*This episode was recorded during our Soundcheck days — now proudly rebranded as GTM Insider.

TL;DR

• Sales and marketing alignment starts with shared goals—mismatched KPIs (like MQLs vs. revenue) create inefficiency and mistrust.

• High-intent leads > low-intent MQLs. Cognism shifted from gated content to a demand gen model focused on demo requests.

• Modern buyers want content delivered in varied, frictionless formats—think short-form video, audio, newsletter, and social snippets.

• The 'Blueprint' is Cognism’s scalable, multi-format content strategy, built once and repurposed across platforms and personas.

• Sales buy-in improves when you show direct revenue impact. Weekly syncs, dedicated roles like MDRs, and data-backed insights foster trust.

• Collaboration thrives when marketing respects sales' workflow—and vice versa. Cognism's motto: 'We exist to make sales easy.'

• Joint projects (like ABM pilots) and shared customer conversations help unify language, goals, and execution between teams.

In this episode of The Sound Check, Alice de Courcy, CMO of Cognism, unpacks how her team overhauled its go-to-market strategy—ditching low-intent lead gen in favor of a high-intent, revenue-driven demand gen motion. She shares the playbook for building better alignment between sales and marketing, structuring buyer-centric content, and scaling impact without relying on outdated tactics.

Why Shared Goals Matter

Alice highlights that misalignment starts when marketing is measured on MQLs and sales on revenue. That setup 'basically means marketing can hit quota while sales aren't hitting targets,' creating finger-pointing and inefficiency.

Cognism changed course by moving away from lead gen and adopting a demand gen-first model, where both teams rally around high-intent demo requests.

The Death of Gated Content

Buyers don’t want to be 'artificially pushed through a funnel just because they downloaded a piece of content,' Alice explains. Instead, Cognism now focuses on 'always-on, friction-free content' across formats like YouTube, Spotify, short videos, newsletters, and audio.

The Blueprint: A New Content Operating Model

The Blueprint is Cognism’s flagship content engine, built using the Easy Mode framework from Todd Klauser and Ebade. It's designed to generate long-form assets broken down across multiple content types and channels.

Rather than ad hoc creation, Alice's team ideates once a year around narrative themes and spins out content in formats tailored to their ICP. Content is then distributed across organic, paid, and social channels.

Getting Sales Buy-In

Marketing proved value by showing sales how top-converting deals interacted with assets like the Blueprint. 'What’s in it for them' became the rallying cry—focusing on how content supports commissions and closes.

They introduced dedicated MDRs (Marketing Development Reps) to handle high-intent leads exclusively—leading to 2x conversion rates over the previous round-robin model.

High-Intent > High Volume

Cognism categorizes content into four buckets: Thought Leadership, Product, Social Proof, and Demand Content. Everything runs friction-free, always-on, across all platforms and is tailored to specific segments.

This strategic shift allowed Cognism to scale demo requests and boost revenue attribution—tracked through tools like HockeyStack.

Alice also recommends checking out Cognism’s free demand gen course, hosted on their website.

Sales as the Customer

Cognism’s internal motto: 'Marketing exists to make sales easy.' Weekly syncs, shared dashboards, and collaborative projects like ABM pilots have fostered mutual respect and alignment.

Even small exercises—like marketers joining SDRs for cold calls—built empathy and challenged the old model.