2026: What works (from leaders doing the work)

I asked a few top GTM leaders a simple question: what are your bets for 2026? Not trends, not predictions, but real bets. The kind you make when you own a team, a budget, and a number.

These are operators. They run demand, brand, growth, and retention. They deal with messy funnels, long cycles, and real buyers. They don’t speak in theory, they see what works and what breaks, every day.

What surprised me is how aligned we all are, without coordinating. Different companies. Different stages. Different ICPs. Different markets. And yet, the same direction keeps showing up.

Less “do everything.” More “do a few things well.”

They’re not betting on more AI features. They’re betting on clarity. On brand. On trust. On customers as the growth engine. On being remembered in a world where everyone ships.

Below are their answers: what they’re doubling down on, what they’re stopping, what now feels obvious and the real bets they’re making for 2026.

Liam Bartholomew - VP Brand & Demand at Cognism

Liam runs brand and demand at Cognism. His bet is that in a zero-click world, brand and content stop being support functions and become the growth engine.

→ Brand and content. Not as a “nice to have.” As the core growth engine.

“We’re doubling down on Brand & Content. In a super competitive market it’s how you stand out.”

Liam Bartholomew,

VP Brand & Demand at Cognism

What sits behind this is a deep shift in how people buy. Most discovery now happens before a form is ever filled. It happens on LinkedIn, on YouTube, and increasingly inside LLMs. Buyers build their understanding long before they show intent.

“We’re creating content that builds awareness and visibility in a zero-click world.”

Content is no longer there to capture. It’s there to be remembered. To shape how people think before they ever land on your site.

→ Anything that doesn’t serve the right ICP.

“That means stopping any activity that isn’t driving ICP growth or is driving the wrong growth.”

This is about becoming ruthless. Not chasing volume, not chasing “activity.” But aligning demand, content, and positioning around the people you actually want to win.

More leads is easy. The right growth is hard.

→ Content has to be ungated.

“Gated content means you’re unable to meet the consumer where they are now.”

Most research now happens before sales, and it happens in public places. On social, on video, inside AI. If your content sits behind a form, it simply doesn’t exist where buyers learn.

“If you’re gating your content, you’re neglecting how you show up in LLMs.”

Gated content doesn’t travel. It doesn’t get cited, it doesn’t shape thinking. Ungated is not a brand choice. It’s a distribution strategy.

→ SEO stops being a game and becomes a brand channel again.

“Good content that actually answers customer questions will win.”

Not content written for algorithms, content written for people. And in a world where AI tools become table stakes, Liam is placing one more bet:

“The right data will become as, if not more important than the AI itself.”

Models will be everywhere. What feeds them will be the real edge.

Kathleen Booth - VP Marketing at Sequel.io

Kathleen’s bet is that brand stops being a layer you add at the end and becomes the system that runs everything.

→ Doubling down on brand as an operating system. Not brand as “copy and colors”, but brand as the story of the problem you exist to solve and the change you believe is happening.

“I’m doubling down on brand as an operating system, not a layer you add at the end.”

Kathleen Booth,

VP Marketing @ Sequel.io

At Sequel, this shows up in how they frame the product. What looks like “a webinar platform” on the surface is tied to a broader shift in how people learn. Education is moving off-site. Buyers now get information in answer engines, communities, and closed spaces. The website is no longer the main place where discovery and understanding happen.

“Our focus on owned-site delivery isn’t just a feature choice. It’s a belief about where long-term leverage lives.”

Brand, in this model, is not something added at the end. It informs product choices, go-to-market, and how the company shows up across channels, not just on the homepage.

“That kind of alignment is what allows small teams to punch far above their weight.”

→ Stopping the idea that speed and quality are tradeoffs.

“That belief might have been true five years ago, but it’s no longer true if you actually know how to use AI well.”

Most pushback on AI comes from bad output. But bad output comes from bad inputs and weak judgment.

“AI doesn’t replace thinking. It rewards people who are good at it.”

At Sequel, the goal is to prove that a very small team can move extremely fast without losing clarity, craft, or taste. Speed and quality no longer have to be enemies.

→ The role of the website has flipped. For years, websites were built to educate first and engage second. The assumption was that people would come, read, and then maybe interact. That assumption is breaking.

“Education is now happening off-site, in answer engines, in communities, and through peers.”

If you want someone to come to your site today, you have to start with engagement, not information.

“You have to give them a reason to show up.”

Once they’re there, they can go deeper. But the hook has to be experiential. This is what Sequel is solving, and it’s a challenge every marketing leader now faces.

→ The big bet is that the best teams will look smaller and perform bigger. Fewer people. Higher bar.

“The best marketing teams will look smaller on paper but accomplish far more in reality.

Teams will be made of people who can think and execute, not just operate in one narrow lane. AI will handle mechanical work, but it will also expose weak thinking very fast.

“These teams won’t rely on layers of process. They’ll rely on shared context and trust.”

In 2026, the gap between teams that adopt this model and teams that don’t will become obvious very quickly.

Ben Smith - Director Global Marketing Reachdesk

Ben runs global marketing at Reachdesk. His bet is that in a world where everyone shows up everywhere, the winners will be the brands that show up with intention, clarity, and human proof, instead of being just another logo in the crowd.

→ Brand, but with intention.

“We’re doubling down on brand, but being intentional about where our brand shows up. We don’t want to be a logo amongst 20 others.”

Ben Smith,

Director Global Marketing at Reachdesk

This is not about more presence, i’s about better presence.

Ben is optimizing for memory, not reach.

“Showing up with intention and at our best to our target audience builds trust and recognition better than ever before.”

Being everywhere makes you visible, being intentional makes you memorable.

→ Mixed signals, especially to sales.

“We will stop giving people mixed signals. And by people I mean our sales team.”

Sales doesn’t need more assets, they need clarity.

“They need to know what signals matter, how to use them and why people care.”

This is about removing noise inside the company. Clear messaging, clear processes, clear experiences. Not just understandable, but unforgettable.

→ Word of mouth is already doing the work.

“It’s probably one of your top performing channels, but you ignore it because it’s hard to scale and put a pipeline or revenue number on it.”

Most teams chase what they can measure, they ignore what actually moves people. Peer stories. Reputation. Private conversations between buyers. That’s where decisions really form.

→ People become the brand.

“With so much information available to the buyer and the rise of AI search, creators, influencers and your customers will be your biggest assets and where people turn to for validation.”

In a world full of content, trust moves to humans. Buyers won’t ask what your website says. They’ll ask who they trust that already uses you. The brand becomes the people around it.

Natalie Marcotullio - Head of Growth and Product Marketing at Navattic

Natalie runs Growth and Product Marketing at Navattic. Her bet is that in a world where features converge and AI levels the field, the real differentiator becomes the relationship you build with your customers.

→ Customer marketing and in-person events.

“Feature differentiation is harder than ever, so we’re staying close with customers and building strong relationships.”

Natalie Marcotullio,

Head of Growth and Product Marketing at Navattic

When every product looks similar on paper, what matters is how close you are to the people using it. Natalie is investing in proximity. In real conversations. In moments that build trust and loyalty. Not more features, more connection.

→ Chasing what everyone else does with AI.

“We’re stopping the obsession with what everyone else is doing with AI and focusing on how it supports our own strategy.”

This is a focus move. Instead of reacting to every new tool, the question becomes: does this help our goals? If not, it’s noise.

→ Doing less beats doing more.

“Doing a few focused pieces of marketing is better than throwing a bunch of stuff out there.”

Most teams try everything, but very few choose one thing and stick with it. Focus builds momentum. Scattering kills it.

→ Quality over optimization tricks.

“We’ll keep creating high-quality content instead of obsessing over AEO/GEO.”

Natalie still cares about distribution. But she’s betting that strong, bottom-of-funnel content around the product will win over time. Good content still ranks, and converts.

Gianna Scorsone - founder ChampionHQ

Gianna is the founder of ChampionHQ. Her bet is clear: customers are not a channel. They are the company.

“Customer Marketing is our marketing strategy for 2026, and the customer value is our business strategy.”

Gianna Scorsone,

Founder ChampionHQ

Customers sit at the center of every decision for us. In 2026, they are quadrupling down on this. Retention is where real growth happens, yet most companies only talk about it. Gianna is building for real impact: strong perceived value, clear business outcomes, and a product roadmap shaped by customers themselves.

They will run more feedback sessions, design more value-driven interactions, and create environments where customers grow. The question guiding everything is simple: how do we help our customers deepen their impact?

She is also closing what she calls the trust gap. AI is everywhere. Tools are everywhere. Noise is everywhere. So trust becomes the real differentiator. That trust is built through real relationships and a strong customer community, where customers don’t just use the product but become part of the story, because they win.

→ Selling to the wrong customers.

“This means we sunset some customers, which is better for everyone.”

By focusing only on the right customers, the product becomes sharper, engineering time is protected, value is not diluted, and advocacy stays real. Wrong customers do not just slow growth, they distort everything.

→ NRR drives new ARR, not the other way around.

“We’re flipping SaaS GTM from ‘new ARR leads to customer growth’ to ‘overachieving in NRR leads to healthy new ARR.’”

Gianna doesn’t see software as something you “sell and ship.” She sees it as something you build with your customers, over time. The product, the roadmap, the way teams work together, all of it evolves through that relationship. When you choose the right customers, your team stops spending energy fixing mismatches and starts spending it on building, improving, and compounding value. The work shifts from saving bad deals to growing good ones.

→ Investing in their customers’ careers. Not in swag, not in logos, but in people.

They use marketing budget to send customers to conferences so they can learn, speak, and be seen. They run workshops that help them become better leaders. They create spaces for peer learning, where customers teach each other and grow together. They bring in executives from outside their world, so they’re exposed to new ways of thinking and can level up how they show up inside their own companies.

“Their success is how we succeed.”

When customers grow, the company grows with them. Inside their org. And across the market.

Tim Davidson - ABM & LinkedIn Ads for B2B SaaS

Tim works closely with B2B teams on ABM and LinkedIn ads. Tim’s bet is that paid will only work in 2026 if it becomes precise, human, and built for how people actually scroll.

→ Target account lists. Not LinkedIn’s native company targeting, but your own.

“We all need to stop donating money to LinkedIn by relying on their native company targeting options.”

Tim Davidson,

ABM & LinkedIn Ads for B2B SaaS

Those options often look accurate on paper, but in practice they include the wrong people and miss the ones that matter. That gap is frequently the difference between ads that generate pipeline and ads that simply spend budget.

By building your own account lists, you define exactly who you want to reach. The same lists can then be used across ads, sales outreach, and ABM plays. Paid stops being a standalone channel and becomes part of a single, aligned GTM system.

→ Carousel ads.

“I like the format. I like the idea behind them. But they’re expensive and don’t produce the results other formats do.”

Carousel ads tend to perform well in presentations, but in practice they are expensive and consistently deliver weaker results than other formats.

In 2026, Tim is focusing on image, video, and document ads, because these are the formats people actually stop to consume in-feed. They hold attention longer and give a message enough space to land, which is what drives real impact on pipeline.

→ Thought leader ads.

“Running organic LinkedIn posts from a person as ads is one of the most efficient units if done right.”

Thought leader ads blend into the feed because they look like real posts from real people. They feel native, human, and credible. Most teams still rely on brand creatives instead of amplifying voices their audience already follows and trusts. The result is ads that look like ads, in a feed people open precisely to get away from ads.

→ Mobile-first creative.

“Across every account, no matter who your buyer is, 80% to 85% of traffic is mobile.”

Most LinkedIn traffic is mobile, yet a large share of ads are still designed for desktop. They rely on horizontal visuals, dense copy, and formats that assume a large screen.

Tim’s bet is to design for mobile-first consumption: vertical images, copy that’s easy to read on a phone, and videos built for small screens. The gap between how people scroll and how most ads are designed is where the opportunity lies.

Key takeaway:

2026 is not about finding the next channel, the next trick, or the next AI feature. It’s about building a system that makes sense. A system your buyers can understand. A system your teams can actually run. A system that improves every quarter instead of being rebuilt every quarter. The winners won’t be the busiest teams. They’ll be the teams that made growth predictable and reliable.

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