Lindsay built her entire marketing strategy around a single word: clarity. Clarity in messaging, measurement, and team alignment drives performance across all marketing functions. This principle guides how STACK proves ROI rather than just promoting software features, leading with value and results instead of capabilities. When teams operate with clear principles, decision-making accelerates and execution improves.

Drawing from Simon Sinek's framework, Lindsay emphasizes stepping back from product features to understand the fundamental purpose behind customer pain points. The process involves walking a mile in customer boots—understanding daily hurdles, listening for what they're not saying, and exploring what they wish they could do rather than just what they're currently doing. This depth of customer understanding informs everything from messaging to product roadmap decisions.

STACK achieved complete marketing-sales alignment by shifting focus from lead volume vanity metrics to pipeline generation and profitability. When both teams speak the same revenue-focused language and share responsibility for go-to-market outcomes, finger-pointing disappears. Marketing treats sales feedback as critical market intelligence that informs not just campaigns but also product development, creating a continuous loop of improvement.

Lindsay's team built a custom GPT trained on their brand to systematically identify where STACK appears—and critically, doesn't appear—in AI model responses. This tool evaluates competitive positioning across topics and rapidly suggests high-value opportunities to close content gaps. This approach transforms content strategy from reactive to proactive, uncovering opportunities that would never emerge from manual research due to bandwidth constraints.

"AI won't take your job, but someone who understands how to use it will." This framing helped her team embrace AI for content operations, research, and analytics while maintaining human judgment for creativity and strategy. The same principle applies to STACK's product—AI accelerates estimating processes but doesn't replace the decade-long expertise estimators bring to complex construction projects.

The channels winning for STACK are those focused on education, trust-building, and community rather than traditional advertising. Content that feels like trusted advice or service—not sales pitches—earns credibility and long-term loyalty. Software users particularly value connecting with peers to share workarounds and hacks. Meanwhile, spray-and-pray tactics, generic webinars, mass emailing, and over-automation without human context continue to fail.

For marketing leaders, the primary job is getting obstacles out of the team's way so they can do their best work. This extends to being "selfish" about hiring and tooling—speaking up when you need better versions of either, because people and tools make a world of difference in what lean teams can accomplish. Efficiency comes from strategic resource allocation, not just working harder.

STACK's 2026 priorities center on driving efficiency in product delivery while maintaining authenticity in marketing execution. Construction customers are increasingly asked to do more with less amid labor shortages and market uncertainty. Meeting this customer need requires balancing AI and automation to scale execution while ensuring every touchpoint demonstrates genuine understanding of their world. Automation scales the work; authenticity scales the meaning.