Crafting a Winning GTM Strategy from the Ground Up

Shownotes

In this Onbase episode, Justine Davis, Head of Marketing at Postman, shares her journey from hospitality marketing to leading high-performing teams in tech, offering insights on building go-to-market (GTM) strategies. She emphasizes the importance of aligning sales, marketing, and product teams through data-driven decisions, internal collaboration, and empathy for organizational change. Justine discusses adapting to shifts in marketing attribution, such as the decline of third-party cookies and highlights tools like Salesforce, Looker, and SparkToro as essential for staying competitive. She also underscores the value of curiosity, leadership, and strategic planning in navigating future challenges, offering practical advice for scalable success in B2B marketing.

Best Moments

• 00:18
  Introduction to Justine Davis and Her Career Journey: Justine shares her unique journey from hospitality marketing to leading marketing teams in tech giants like Atlassian and Postman, offering insights into her leadership evolution.
• 07:01
  Building a Go-to-Market Strategy: Justine explains her process for evaluating whether a strategy needs a refresh or a total rebuild, emphasizing the importance of a listening tour and aligning with customer and organizational needs
• 10:05
  Securing Genuine Buy-In Across Teams: She highlights the significance of aligning with sales and product teams, backed by user interviews and data, to secure authentic cross-functional collaboration.
• 14:36
  Effective Marketing Metrics: Justine outlines the key metrics for product-led growth (professional domain sign-ups, team expansion) and enterprise strategies (pipeline velocity), focusing on aligning them with company objectives.
• 17:07
  Empathy in Leadership and Team Building: She stresses understanding the experiences and challenges of team members and tailoring strategies to ensure they are set up for success.
• 24:46
  Adapting to Attribution Changes and New Marketing Trends: Justine discusses the need to move away from third-party cookies, implement server-side tracking for compliance, and stay ahead of evolving privacy regulations.
• 32:39
  Closing Thoughts on Future Marketing Skills: She encourages marketers to cultivate curiosity, adaptability, and a collaborative mindset to drive success in a rapidly changing industry.

About the guest

Justine Davis is Head of Marketing at API platform Postman. She previously served as the Head of Marketing for Atlassian’s Agile and DevOps suite of products. With over 9 years of experience working with DevOps teams and tools, Justine is passionate about solving the needs of customers. Outside of work Justine is a mom, avid reader, and loves to close the move goal rings in sunny Scottsdale, AZ on her Apple Watch.

Connect with Justine Davis

Key takeaways

• Conduct a listening tour to understand team dynamics, customer needs, and current successes to shape a data-driven strategy.
• Align with sales, product, and data teams by addressing their priorities and showing how the strategy supports shared goals.
• Transition to server-side tracking for accurate attribution and compliance with evolving privacy regulations like GDPR.
• Hire experienced professionals for new functions to quickly establish processes and build team capability.
• Focus on professional domain sign-ups for PLG and pipeline velocity for enterprise strategies to track success.
• Foster curiosity and cross-functional collaboration to drive innovation and align teams with shared objectives.

Quotes

“Trust is built by aligning our goals with those of sales, product, and data teams, fostering a collaborative environment where strategies support shared objectives.”

Highlights from this episode

How do you approach building and evaluating go-to-market (GTM) strategies?

Justine emphasized starting every GTM strategy with a listening tour. This involves speaking with stakeholders across the company—sales, product, engineering, and customers—to understand what’s working and what needs improvement. Using this data, she evaluates the current strategy’s effectiveness and determines if a refresh or complete overhaul is required. For her, alignment between where the company is today and where it wants to go is key, supported by actionable insights and a roadmap for execution.

What methods do you use to secure buy-in across sales, product, and marketing teams?

Justine highlighted the importance of building trust through collaboration. She stressed the need to understand each team’s goals and challenges before presenting marketing initiatives. By demonstrating how the strategy aligns with and supports their objectives, she ensures buy-in. For instance, marketers need to speak the product team’s language when proposing changes or working on shared projects, using data and customer insights to back their requests.

How are you adapting to changes in marketing attribution, especially with evolving privacy regulations?

Marketing is transitioning away from third-party cookies due to privacy regulations like GDPR. Justine explained her approach of implementing server-side tracking, which anonymizes user data to ensure compliance while maintaining accurate attribution. She discussed building internal systems that integrate with platforms like Google Ads, enabling Postman to track user behavior without relying on client-side tracking methods that are becoming obsolete.

What leadership principles guide you in building and scaling marketing teams?

Justine focuses on hiring experienced individuals to establish new functions, ensuring they can hit the ground running. She values curiosity and self-awareness in her team members, believing that these traits lead to innovation and adaptability. Her leadership style is empathetic, recognizing that employees are humans first, and she actively creates environments where they feel supported and empowered to excel.

Which marketing metrics do you prioritize for product-led growth and enterprise strategies?

For product-led growth, Justine prioritizes metrics such as professional domain sign-ups and the growth of paid monthly active users. For enterprise strategies, she focuses on pipeline velocity and the percentage of opportunities touched by marketing. These metrics ensure alignment with company goals while providing clear indicators of success for both customer acquisition and expansion efforts.

What tools and trends are essential for modern marketers to stay competitive?

Justine highlighted tools like SparkToro for audience insights and Looker for analytics, which help marketers better understand their customers and optimize campaigns. She also mentioned using ABM tools, social listening platforms, and server-side tracking solutions to stay ahead of industry trends. Staying competitive requires not just adopting new tools but also understanding evolving customer behaviors and privacy standards.

What skills do you believe are crucial for future marketing professionals?

Justine believes curiosity and adaptability are essential traits for future marketers. She encourages a collaborative mindset, where professionals work across teams to align strategies and overcome challenges. Additionally, understanding data, embracing change, and being open to learning new technologies is critical for thriving in an industry that is constantly evolving.

Resource recommendations

Podcasts:

• All-In Podcast: A resource for staying updated on general tech trends.macroeconomic trends, industry developments, and insights into the future of AI.
• Lenny’s Podcast: A go-to for practical and actionable advice on product management, growth, and startups.
• Remarkable Marketing Podcast: Focused on effective marketing strategies and trends.
• Prof G Podcast: A great choice for insights into tech, marketing, and business strategies

Shout-outs

• Robert Chatwani, President at DocuSign: Justine admires his people-first leadership approach and how he treats employees as humans first, which has inspired her own leadership style.
• Archana Agarwal, President at Intercom: Justine appreciates Archana’s balanced approach of being both technically adept and a strong female leader who can hold her own in male-dominated spaces.
• Jay Simons – General Partner at Bond, currently in the VC space: Justine values Jay’s extensive industry experience and his ability to provide a broad, insightful perspective on the changes and trends happening in the B2B space.