♾️Clay's thought leadership strategy

You’re reading The Content Loop — a weekly 5-min read on how B2B SaaS marketers can use original research and product-led content as a growth lever.

Did someone forward this email to you?

I’ve been watching Clay for months now. They’ve been all over LinkedIn in the past few months—because of the new B2B influencer partnerships they’ve invested in.

But that’s not what caught my attention. It was its thought leadership motion that really did it for me.

Many companies talk about AI “changing” how we do our roles every single day. But Clay took that 10 steps further by ushering in the “GTM Engineer” role.

If you’re chronically online like me or pay attention to sales roles, you would’ve noticed this change.

As of April 2025, almost 5 million people use “GTM Engineer” as their title.

It’s a true masterclass in bringing a product (and POV!) to market using original research.

Here’s why:

#1. Clay brings its POV to market like it’s a product

Clay didn’t accidentally stumble upon their point of view. They deliberately crafted and launched it.

According to Tom Alder from Strategy Breakdowns, Clay outgrew their positioning in 2024.

They were known for “personalized outreach” and “data enrichment,” but by mid-2024, they slowly realized this was just one use case customers were using them for.

In fact, they were using them to do account research, look for intent signals, and source target accounts. Now, Clay was capable of all of this—but it’s not something the company really advertised.

Customers just “engineered” these use cases based on what they needed.

It was this revelation that resulted in the “GTM Engineering” movement.

They used those signals to test the message and made it a core part of their positioning. Interestingly enough, they did it right when they announced a new funding round—which was perfect to create a buzz around the product.

When they published their piece on "Why we built the first GTM engineering team—and believe that it’s the future of sales," they weren’t just sharing an opinion.

They were launching a vision of how sales organizations should function. And it caught on like wildfire.

Your POV should be validated by your audience. Or else it’s just a spiky opinion that no one will rally behind. 

True thought leadership comes from your own experience and observations in the market.

#2: Rally real experts to validate your vision

Clay doesn’t rely solely on their own voice to promote their POV and vision. They’ve got real experts to do that for them. 

Honestly, they’ve built such a moat after years in the industry that finding experts must not be that hard. Especially since they have a Clay Experts database and a Clay Creators program.

But, the company’s program is still an excellent example of letting experts who your audience knows and trusts bring your vision to market.

For example, here’s a recent article titled, “Why we’re pivoting our Clay agency from outbound to CRM enrichment.” One of their “Clay Experts” authored this piece on how they’re repositioning their agency and services that are built with Clay.

The best part about this is that these articles indicate a slow shift in the market—and their audience is using the product to stay competitive.

We’re not all lucky enough to be a part of a company that’s at the “cutting edge” of the market. But that shouldn’t stop us ordinary humans from using this play.

Typically, my first order of business in any company is to build an “Expert Advisory Board.” It includes a list of people whose shoulder I can tap when I need to interview someone for a piece or a series of assets.

#3: Run real experiments that prove your claims

Clay’s team doesn’t just make a claim and leave it. They come with receipts. 

Usually, when we create bottom-of-funnel content like comparison pieces, we might:

• Rely on sales teams

• Work with product marketing teams

• Conduct secondary research (like review sites)

However, one of the most underrated plays is to run an experiment that compares your product with competing products.

For example, in the "The best personal email finders of 2024" article, Clay ran a head-to-head test against competitors like Rocketreach and Mixrank.

These were seemingly objective tests if you look at the data. But the best part was they didn’t shoehorn the product to make themselves look good. Instead, they used data from their own work (validated emails through outreach) and tested other providers against the same list.

This is not always possible because some products are too complex. In those cases, you can:

• Use first-party data from your sales conversations

• Interview experts who have used competing products and your own

• Pull CRM/call data from customers who migrated to your solution 

It lends authority to the piece—but make sure you don’t talk down to your competitors. That’s never a good play.

Clearly, Clay’s approach is working for them. They recently opened a position for an editorial lead to “interview GTM experts” and “craft GTM essays.”

They listened to their customers and built a category for themselves. That’s how you lead a market rather than just participate in it.

Would you like me to do more of these issues? Hit reply and let me know!

P.S. Liked the issue? Share it with someone who could benefit from it.

That’s all for today! As always, if you have any questions or feedback, hit reply and let me know.