Agreed, marketing is all about choice. The core of a company's marketing strategy spans both what it chooses to do and when it chooses to change course.

It is also about knowing when to switch it up. Especially if you just joined a Series A startup scaling fast.

If you're running outbound or ABM at a B2B company, the question Ruth tackles — when to go broad versus when to go precise — comes up in almost every pipeline review. Her answer, grounded in Ada's growth from Series A to unicorn, is worth reading closely.

And this is something Ruth Zive, SVP, Ada excels at.

“In Ada’s case, the urgency from A to B was more so around the volume of the pipeline. So how do I build those systems on the demand or growth side to put in front of sales as many at-bats as possible? That was the key driver from A to B. You know, turn on all the faucets and get the water flowing,” Ruth says.

“And then from B to C, it was about the quality of water. Is it the cleanest, best-tasting water that we could deliver to sales? We started to refine our strategy. Turn our attention more to the brand. And really define our ICP and zero in on the best quality of leads for sales so they can close at the highest win rates,” she continues.

In this chat with Trinity Nguyen on The First 100 Days podcast, Ruth Zive shares lessons from her journey growing Ada from series A to C and achieving unicorn status in three years.

Prefer to give it a listen? Here’s the link to the interview.

Editor’s note: The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Nothing beats the data you get from the market

There's no universal playbook here — context shapes everything.

“But right out of the gate, you just want to pitch your company and value proposition as many times as possible. Because whatever assumptions you’re making without having had that experience are probably wrong,” Ruth says.

“So, get in front of as many people as possible. Test your message and value proposition. Learn the sales motion. Then you can start to refine it,” she continues.

Early on, Ada struggled to position itself effectively inside consumer-facing verticals. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Ruth says. Ruth admits they underestimated compliance considerations, sales cycle complexity, and back-end integrations despite having great customers in the travel, hospitality, and telco spaces.

After many at-bats with different industries, “because I didn’t constrain my ideal consumer profile by industry at that early stage,” she says. They discovered Ada resonated most with digital-first industries, such as e-commerce, and zeroed in on those industries.

Today, Ada is revisiting their initial industries because now “we’re much more mature. Our product is more sophisticated and deeply integrated. We have lots of back-end integrations. We've met certain compliance thresholds. Once we understood the challenges in those industries, we could return to them,” Ruth explains.

In those early days, the industries they expected to win in were the ones that taught them the hardest lessons.

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The rightful place for the BDR function? marketing

Putting the BDR function inside marketing improves lead quality and gives marketing direct visibility into what's landing with sales, improving sales and marketing alignment.

“I’m opinionated that the BDR function should sit within marketing,” says Ruth. “I think it creates better alignment between sales and marketing. It gives me a deeper line of sight into the funnel and the leads that I'm delivering to sales.”

“It gives sales a much better qualified meeting or opportunity because we've touched it several times before it lands in their hands – and it meets a lot of other qualification measures. So, sales can focus on more down funnel activity, which I think is effective as well,” she continues.

Two things need to happen for it to succeed. The first is that sales must support it and buy into the paradigm.

The second is that there has to be a clear progression path for BDRs into sales. “Most BDRs want that path available to them. Again, you need the sales organization to really be supportive of that. That is absolutely the case at Ada, which is great,” says Ruth.

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You learn by doing

The best way to understand what actually works — messaging, sequencing, ICP targeting — is to run the plays yourself before handing them off. If you don't know where to start, find someone who's already figured it out in your space and adapt their approach. Not every play needs to be invented from scratch. And if the first version falls flat, that's information — tighten the targeting or the message and run it again.

For the full interview with Ruth Zive, tune in to The First 100 Days wherever you get your podcasts.