The Playbook · v1.8
Read in any order. Open whichever module matches what you're shipping this week. Every module is open and free. The whole playbook is written to be useful before you have a Brief, sharper once you do.
FIRST TIME HERE?
The sections below are the library. The starting point is your Operator Brief — the populated document that grounds every prompt and agent in the system. Fill it once, then every module reads from your real values. Open your Operator Brief →
THE MACRO RESET — THE INVISIBLE BUYER JOURNEY
Most of the playbook below was written for a world where the buyer's research path ran through your website. In 2026, that world is going.
The data the senior operators cite: 73% of B2B buyers now use LLMs to conduct their research (Loganix, 2025). 75% complete the full buyer journey before they ever contact a brand (Gartner CSO research, 2025). Among IT leaders, advanced AI adoption is up 700% year over year, with 64% at "advanced or leading-edge" levels. Organic web traffic to vendor sites is down across the board — HubSpot is the most public example, but the pattern is industry-wide.
What this means for the marketing function: the buyer is shortlisting vendors before vendors know they're being evaluated. The decision happens in conversations with AI tools, in founder DMs, on curated peer-network platforms, in podcast recommendations, in analyst reports, in the comparison threads that surface in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Then the qualified buyer arrives at your site already "solution aware" — usually for a demo, not for research. Your owned content has to win the LLM citation game first, the human-eyeball game second.
Every section below is true in itself. But read them through this lens: the function's job is no longer to drive buyers to your site. It's to be the brand the AI shortlists, the brand the founder DMs about, the brand the analyst cites, and the brand the customer story flows from. The new AI Operating Model and the AI-era PR depth in PR & Comms are the sections that name the shift directly. The rest of the playbook earns its keep when you read it as the operating discipline that makes the new buyer journey win, not the old one.
Source attribution: Loganix 2025 B2B Buyer Behavior Study; Gartner CSO 2024–2025 research on B2B buying behavior; G2 March 2026 B2B Buyer Survey.
The natural groupings: the first ten sections — TAM/SAM, ICP, Personas, Right-to-Win, Competitive Intel, Pricing, Win/Loss, Brand, Best-in-Class, and AI Operating Model — set the strategic foundation. The middle eight sections — Content, Demand, Lifecycle, ABM, Comms, Reviews, Customer Marketing, and PR — are channels and execution. The final six sections — KPIs, Budget, MMM, Org Design, Customer Lifecycle, and Executive Comms — are measurement, budget, ops, and executive influence.
Strategic Foundation
The market math. The customer math. The competitive math. The pricing math. The brand math. And the operating discipline that makes the AI layer compound rather than amplify weakness.
Module 01
Does the market exist? Is it big enough to underwrite the revenue plan? Top-down + bottom-up TAM, SAM filters, SOM math, CFO defense memo. The model the board can audit.
Module 02
Who you sell to. Vertical scorecard, buying committee structure, easy-wins methodology, the 8-step ICP construction, beachhead market entry.
Module 03
One persona per buying-committee role. Seven dimensions per persona — goals, priorities, challenges, objections, metrics, watering holes, trigger events — plus the propensity-to-buy signal layer.
Module 04
The empirical truth about where you win consistently. 3-intersection framework, two-signals method, the statement shape, the agent that watches drift weekly.
Module 05
Proactive competitive intel. The Market Intelligence Agent crawls competitor sites, hiring pages, and changelogs weekly — so Sales never finds out from a buyer first.
Module 06
Pricing is a strategic lever, not a finance function. Value-based philosophy, tier architecture, value-metric selection, discount policy, competitive position.
Module 07
The most direct feedback loop in marketing. Structured win interviews + loss interviews + quarterly thematic synthesis.
Module 08
Brand work is the highest-leverage discipline in B2B SaaS. The same conviction-pillars-voice block onboards every AI agent in your stack.
Module 09
Score yourself harder than your board would. The quarterly self-audit + the six traps that end CMO tenures.
Module 10
The operating discipline every other area of the playbook assumes. 3-layer LLM ops, the Marketing Agent Org Chart, buy-vs-build matrix, governance.
Channels & Execution
The sections that turn the strategic foundation into pipeline.
Module 11
Topic clusters, on-page SEO, the comparison-content pattern, FAQ content production. Where the content engine actually compounds.
Module 26
Answer Engine + Generative Engine Optimization. The dedicated home for the operating thesis: SEO/AEO/GEO triad, llms.txt, robots.txt, cross-surface positioning enforcement.
Module 12
MQL nurture, lifecycle programs, the email-deliverability discipline, the newsletter cadence.
Module 13
Founder LinkedIn, exec voices, company-page cadence, the comment strategy. The single highest-leverage B2B channel.
Module 14
Channel mix by ACV, target CPL calibrated to the business, paid search vs. paid social, retargeting discipline.
Module 15
Tier-1 selection, intent-data sources, 1:1 playbook for the top 20.
Module 16
Tier-1 flagship through Tier-4 webinars. Event lifecycle from T-12 months to T+30 days.
Module 17
G2, Capterra, peer review sites, the 92%-of-buyers-read-reviews stat. Cadence, response discipline, and Buyer Intent integration.
Module 18
Tier-1 Champions, case-study cadence, expansion playbooks, the community that builds itself.
Module 19
Earned media for the AI era. The shift from press releases to LLM-citation framing. The CFO defense for the PR line in the budget.
Measurement, Influence & Alignment
The six disciplines that keep everything else honest — including the cross-functional alignment that makes a marketing leader an operator.
Module 20
Pipeline model by ACV/stage, win-rate math, MQL/SQL definitions, the number you own.
Module 21
MMM patterns by stage, the MMM engine, channel attribution, the refresh cadence.
Module 22
Annual marketing budget, brand vs. demand allocation, brand bets, agency roster.
Module 23
Weekly Pipeline Call, Monthly Pipeline Council, Quarterly Revenue Handbook, enablement layers.
Module 24
Weekly ELT Dashboard, Monthly State of Union, board snapshot, CEO 1:1, CFO check-in.
Module 25
Marketing's role across Product, Sales & CS. RACI for contested zones, PMM org design, first 90 days for a new VP/CMO.