{"id":10800,"date":"2026-02-18T18:44:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10800"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:44:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:44:19","slug":"the-gtm-spending-problem-no-one-wants-to-admit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10800","title":{"rendered":"The GTM spending problem no one wants to admit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The latest GTM Effectiveness Report<\/a> from Proof Causal.ai and Fiduciari makes the numbers difficult to ignore. Across enterprise B2B go-to-market functions, roughly 53% of GTM spend was ineffective across a basket of approximately 500 public companies. Among private startups and scaleups to which Proof had access, the inefficiency rate climbed above 70% before causal relationships in GTM were assessed. Yet, inside that ocean of waste, there was one notable exception: communications and PR.<\/p>\n

While most marketing and sales spending failed to create measurable lift, PR performance stood out with an unusually low inefficiency rate. Only about 12 cents of every PR dollar was ineffective.<\/p>\n

That difference is meaningful. It points to a structural flaw in how GTM is designed and funded today. It implies something more serious than simple inefficiency \u2014 most GTM functions may be built on flawed causal assumptions.<\/p>\n

Earned legitimacy drives buyer confidence<\/h2>\n

The standard internal framing of PR is simplistic: brand awareness, company credibility or general trust-building. Those phrases aren\u2019t wrong, but they are incomplete.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s environment, dominated by paid media saturation and owned content inflation, PR is also an economic mechanism. It\u2019s the primary generator of earned legitimacy \u2014 now the dominant input into buyer confidence.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s B2B buyers are overwhelmed, surrounded by paid social, paid search, ABM ads, sponsored newsletters, webinar campaigns, thought leadership series, SEO content farms and AI-generated white papers.<\/p>\n

The buyer\u2019s challenge is determining what\u2019s real. In that context, earned media and analyst validation contribute an estimated 89% of the confidence and trust factors that shape purchasing behavior.<\/p>\n

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Confidence is about what you can really do. Trust is about who you really are. This isn\u2019t a branding argument, but a causal reality. Earned content functions as third-party verification in a market flooded with self-asserted claims.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: B2B firms suffer from poor GTM understanding<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Most GTM operates on the wrong causal model<\/h2>\n

Most GTM spend assumes exposure produces outcomes: more campaigns lead to more awareness, which leads to more leads and more revenue.<\/p>\n

Causal modeling shows a different pathway: earned validation drives a confidence shift, which increases willingness to engage, accelerates deal velocity, expands deal size and improves close probability.<\/p>\n

In other words, PR isn\u2019t simply top of funnel. It\u2019s upstream of the entire funnel. It determines whether the market will allow your pipeline math to work at all.<\/p>\n

PR is structurally more effective because it\u2019s inherently disciplined. Unlike paid media, PR can\u2019t brute-force outcomes with spend. The market decides whether a story has legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Unlike owned media, PR can\u2019t self-certify truth. Readers rely on third parties, notably press and analysts, to validate it.<\/p>\n

Unlike most MOps, PR results are binary. The placement happens or it doesn\u2019t. The analyst briefing lands or it doesn\u2019t. The narrative is credible or it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

This dynamic forces the function into a feedback loop that more closely reflects causality than correlation.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: The future of GTM starts with causal clarity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

GTM budgets are allocated backward<\/h2>\n

Once you see this, the financial conclusion becomes difficult to avoid. If earned content is driving nearly 90% of trust formation, and trust formation accelerates pipeline, then many companies are allocating capital backward. The dominant enterprise spend model today looks something like:<\/p>\n