.
To figure out what you need, look at your team.
Does your marketer gravitate toward storytelling, defending the brand, and defining messaging and positioning. → You have a Comms marketer.
Is your marketer great at advertising, driving demand, campaigns, and email performance? → You have a Growth marketer.
Does your marketer have the vision (and experience) to take a product and company to market to drive awareness, demand, and adoption? → You have a GTM strategist.
If you are wondering why marketing isn’t driving the results you expected, you don’t have a talent problem, you have a coverage problem. And that’s fixable.
If you want help identifying what you have, what you’re missing, and what would unlock your next stage of growth, let’s talk.
