Recorded IRL at Pavilion’s GTM2025, Washington DC!

Amanda McGuckin Hager has worn many hats in her career—sales, marketing, fractional consulting—and today she holds two big ones: CMO and CRO at TrueDialog. After starting out in sales and quickly realizing her heart was in marketing, Amanda built a path through Austin’s B2B tech community, leading teams, experimenting with growth plays, and eventually taking on dual leadership of sales and marketing.

In this episode, we unpack Amanda’s journey, her approach to building strong cultures without “duds,” why she’s protective of her CMO title, and how she’s testing AI and search in practical, creative ways.

Here’s what we cover:

• Amanda’s early pivot from sales into marketing (and why it stuck)
• What it really looks like to be both CMO and CRO at the same time
• Resetting a sales org from comp plans to quotas to team structure
• Why fewer silos and more shared accountability reduce finger pointing
• How to spot (and avoid) “duds” when building teams
• The role of fun and positivity in high-performing leadership
• Fractional marketing lessons: variety, freedom, and choosing clients
• Why Amanda protects the CMO title (even while running sales)
• Experiments with LLM optimization, long-tail queries, and AI tools
• Guarding deep work time with “no meeting” blocks and shitty first drafts

Key Links:

Guest: Amanda McGuckin Hager: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda/

Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/

Recorded live from Pavilion's GTM2025: https://attendgtm.com/

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**Originally published on October 16, 2024**

This replay features the brilliant Liza Adams - AI advisor, fractional CMO, and one of the top 50 CMOs to watch in 2024. We talked about her journey from Manila to Michigan, why gratitude fuels her leadership, and how she’s spent 20+ years helping B2B tech companies elevate marketing from “tactical” to truly strategic.

Liza’s perspective on AI, trust, and building defensible moats is refreshing and practical - I left this convo inspired and with about ten new quotes for my wall.

- Jane

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In this episode of Women in B2B Marketing, host Jane Serra sits down with Liza Adams, AI advisor and fractional CMO. Liza shares how her engineering roots shaped her early entry into AI, and why she’s passionate about marketing’s role as a strategic driver of business growth (not just the “campaigns and events team”).

This episode covers:

• Liza’s journey from immigrant roots in the Philippines to tech executive in the U.S.
• Why marketing must reclaim its North Star: deep customer understanding
• The three passions guiding her career: elevating marketing’s strategic value, championing diverse voices, and using business as a force for good
• Practical frameworks for evaluating product-market fit and building defensible moats
• How AI can shrink research cycles, spark alignment, and elevate marketers from tacticians to strategists
• Trust as the ultimate differentiator - why “brand building” is really “trust building”
• Examples of how teams are using custom GPTs to boost productivity and decision-making
• Her advice to CMOs in today’s “pressure cooker” environment

Liza also shares the golden rule of modern marketing: be an amazing human first, then an amazing marketer. (yesssssss!!)

Key Links:

Guest: Liza Adams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizaadams/

Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/

Discussed in Episode:

Disrupt or Be Disrupted: AI's Verdict on Your Product's Defensibility

Competitive Defensibility Analyzer GPT

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Paige Tills didn’t set out to be a marketer. After starting in international relations and higher ed, she pivoted into business development at #samsales - where she built her way into marketing and ultimately grew into the role of VP of Marketing. Paige has built her role from the ground up, shaping the company’s content engine, experimenting with paid and organic channels, and scaling what started as one newsletter into a multi-channel brand presence.

In this conversation, we dive into Paige’s journey, her lessons learned on newsletters, social, ads, webinars, YouTube, and AI, and what it takes to market with personality, precision, and scrappiness.

Here’s what we cover:

• Saying yes to pivots and building a career in unexpected places
• How #samsales scaled from one newsletter to a full content ecosystem
• Zero-click content and why click-through isn’t always the goal
• LinkedIn ads, thought-leader campaigns, and what not to do with targeting
• YouTube lessons: shorts, long-form, and CTAs that actually work
• Why founder-led brands win - and what to do if you don’t have one
• Making webinars engaging without the slide deck snoozefest
• Early AI + LLM experiments: traffic, Wikipedia, and Reddit potential
• The role of personal storytelling and motherhood moments on LinkedIn

Key Links:

Guest: Paige Tills: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paige-tills/

Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/

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