The Marketing Hire Most Alabama Companies Get Wrong

There’s a new category of growth professional most hiring managers don’t know exists yet. Here’s why it might be the most important hire your company makes, and exactly how to find the right one.

By Scott Simon | Better Hire, Inc.

Scott Simon, founder of Better Hire, Inc.

Most companies don’t have a marketing problem. They have a clarity problem.

They know they need to grow. They know digital is part of that. They post on LinkedIn occasionally, run a few ads, maybe hire a marketing coordinator who’s good at Canva and captions. And then they wonder why none of it moves the needle.

Here’s what I’ve learned after 26 years of placing talent across Alabama and the Southeast: the reason most marketing efforts fall short isn’t effort. It’s architecture. Companies hire for execution when what they actually need is someone who can build the engine first.

There’s a category of marketing professional emerging that most hiring managers in Alabama don’t know exists yet. They’re called go-to-market operators. If you’re trying to build a predictable revenue stream, they may be the most consequential hire you make.

What a Go-to-Market Operator Actually Is

Forget the job title for a moment. Think about what you actually need.

You need someone who can look at your business, understand your audience, the customers you have and the ones you should have, and build a system that reaches them consistently. Not a one-time campaign. A system. Something that runs, generates data, improves over time, and connects directly to revenue.

That’s a different animal than a traditional marketer.

A traditional marketer executes. They take direction, produce content, manage a calendar. They’re valuable, but they’re downstream of strategy. A go-to-market operator thinks upstream. They ask: Who are we trying to reach? Where do they live digitally? What do they care about? How do we get in front of them at the right moment with the right message? And how do we automate that so it keeps happening whether anyone is watching it or not?

The intelligence layer is the difference. Modern marketing platforms, LinkedIn, Google, Meta, and audience tools that most Alabama companies haven’t tapped yet, generate enormous amounts of data about buyer behavior. A GTM operator knows how to read that data and adapt in real time. They don’t just run ads. They build a feedback loop between your audience and your revenue.

The Process of Finding One

This is where most companies go wrong. You don’t find a GTM operator by posting a generic “Digital Marketing Manager” job and waiting to see who applies. You find one by first understanding what you specifically need, which means doing internal work before you ever write a job description.

1. Start with the revenue gap, not the job description.

Where is your growth stuck? Is it awareness? People don’t know you exist. Is it conversion? They know you but don’t buy. Is it retention? They buy once and disappear. The answer to that question changes who you hire. A company with an awareness problem needs someone who can build top-of-funnel reach. A company with a conversion problem needs someone who understands buyer psychology and can build automated nurture sequences. Don’t hire a marketer until you know which problem you’re solving.

2. Define your audience with real precision.

Not “small business owners in Alabama,” but “owners of manufacturing companies with 50 to 200 employees who are actively evaluating equipment upgrades.” The more precisely you can define who you’re trying to reach, the better you can evaluate whether a candidate has experience reaching that kind of buyer. GTM operators live and die by audience definition. If you can’t articulate your ideal customer profile, you can’t assess whether their skills match your need.

3. Look for systems thinkers, not campaign executors.

In an interview, ask them to walk you through something they built, not something they ran. Ask them what happens in month three of a campaign when initial results plateau. Ask how they’d use data from your existing customers to build a lookalike audience. The right person lights up at these questions. They’ll draw you a diagram. They’ll talk about infrastructure and feedback loops. If they mostly talk about content calendars and follower counts, keep looking.

4. Assess the intelligence layer.

The best GTM operators today use AI-assisted tools to compress the research phase, automate audience segmentation, and run campaigns at a scale that used to require a full team. Ask which tools they use and why. Ask how they stay current. This field is moving fast. You want someone ahead of it, not catching up.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Consider the situation facing PMT Publishing, the company behind Business Alabama and Birmingham Home & Garden.

Two iconic Alabama brands. Strong editorial content. Loyal, established audiences. And like a lot of media companies, a traditional revenue model built on relationships and print advertising that has a ceiling.

The opportunity is substantial. Business Alabama reaches executives, operators, and decision-makers across the state. Birmingham Home & Garden reaches homeowners in an active, intent-driven consumer market. But reaching those audiences editorially and monetizing that reach strategically are two different things.

What PMT needed wasn’t a marketing coordinator. They needed someone who could segment those audiences with precision, build campaign systems across LinkedIn, Google, Pinterest, and Instagram simultaneously, for both a B2B and a consumer brand, and connect that effort directly to advertiser revenue. Someone who could turn impressions into access and access into a repeatable commercial product.

That’s a GTM operator. Finding the right one required starting with the revenue gap, defining the audience with precision, and evaluating candidates on their ability to build systems rather than execute campaigns. The question was never “who’s good at marketing?” It was “who has built this before, and can they build it here?”

The Hire That Changes the Trajectory

Here’s what a well-placed GTM operator does that no traditional marketing hire can: the impact compounds.

Traditional marketing spend is largely a cost. You pay for impressions, clicks, and leads, and when you stop paying, it stops working. A GTM operator builds infrastructure. The audiences they define, the data they generate, and the automated systems they architect become assets. They keep working. They get smarter over time. And they give your sales team something they’ve probably never had: a predictable pipeline.

That word, predictable, matters more than most owners realize. Unpredictable revenue means unpredictable hiring, unpredictable investment, unpredictable growth. When you build a system that consistently touches the people you know, the people you should know, and the people who look like your best customers, you start to see patterns. You start to forecast. You stop chasing and start compounding.

Alabama companies are sitting on more audience equity than they’re using. Whether you’re a regional media company, a professional services firm, a manufacturer trying to reach procurement managers, or a healthcare group trying to stay in front of referring physicians, the audience exists. The platforms exist. The tools exist. What’s missing, in most cases, is the operator who knows how to connect them.

Where to Start

Before you write a job description, write a one-page answer to three questions: What does revenue growth look like for your company in the next 18 months? Who specifically do you need to reach to get there? And what do you have today, in terms of audience, content, data, and platform, that a great GTM operator could build on?

That one page will do more to sharpen your search than any job posting template.

The companies that figure this out first will have a significant advantage over those still running marketing by instinct. The tools are available. The talent exists. The only variable is whether your company has the clarity to go find it.