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Case Study

A Scalable GTM Model for Growth-Oriented Advertisers

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Challenge

Navigating Growth as Print Declines and Advertiser Needs Shift

A world-renowned publisher with over $2 billion in revenue, and ~20% of that revenue coming from ad sales, was facing growth challenges year over year. These challenges were only exacerbated by the loss of print subscribers and print ad revenue, with revenue growth declining as a result. While ad revenue was flat in 2024, it previously decreased by 3.5% between 2022 and 2023.

To address these challenges, this leading media and journalism company wanted to shift to more down-market customers that focuses on growth-oriented advertisers. The organization already worked with a media-focused consulting firm to develop a commercial blueprint for selling to growth-oriented advertisers.

However, Alexander Group was brought in to help this client further define what it means to be a “growth-oriented” advertiser, create actionable job design details (such as roles, detailed responsibilities, competencies and rules of engagement), develop commercial processes around opportunity and segmentation of growth-oriented advertisers and design compensation structures to achieve success in this newly-defined growth segment.

Solution

Turning Growth Ambition Into a Clear GTM Blueprint

Alexander Group partnered with the media client to develop a go to market (GTM) blueprint and supporting financial business case designed to support the client’s growth objectives.

This new, comprehensive model included:

A data driven opportunity model that sized revenue potential across current and prospective advertisers using past performance and market spend, creating a clear fact base to prioritize growth accounts and guide GTM decisions.

Sharper advertiser segmentation that clearly identified “growth oriented” advertisers across enterprise, growth and rest of market. This also spelled out how the client’s goals, sales cycles, routes to market and service needs differ to guide execution.

An updated coverage and execution model that turned opportunity and segmentation insights into practical GTM choices, including who to cover, how to engage and which roles best support growth oriented advertisers.

A headcount and capacity plan that balanced growth goals with profitability, aligning staffing levels to modeled opportunity and expected productivity across multiple hiring scenarios.

Sales compensation structures that supported new logo wins and expansion in the growth segment, reinforcing the right seller behaviors and aligning incentives to the updated GTM strategy.

Pricing and packaging recommendations tailored to the growth ICP, enabling scalable execution while protecting the client’s premium brand positioning.

Together, these components established a clear, execution-ready GTM foundation to support the client’s growth ambitions and inform future performance improvements.

Impact

Positioned to Drive Double-Digit Growth

The expected impact of the engagement was grounded in a clear financial business case, built on the updated segmentation, coverage and compensation design. The modeling showed that re segmenting the account universe and refining coverage were anticipated to drive double digit revenue growth by sharpening focus on growth oriented advertisers and matching engagement models to real opportunity. Updated sales compensation was also designed to accelerate new logo wins and expansion within the growth segment by reinforcing the behaviors that matter most.

Beyond the modeled results, the engagement delivered meaningful strategic and organizational impact. The client shared high praise of the team, due to their credibility, strong understanding of the media business and ability to quickly get up to speed. Leadership noted that this combination set the team apart from other firms they had worked with, which took longer to build the same level of context and confidence.

The client also shared that a prior attempt with another firm to stand up a growth segment team stalled due to limited rigor and unclear direction. This work changed that. It strengthened leadership’s confidence in the strategy and reinforced their decision to partner with Alexander Group, taking their perception of the firm to the next level.

Adapt Your GTM Strategy for Modern Growth

Learn how Alexander Group helps leading media organizations design growth focused go to market models that align strategy, talent and incentives to unlock sustainable revenue growth. 

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About Alexander Group

Alexander Group understands your revenue growth challenges. Since 1985, we’ve served more than 3,000 companies across the globe. This experience gives us not only a highly sophisticated set of best practices to grow revenue—we also have a rich repository of unique industry data that informs all our recommendations. Aligning product, marketing, operations and finance efforts behind a successful sales organization takes insight and hard work. We help the world’s leading organizations build the right revenue vision, transform their organizations and deliver results.

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