Build Your GTM Playbook

10 years of building GTM playbooks in B2B SaaS

I recently sat down with Alex McEachern, a startup marketer who's built four GTM playbooks at four different SaaS companies in the past 10 years.

And now, he’s building his 5th GTM playbook at Intelligems, a Shopify Plus app.

As we all have entered a new era of marketing being redefined by AI, I wanted to get his insight on how he’s been able to focus on the most important projects to help his companies grow.

You can listen to our full conversation here:

If you want a quick summary, here are some of the key moments we touched on:

The evolution from CRO to PRO in ecommerce

When I asked Alex about the shifting landscape of ecommerce, he painted a picture of fundamental change.

"Old ways: advertising excellence. New ways: operational excellence," he explains.

This stuck with me because it isn’t just about changing metrics—it's about fundamentally rethinking how we measure and drive business growth in ecommerce.

Marketers need to use the three-suit framework

The “three-suit” framework addresses a critical challenge in modern marketing, which is the tendency to create new campaigns for every initiative instead of building reusable components.

Which means marketers are spending too much time on creating things for one-off tasks.

The "three-suit” framework offers a practical solution to marketing complexity: "If you have a gray suit, a black suit, and a navy suit... no one's going to know that you only have three suits."

Alex’s approach breaks down into three key principles:

• Focus on a maximum of three key initiatives that can be mixed and matched

• Build reusable components that serve multiple purposes

• Optimize for versatility over specificity, allowing for quick pivots

Content marketing isn’t dead. It’s just different.

"Content is going to be a slow burn. It is like renewable fuel," Alex explains, while paid advertising acts like fossil fuel—quick to burn and quick to deplete.

This insight comes from his experience managing both high-budget paid campaigns and long-term content strategies.

Content builds compound interest over time, while paid advertising resets to zero each month.

AI gives you time back to spend with customers

I wanted to understand how AI fits into all of this for Alex.

So he walked me through his workflow, demonstrating how he reduced podcast production from two hours to 15 minutes!

We both agreed that while AI saves you time on tasks around amplification and execution of marketing campaigns and content, marketers should be reinvesting that time talking to customers which will further enhance your product positioning and strategic narrative.

Creating Windows of Transparency

One of my favorite insights came when we discussed how Alex communicates marketing updates to his CEO and leadership team.

Alex introduced the concept of "creating windows" - a practical framework for making your marketing work visible which gives confidence to your C-Suite without requiring their constant attention.

Whether it's a dedicated Slack channel or a living strategy document, give your leadership team a passive way to peek into your thinking and see the marketing bets you’re making.

This builds trust and reduces the need for constant updates.

If you want to listen to our full conversation, you can listen here.

PS - Connect with Alex on Linkedin and binge his IntelliJAMS podcast here.