Guest Blog: How I Transformed a Small Marketing Team Into an AI-Powered Competitive Machine
As CMO of Broadvoice, I had a choice: hire expensive specialists to compete with enterprise marketing budgets, or mandate that every team member integrate AI into their daily workflows. Here's why I chose AI-first—and the results that followed.
Twelve months ago, I inherited a brutal competitive reality: our contact center solution, GoContact, competes against the largest Contact Centers in the worled companies with marketing budgets 10-50x our size and sales teams larger than our entire organization.
My options were limited. I could beg for budget to hire expensive specialists. Or I could transform our existing small marketing team into something fundamentally different: an AI-first marketing operation that outthinks enterprise competitors instead of trying to outspend them.
I chose transformation. Today, that same small team massively grew qualified partner pipeline for GoContact, produces 3x strategic enablement pieces annually , and maintains 99.1% positive sentiment across our content—while competitors waste millions on generic campaigns.
Here's exactly how I did it, and why I now require every marketing hire to demonstrate AI proficiency on day one.
The AI-First Mandate: Why I Made It Non-Negotiable
Most CMOs treat AI as a productivity enhancement. I made it a core competency requirement.
Every person on my marketing team—from content creators to performance marketers—must leverage AI to multiply their output. Not because I'm obsessed with technology, but because we're not competing against other small teams. We're competing against enterprise marketing departments with unlimited resources to promote their legacy contact center solutions.
The Cultural Shift I Demanded:
No more quarterly competitive analysis - AI delivers daily intelligence briefings on the contact center market
No more gut-driven content creation - every GoContact positioning piece informed by behavioral data
No more post-mortem campaign optimization - real-time AI adjustments for our contact center campaigns
No more generic partner materials - intelligence-driven, segment-specific enablement for GoContact
The Productivity Reality: My team now spends 70% of their time on strategy and execution instead of manual research and reporting. That's the difference between managing tasks and driving growth for Broadvoice GoContact.
Daily AI Workflows: How I Transformed Each Role
I didn't just mandate AI adoption, I redesigned every workflow around AI-enhanced productivity to support our GoContact go-to-market strategy.
My Content Marketer's New Reality:
Every morning, DOJO AI delivers competitive intelligence about the contact center software market that would take a traditional marketer 4 hours to compile. By 9 AM, she's analyzing sentiment patterns across our GoContact target segments. By 10 AM, she's generating content variations testing different GoContact positioning angles.
The Result: 290% increase in GoContact-focused content output with engagement rates that consistently beat industry benchmarks.
My Performance Marketer's Evolution:
Instead of running contact center campaigns and hoping for the best, he starts each day with AI-identified optimization opportunities. DOJO AI shows him exactly which bid adjustments will improve our GoContact cost-per-acquisition based on ICP behavioral patterns.
The Impact: 40% reduction in acquisition costs while scaling qualified traffic from our target mid-market segments interested in cloud contact center solutions.
My Partner Enablement Manager's Transformation:
She no longer creates generic battle cards. Every Monday, DOJO AI delivers partner-specific market intelligence about contact center opportunities in each territory. Every GoContact enablement piece is informed by real behavioral data from successful deals.
The Growth: Partner-sourced pipeline for GoContact increased 67% with the same partner network.
Competitive Intelligence: From Reactive to Predictive
Here's where most contact center marketing teams fail: they discover competitive threats months after the damage is done.
I implemented a different approach. Every team member gets daily competitive intelligence about the contact center market that directly informs their GoContact positioning. Not quarterly PowerPoints that leadership ignores—actionable insights that drive immediate execution.
My AI-First Intelligence System:
DOJO AI monitors 47 contact center competitors across 12 positioning dimensions
Daily alerts when competitors shift messaging or launch campaigns against our GoContact market
Real-time sentiment analysis revealing competitor vulnerabilities in the CCaaS space
Predictive modeling showing contact center market opportunity gaps
Real Example: In Q2, DOJO AI identified a major contact center competitor struggling with "complex implementation" sentiment (+340% negative mentions). Within 48 hours, my team had created partner enablement materials emphasizing GoContact's "simple deployment" advantage and launched targeted campaigns in affected regions.
The Result: 23% market share gain in Portugal's mid-market contact center segment over 90 days.
Why This Matters: While contact center competitors react to market changes quarterly, we respond to shifts in real-time. That's the difference between playing defense and controlling the narrative around GoContact.
Strategic Content: Intelligence-Driven vs. Best-Practice-Driven
I eliminated content creation based on assumptions. Every piece my team produces about GoContact is informed by behavioral intelligence and predictive modeling.
My AI-Enhanced Content Process:
DOJO AI identifies pain points trending in contact center target segments
Sentiment analysis reveals emotional triggers driving mid-market contact center decisions
Competitive intelligence exposes messaging gaps competitors miss in the CCaaS space
Performance modeling predicts which GoContact positioning angles will convert
Real-time optimization adjusts content based on engagement patterns
The Numbers Don't Lie:
99.1% positive sentiment across our strategic GoContact content
74.6% of content includes business-focused keywords that drive contact center conversions
2x engagement rates compared to our pre-AI approach
146 strategic GoContact pieces produced in 12 months vs. 40 previously
The Strategic Insight: AI revealed that mid-market prospects respond 3.2x better to "operational control" messaging than "advanced contact center features." This single insight shifted our entire GoContact positioning strategy and drove a 45% increase in demo requests.
Partner Enablement: From Generic to Precision Intelligence
Generic partner portals are marketing theater. I use DOJO AI to create partner-specific intelligence that makes our GoContact channel partners more effective than competitors' direct sales teams.
My Approach:
Geographic Intelligence: Market-specific GoContact positioning based on regional performance data
Competitive Battlecards: Real-time contact center competitor analysis for each partner's territory
Behavioral Insights: AI-identified buying signals and optimal GoContact messaging triggers
Success Patterns: Analysis of winning GoContact deals to create replicable strategies
The Transformation: Our partners evolved from generic vendor relationships to strategic GoContact market intelligence partnerships.
The Results I Measure:
Massive growth in qualified GoContact partner pipeline from precision targeting
Internationally, 60% of prospects now partner-introduced vs. cold outreach for contact center solutions
787 qualified GoContact demo requests through enhanced partner channels
40% improvement in partner deal quality
The Multiplier Effect: Why AI-First Culture Compounds
Here's what I learned: in AI-first marketing operations, every improvement compounds.
Better competitive intelligence creates more effective GoContact content. Higher content performance enables better campaign targeting. Enhanced targeting reduces acquisition costs. Lower costs allow more market investment. More investment generates better intelligence.
My Team's Compound Results:
The same small team now:
Monitors 47 contact center competitors daily instead of quarterly research
Produces 290% more GoContact content with higher engagement
Executes in 4 geographic markets with precision targeting
Enables 12 channel partners with GoContact market-specific intelligence
Generates increased pipeline with 40% lower acquisition costs
The Strategic Advantage: While competitors manage fragmented marketing tools, we built unified intelligence that makes every team member more strategic, efficient, and effective at promoting GoContact.
Why I Only Hire AI-First Marketers Now
The marketing profession is splitting into two categories:
Traditional marketers who use AI occasionally for productivity
AI-first marketers who've integrated intelligence into every workflow
The performance gap is already massive and widening daily.
Every marketing hire I make now must demonstrate AI proficiency. Not because I'm chasing trends, but because operational intelligence is our key sustainable competitive advantage against enterprise contact center budgets.
My Hiring Reality: I'd rather have a small team of AI-enhanced marketers than a large team of traditional ones promoting GoContact. The productivity multiplier isn't linear—it's exponential.
The Future Is AI-First or Nothing
Broadvoice's approach isn't just about efficiency—it's about competitive survival in the contact center market. In markets where enterprise competitors have unlimited resources, the only winning strategy is superior intelligence execution.
The companies building AI-first marketing operations today will dominate tomorrow's contact center landscape. The ones still managing marketing like it's 2019 will become irrelevant.
My Prediction: Within 24 months, AI proficiency won't be a competitive advantage—it'll be table stakes for contact center marketing teams. The CMOs who understand this shift and act now will build insurmountable operational advantages.
The Question for Fellow CMOs: While your competitors debate whether to adopt AI, how long can you afford to have team members executing contact center marketing without intelligence enhancement?
The future belongs to AI-first marketing teams. I'm not waiting for the contact center market to catch up.
Malachi Threadgill is CMO of Broadvoice, provider of GoContact cloud contact center solutions for small and medium businesses. Connect with him on LinkedIn to discuss AI-first marketing strategies.
Ready to transform your marketing team into an AI-powered competitive advantage? See how DOJO AI multiplies marketing team performance .
