A GTM Engine From Zero
I joined Prerender.io as its first product marketer, with no playbook, and three GTM motions already running at once: product-led growth, enterprise sales and partner-led growth. In 6 months I built the product marketing function from scratch and stood up the GTM frameworks Product, Sales, Partnerships and Customer Success work from. This page is less about what shipped and more about how I decide what deserves a GTM plan, how I build one, and why each step is there.
Company:
Prerender.io (part of saas.group)
expertise:
0→1 Build, GTM Strategy
My Role:
Founding Product Marketing Manager
Too many good options, one marketer
A founding product marketer never runs out of things to market. Every feature, framework page and segment had a case for attention, and each of the three motions came with its own buyer journey.
Marketing everything equally would have meant thin coverage everywhere and proof nowhere. So the first strategic question was not “how do we launch this?” It was “what deserves a full GTM plan first, and why?”
How I build a GTM plan
Five steps, in this order, because each one depends on the decision before it.
When there's no playbook, prioritisation is the strategy
01 | Prioritise before you position
I score launch candidates on five weighted criteria: pain and urgency (30%), ICP fit (25%), business value (20%), differentiation (15%) and GTM readiness (10%). Readiness is weighted lowest on purpose: product marketing can build messaging and proof, but not customer pain. The score is a hypothesis, which I check against pipeline, win/loss and revenue data before committing budget.
02 | Start from the evidence you have
I build the first plan around what we can already prove, then fill the gaps. At Prerender, an AI-powered customer intelligence workflow turns Sales, CS and BDR conversations, product usage and CRM signals into an evidence base that keeps refreshing.
03 | Position from the customer's alternatives
Using April Dunford's framework, I start with what buyers do today and work outward. At Prerender, this surfaced the real differentiator: server-side rendering also unblocks the AI crawlers that firewall and CDN rules stop. One narrative, the access layer for machine visibility, then served both buyers: commercial impact for the economic buyer, product proof for the technical user.
04 | Turn positioning into plays
Thought leadership, product education, ICP campaigns, persona enablement and customer proof. Each play has one job, and all trace back to one positioning, so messaging stays consistent across three GTM motions.
05 | Map the journey, then validate
Each stage answers one buyer question: why is this a problem, how does it work, why change, why us. I validate with Product against the roadmap, pressure-test with Sales, Partnerships and CS, and use quantitative evidence wherever possible. Opinion is where I start, never where I stop.
From one plan to a launch system
To make this repeatable, I built Prerender’s first product launch and sales enablement framework, with launch tiering, asset tracking and clear handoffs between teams. Every launch now gets the GTM depth its strategic weight deserves, instead of the depth whoever shouts loudest asks for.
Results
6 months: product marketing function built from zero
4 teams: Product, Sales, Partnerships and CS on shared GTM frameworks
3 motions: PLG, enterprise and partner-led growth supported at once
2 + 1 : feature launches and a tier-1 release on the new launch framework
56%: of beta customers opted in and integrated AI Insights
150 attendees: PLG onboarding webinar, with a 2% lift in free-to-paid conversion in month one
Amelia's skills line in bringing stakeholders together and keeping projects highly visible. Her enthusiasm is also genuinely contagious, and she has a real talent for launching initiatives forward and creating momentum where things might otherwise stall.
Hannah Pelletier
Director of Revenue Operations, Prerender.io
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