The 2026 GTM Playbook – Turning Top CMO Insights Into Action
The future of GTM is arriving faster than anyone expected—and during our this webinar, we explored what leading CMOs are already doing to prepare. We were thrilled to co-host this conversation with Lora Kratchounova, Founder & Principal of Scratch Media + Marketing, a long-time advisor to B2B tech companies and one of the industry’s sharpest voices on modern growth strategy.
The Buyer Journey Has Changed, Again…
The buyer journey is undergoing one of the most significant shifts we’ve seen in more than a decade. While the last era was defined by the rise of buyer-led journeys—where prospects controlled the pace and sequence of their research—we’re now entering a phase shaped heavily by AI. Buyers are turning to LLMs to synthesize information, shortlist vendors, and validate claims long before traditional marketing touchpoints occur. This creates a new dynamic: journeys that are faster, more specific, and centered around direct answers rather than long paths of content exploration. During the webinar, we discussed how this “answer-led” environment changes the rules for both marketing and sales. Trust, brand familiarity, and prior relevance become even more important as buyers rely on AI to filter the noise and surface only the most credible options. At the same time, sellers are being pulled into conversations earlier—but with buyers who expect clarity, precision, and a deep understanding of their context from the very first interaction. It’s a fundamental reset in how teams must think about content, messaging, and the role of digital properties in shaping early-stage perception.
What Top CMOs Are Prioritizing for 2026
In this webinar we shared Insights from our recent CMO Brunch in Boston, surfacing the realities and pressures today’s marketing leaders face. While the average CMO tenure hovers around 18 months, the ones who thrive take a very different approach: they think in multi-year arcs while operating with short-term agility. We also dug into why CMOs must now behave more like chief scientists—running ongoing experiments, evaluating hypotheses quickly, and adjusting GTM tactics in compressed timeframes.
Additional takeaways are the renewed importance of brand, positioning, authenticity, and internal alignment across marketing, sales, customer success, and even product teams. The leaders who joined us shared sharp, candid perspectives on what they’re doubling down on—and what they’re abandoning entirely.
Scroll below to watch the webinar, and see the full list of principles shared by top CMOs.
Preparing Your Website and Tech Stack for Agentic Buyers
The second half of the webinar shifted from trends to execution, focusing on how companies can operationalize an answer-led, AI-influenced GTM motion. We walked through a step-by-step framework that starts with an internal content audit, expands into understanding how LLMs currently perceive and present your brand, and ends with building a website experience capable of handling more contextual, conversational, and personalized buyer interactions.We also shared examples of how teams are using contextual signals, LLM-driven insights, and website optimizations to reclaim relevance in AI-led discovery flows. And for those ready to dive deeper, we introduced a special integrated LLM audit offer designed to help organizations understand their entire answer-led footprint—from on-site content to how they’re represented across external AI channels.
👉 Watch the webinar to get the full framework:
