MARketing & GTM Strategy
Operator grade marketing and GTM strategy
Operator grade marketing and GTM strategy delivered as a written diagnostic and a 90 day plan. The kind of work a VP of Growth would deliver — without the headcount. Healthcare, SaaS, and education.
The VP of Growth Framework
Most marketing strategy work fails because it's produced by people who never had to live with the results. Decks survive the kickoff meeting. Strategy that fits real operating constraints — team capability, budget, channel mechanics, stakeholder dynamics — survives the year.
Our Marketing & GTM Strategy work is structured the way a VP of Growth would structure it inside your company — with the same accountability, the same diagnostic discipline, and the same operating mindset.
A VP of Growth is responsible for:
Owning the full revenue funnel from awareness through expansion
Aligning marketing, sales, product, and customer success around a shared pipeline
Building the measurement infrastructure that ties activity to revenue
Designing and staffing the growth function for the company's stage
Reporting growth performance to the executive team and the board in language they can act on
You don't always need to hire one full-time. Sometimes the right move is to bring in someone who operates that way, builds the system, and hands it off — or runs it for a defined period. That's how we engage.
What's Included in the Engagement
Every engagement starts with the same diagnostic structure. The deliverable is a written document and a 90-day plan — not a deck.
Pipeline Diagnostic
Funnel mapping from awareness through expansion
CAC, LTV, payback period, and pipeline coverage analysis
Conversion math by stage, channel, and segment
Where the funnel actually breaks, and why
Messaging Audit
Positioning and category framing review
ICP and audience definition validation
Messaging consistency across web, sales, content, and product
Where the story isn't landing, and why
Channel Review
Channel mix audit (paid, organic, content, events, partnerships, AEO)
ROI and contribution by channel
Underbuilt and overweighted channels
Sequencing recommendations for the next 90 days
Team Assessment
Org design for your stage
Capability gaps versus capability gluts
Hiring sequencing
Vendor and agency portfolio review
Closing paragraph: Deliverable: a written diagnostic, a scored maturity assessment across the four dimensions, and a 90-day plan that prioritizes the highest-leverage moves. Plus optional execution support if you want it run by an operator, not a contractor.
Who This Is For
Five typical buyers — different stages, same operating need.
Founder led companies hitting their first growth plateau. The early channels stopped scaling and there's no clear playbook for the next stage. You need a structured diagnostic and a plan you can execute without hiring a full marketing leader yet.
Companies between CMO or VP Marketing hires. Someone left, the search will take six months, and the function needs an operator in the chair — not a vendor running plays.
PE backed portfolio companies needing a measurable growth function. The investor needs board grade reporting tied to value creation. The marketing team needs an operating system that supports it.
Mid-market companies whose growth has stalled. Revenue is flat or declining, the team isn't sure why, and you need an outside operator to diagnose the structural issue before reorganizing or replacing leadership.
Marketing leaders who need an outside operator to validate, challenge, or accelerate the plan. Sometimes the work is coaching the leader you have, not replacing them.
How This Connects to AEO and Digital Transformation
How This Connects to Our Other Capabilities
Marketing & GTM Strategy is the foundational engagement. The diagnostic identifies the highest-leverage growth moves for your company at your stage. Sometimes the answer is a deeper AEO build. Sometimes it's a digital transformation of an outdated marketing function. Sometimes it's neither.
The diagnostic surfaces which capability matters most:
If AI search is rapidly reshaping discovery in your category, our AEO & AI Search Visibility work is often the right second engagement
If your marketing function is operating on legacy tooling, fragmented data, or pre-AI workflows, digital transformation work follows
If your buying motion is consensus driven across complex healthcare committees, the engagement extends into Healthcare B2B SaaS territory
You don't have to know which one before the engagement starts. The diagnostic tells you. That sequencing — strategy first, capability work second — is what separates durable growth from channel by channel experimentation.
Common Miscalculations
Treating growth strategy as a deck deliverable
A 50 slide deck does not survive the next operating quarter. Strategy that doesn't translate into specific moves, owners, timelines, and metrics gets quietly shelved. We deliver written diagnostics and 90-day plans because they're what teams actually use.
Confusing channel optimization with growth strategy
Improving paid CAC by 15% is channel optimization. Deciding which channels matter, in what sequence, for what audience, at what stage of company — that's growth strategy. Many companies pay for the first while believing they're getting the second.
Hiring a growth leader without a defined operating model
The role fails before the person starts. Without clarity on what the function is responsible for, who they report to, what metrics they own, and how marketing, sales, and product coordinate, no candidate can succeed. The org chart has to be designed before the hire.
Buying martech before building the architecture
Tools serve operating models, not the other way around. Companies that buy attribution platforms, automation systems, or AI marketing tools before defining the funnel, the data model, and the team end up with expensive shelfware and a frustrated team.
Asking for "the marketing plan" without specifying constraints
A marketing plan for a $5M ARR founder led SaaS company looks nothing like a marketing plan for a $100M ARR PE backed portfolio company. Asking for "the plan" without specifying horizon, audience, budget, and operating constraints produces generic output. The diagnostic forces those constraints to the surface.
Representative Outcomes
Across engagements with digital health, health tech, behavioral health, AI-enabled healthcare, and regenerative care companies, the work has included:
Aligned commercial, clinical, and marketing teams around shared outcomes — patient acquisition, enterprise partnerships, clinical adoption
Rebuilt demand and reputation engines tuned to compliance, accreditation, and KOL signals
Repositioned brands, value propositions, and clinical messaging for regulated, reference-driven categories
Strengthened patient experience, member retention, and end-user adoption inside enterprise contracts
Built separate but coordinated engines for B2C, B2B, and B2B2C marketing motions inside one healthcare organization
Supported M&A, integrations, and post-acquisition GTM transitions
Frequently Asked Questions
-
A VP of Growth owns the full revenue funnel — awareness through expansion — and aligns marketing, sales, product, and customer success around shared pipeline. A CMO has broader brand and product marketing remit and often reports more on positioning, narrative, and demand. The two roles overlap, but VP of Growth is more pipeline and operations focused. The framework we apply mirrors the VP of Growth pattern because it's the right operating model for most companies that need outside marketing leadership at this stage.
-
A written diagnostic across four dimensions: pipeline (funnel mechanics, conversion math, CAC/LTV), messaging (positioning, ICP, narrative consistency), channels (mix, ROI, sequencing), and team (org design, capability gaps, hiring). Plus a scored maturity assessment and a 90-day plan with prioritized moves. The full document typically runs 30–50 pages and is built to be read by your CEO, your board, and your team.
-
3–4 weeks for the diagnostic and 90-day plan. Follow-on engagements depend on whether you want hands on execution support or want to run the plan internally. Typical extended engagements run 6–12 months in either a fractional VP of Growth capacity or a project based capacity.
-
Some engagements are. Some are project-based diagnostic work. Some are coaching engagements with an existing marketing leader. The structure adapts to what you need. The methodology is consistent across all three.
-
Healthcare, B2B SaaS, and healthcare education companies — from founder-led startups through PE-backed mid-market. The methodology applies broadly, but our deepest pattern recognition is in those three industries.
-
Agencies typically execute channels. We build the operating system that decides which channels matter, in what sequence, with what team and budget. Agencies report on activity. We report on pipeline. We're often the layer between a CEO and their agency portfolio — or the layer between a CEO and their first full time marketing hire.
-
A written diagnostic document, a scored four-dimension maturity assessment, a 90-day plan with prioritized actions and named owners, and ongoing operating cadence support if you want it. The output is something your team can act on, not strategy theater.
Ready to build a marketing function that compounds?
Considering a structured GTM diagnostic, a fractional VP of Growth engagement, a marketing reset, or a 90-day plan to fix your operating model? Book a 20-minute working session. No deck, no pitch — bring one specific problem, leave with one concrete next step.