Tom Wentworth
CMO at incident.io, engineer-turned-marketer. Writing about building modern marketing teams and how AI is rewriting the playbook. My rule of thumb: Marketing Output = AI × Taste².
Latest
The Model Doesn't Matter. The Harness Does. The model doesn’t matter. The harness does.This is a follow-up to Let’s Talk About “Claude”. In that post I tried to split “Claude” into two parts, the harness (the experience on top of the model) and the models themselves. For...Writing
- Sales Engineers Know the Customer Best Sales engineers know the customer best.Good point of view from Matt Heinz on the future of the CMO role, which is what got me on this. Matt believes...
- Go Big or Don't Go If you aren’t willing to go big, don’t go.A bunch of marketers I know (including me) were dunking on a well-funded Series A startup who spent a ton...
- We've Reached the Performative Era of AI in GTM We’ve reached the performative era of AI in GTM.By now, most companies have implemented a “context brain” that ties together and describes all your internal data and have...
- The CMO Isn't the Best Marketer The biggest misconception about the CMO role is that the CMO is the best marketer at the company.I’m certainly not the best marketer at incident.io.I have experience and...
- Marketing Is About Who You're Not For Marketing is also about communicating who you are not for.Two stores in Nantucket I’ve never heard of are fighting over influencers. Four Winds Craft Guild sells expensive shit...
- Wentworth's Copywriting Law Wentworth’s copywriting law: Quality = 1 / (number of Contributors)Fastest way to produce shit copy is to drop it into Notion or Google Docs and ask for “feedback”.Working...
- Let's Talk About "Claude" You love it, I love it. Claude is all over my feed and I love hearing stories about marketers nerding out in Claude Code.But let’s dissect “Claude” a...
- The Gap Between Marketing Engineers and Engineers Who Work on Marketing I’m pretty technical for a CMO and I’ve always wanted to be an engineer. I got close as a long time sales engineer, but no one wants me...
- Their Playbook Won't Work for You Reminder that just because it worked for Ramp or Wiz or Rippling or ElevenLabs or Clay or whatever incredibly well funded startup you admire doesn’t mean it will...
- Product Marketing Is the Best Marketing Need to clear something up based on a bunch of LinkedIn posts recently:Product marketing is the best marketing. The best product wins over the best marketing.You think Anthropic...
- The B2B Buying Experience With AI: What Changes? This episode is from a recent Exit Five live session with Lindsay O’Brien (Head of Marketing & Operations, Predictiv), and Aditya Vempaty (VP of Marketing, MoEngage) and me...
- The AI CMO Tom Wentworth (CMO @ incident.io) is replacing himself with an AI CMO. It’s scary good.He came on my podcast to talk about how he’s actually using AI in marketing, and:...
- AI Makes the CMS More Relevant Than Ever Here’s a podcast I recorded with Progress Software on how AI impacts content management
- Vibe coding an iOS app + deploying to the App Store Let me be clear: no one asked for this. But I’m going to walk you through how I built and published an iOS app using Claude Code, Xcode,...
- Vibe coding for marketers Here’s an end-to-end demo of how to vibe code a “lead magnet” using Claude Code.It’s long, so get comfortable.
- Aligning Marketing and Finance for Growth https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/b2brevenuevitals/episodes/RV218—Aligning-Marketing-and-Finance-for-Growth–Go-To-Market-Live-Episode-35-e2pn3g0/a-abj3qdh####In this week’s live event, Chris is joined by Tom Wentworth, CMO of Recorded Future, to discuss the intricate collaboration between marketing leadership and finance. They dive deep...
- Lifecycle of running a customer conference 1 Conferences are great, let’s do one!2 Wow, this is a lot of work3 I’ll never, ever do another customer conference4 Hey people actually came and had a...
- Expert Session: GTM Programs & Marketing ROI Podcast with Chris Walker on a bunch of topics*Tom emphasizes the importance of narrowing down account focus, even for large enterprises, suggesting that a smaller, targeted set of...
- Stop Using Someone Else’s Playbook This episode features an interview with Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, the world’s largest threat intelligence company, working with over 1,600 businesses and government organizations across more...
- CMO Circle: Tom Wentworth’s Unconventional Approach to Long-Term Marketing Success https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/cmo-circle-tom-wentworths-unconventional-approach-to-long-term-marketing-success
- Consistent Messaging is Better than Better Messaging By the time you are sick of repeating a message, sales are just starting to get it.By the time sales are sick of repeating a message, clients are...
- The Best Performing Marketing Channel is...
- Standout Startup Brands: Tom Wentworth – CMO, Recorded Future Here’s a podcast episode I recorded with Amrita Gurney and Janessa LantzIn this episode, we interview Tom Wentworth, CMO of Recorded Future and former CMO at high growth...
- Brand to Demand: Fueling Growth in Tough Times Let’s face it: it’s tough out there. Marketers are being asked to do more, with less budget and fewer resources. The first budget casualty is almost always brand...
- My Winter 23 Book Report TL;DR: In this post, I reviewed five fascinating books that I read while recently on vacation: “Becoming Steve Jobs,” an in-depth biography exploring Jobs’ life and career; “Build,”...
- Attribution Hunger Games In this episode of Scaleup Marketing, I talk about the Catch-22 of Attribution, and why fighting over attribution is destroying go-to-market teams. Okay. I want to talk a little...
- Jamie Sloan (InVision) on Strategic Marketing Operations On this week’s episode of Scaleup Marketing, I’m joined by Jamie Sloan, the Senior Director, Marketing Operations and Automation at InVision. Jamie talks about the evolution of marketing...
- Why I Started a Podcast (and Why You Should Too) In this week’s episode of Scaleup Marketing, I talk about why I decided to start a podcast, what I’m hoping to get out of it, and why I...
- Rene White (Chasm Group) on How to do Positioning the Right Way On this week’s episode of ScaleUp Marketing, I talk to René White, a Senior Advisor with the Chasm Group. René works with boards, CEO’s, and executive management teams...
- Mike Waldrop (DataStax) on What Sales Engineers Really Want from Marketing On this weeks episode of Scaleup Marketing I talk to Mike Waldrop, the Director of Presales Solution Architecture at DataStax about the relationship between sales engineers and marketing....
- Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor (Caldwell Partners) on How To Hire Marketing Executives In this weeks episode of Scaleup Marketing I talk to Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor, a managing partner of Caldwell’s Private Equity and Venture Capital Executive Search Practice. Mercedes focuses on...
- Kyle York (York IE) on how Brand Creates Demand In this week’s episode of Scaleup Marketing, I talk to Kyle York, the co-founder, CEO, and managing partner at York IE, an investment firm. Kyle and I talk...
- Lynne Capozzi (CMO Acquia) on Kicking Marketo to Curb On this week’s episode of Scaleup Marketing, I’m joined by Lynne Capozzi, the CMO of Acquia. Lynne and I talk about moving from Marketo to the Acquia Campaign...
- Jess Iandiorio (CMO Starbust Data) on “She’s Not Strategic” and the Importance of Category Creation This week’s guest on Scaleup Marketing is my friend and former colleague Jess Iandiorio, the CMO at Starburst Data. Jess and I worked together at Acquia, and she’s...
- Rick Klau on the Immaculate Promotion + being a Product Manager at Google On today’s episode of Scaleup Marketing, I’m joined by Rick Klau, a long-time startup entrepreneur, former operating partner at GV, and a Product Manager at Google where he...
- Anthony Deighton of Tamr on Why Standup Comedians Are Great Marketers On today’s episode of Scaleup Marketing I’m joined by Anthony Deighton, the Chief Product Officer at Tamr. Anthony has 20 years experience in enterprise software, including 10+ years...
- Eric Schurr on Great Product Marketing On today’s episode of Scaleup Marketing, I talk to Eric Schurr, the former CMO of Carbon Black, and one of the best marketers to come out of the...
- Introducing my new podcast Scaleup Marketing Today I launched a new podcast. You’re thinking just what we need another podcast, right? Okay, fair enough.But I’m trying to fill a gap. While there are lots...
- Shall we play a game? TL;DR I started a new job as the Chief Marketing Officer of Recorded Future. We empower organizations to reveal unknown security threats before they impact business, and enable...
- On Cambridge Analytica Last night I watched the Great Hack on Netflix. Highly recommended. Here’s a TL;DR oversimplification on how it all worked: SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, created a...
- Sales Engineers are the MVPs of SaaS I graduated college back in the mid-90s when a 56k modem was considered high-speed internet. I started my tech career in QA at a software startup called AimTech...
- Oh Shit, Now What? Okay let me start by paying off this clickbait headline right away: A couple of months ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. TL;DR I made life...
- There and back again Today I started a new job at Acquia, the open source digital experience company. Yeah, that Acquia.\https://twitter.com/twentworth12/status/282151641401155586First day at Acquia in 2012Since I left in 2015, Acquia has...
- My 2018 Book Report A year ago today, I challenged myself to read err listen to more books in 2018. Thanks to a long commute and Audible, I hit my goal. Here’s...
- Bad Bros and Bad Blood: a Summer Vacation Book Report Hey kids: I know you hate all that summer reading you get assigned at the end of every school year. But when you grow up, you’ll discover that...
- How to do A/B/N testing in a Pardot Engagement Stream Want to do A/B testing in a Pardot Engagement Stream? You can’t :( Well, not without a little bit of customization. Here’s a simple workaround for doing A/B/N testing...
- Debunking Five Analyst Relations Myths Analyst relations is easily the most misunderstood function in marketing. I’ve been involved with analyst relations — or AR — for over a decade, working on dozens of Gartner Magic Quadrants and...
- What I Learned Building an App on the Drift Platform A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away — I was a Computer Science major at the University of Illinois. I grew up programming in BASIC on a...
- Your Best Startup Strategy is Better Execution It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, not that time. The other one. The time where your startup gets together and starts planning for the upcoming...
- Lessons Learned Shifting to Product Qualified Leads The Death of the Marketing Qualified Lead?A little over a year ago I wrote an article about killing the marketing qualified lead. Here’s a quick refresher: Once upon...
- Predictive Account Based Inbound Agile Marketing Automation We’ve hit peak Account Based Marketing. I’ve received 5 emails this week from vendors extolling the virtues of ABM. I’ve been invited to one dinner, two lunches, received...
- When Marketing Personas Fail Marketing personas are those fictional people with the clever names like Statistical Stephen at RapidMiner or Marketing Mary at HubSpot. Personas are formed through extensive quantative and qualitative...
- How to Send Almost Anything to Microsoft Teams using Webhooks and Zapier Microsoft Teams is set to take on the new breed of collaboration apps like Slack and Hipchat. Each collaboration area is called a Team — and each Team can have...
- Stop The Lead Scoring Madness I recently came across a lead scoring article on the Mattermark blog that reminded me of a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while: the way...
- A Primer on Developer Marketing TL;DR marketing to developers is hard, and you are probably doing it wrong.The unstoppable rise of the developerMy former Acquia colleague David Churbuck introduced me to RedMonk’s Steve...
- Building a Data (Science) Driven Marketing Team Marketers like to claim that we’re data driven, but are we… really? Sure, we track our lead conversion funnel from acquisition through conversion to paid customers. We use...
- An Ode to Sonos I’ve been using Sonos since 2005, when I wanted to add whole-house audio to a new home I had just purchased. At the time, multi room audio was...
- When Sales and Marketing Best Practices Become Average Practices No one got fired for buying IBM?In the 80s, IBM dominated tech from the desktop to the datacenter. Buyers often picked IBM because they were safe choice, not the...
- How I Got Past the Awkwardness of Self Promotion Without Becoming a Kardashian Every time I come across one of those “top marketer” lists on Twitter or LinkedIn, a nervous anticipation builds as I quickly scan for my name. Sometimes I’m...
- Why I’m Killing the Marketing Qualified Lead Five years ago, I was sitting at my desk working on a PowerPoint pitch for an upcoming customer visit. My boss stopped by and asked me a question...
- Before you agree to widening the top of your lead funnel… Few things cause CMOs to panic more than hearing the dreaded phrase “we need to widen the lead funnel” from the head of sales. Or the CEO. Or...
- Is Specialization Bad for Startup Marketing? We’re starting to run a Scrumban process in RapidMiner marketing. Scrumban is a great way accelerate output by creating more transparency around priorities in the hectic world of...
- You’ve been asked to cut your marketing budget. Now what? Unicorpses. Layoffs. Bursting bubbles. Winter is coming. Every day there’s a new story on the 2016 techpocalypse. Having lived through the 2000 dot com crash, this is nothing...
- Some Practical Advice for Aspiring Tech CMOs In no particular order, here are some of the lessons I’ve learned running marketing at three tech companies.Your most important job is to recruit and retain exceptional peopleNever...