Latest / GTM Made Simple / Brand Drives Demand. Clay Just Proved It With 6 Million Impressions.

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Brand Drives Demand. Clay Just Proved It With 6 Million Impressions. · GTM Made Simple

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  Sangram here. Did you know that play generated an AI company 6 million
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  impressions in just last three months? And if you look at that, it all came from the
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  executive content. And today I want to jump in and share with you why that is so amazing and why
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  you should be able to do this literally with your own business day in and day out, especially if
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  you're in B2B, because most executives struggle with creating content. They struggle with creating
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  pipeline and demand. But let me tell you, brand drives demand. And today I'm going to jump into
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  this idea of how you create a brand that will help you solve the demand problem that you have
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  in the business. And here is the big challenge that everyone faces, almost 70 to 80% of the
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  budget that most CEOs have for go to market is going towards demand. And here is Clay, an
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  incredible AI company that you all probably follow right now, today. And wondering like, wait a
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  minute, there a big company, there is a lot of money. But even before they raise a lot of money.
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  What they did was they created a brand that was worth raising money. They created a brand where
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  people were able to spend so much time and energy on that. They started to become the darling of the
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  B2B space, especially in 2026 right now. So I'm going to just walk you through a very simple
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  framework of how you think about it. But first, let me just share with you why I think I know a thing
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  or two about how they did it and what we have done in the past. So if you don't know me, I'm
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  saying I've read marketing a lot, got acquired by Exacttarget and Salesforce for $2.7 billion, and
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  then build a company called terminus with Do co-founders. We went from a million in the first
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  year to 5 to 15 in the third year, helped build an ABM category around this idea of flip on funnel.
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  So when I look at something like this, I'm thinking, whoa, this is this is very similar. But I
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  did that ten years ago and this company is doing 2026. So I'm gonna have lessons that come from
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  Clay that you can see right now. Also from what I've built over ten years ago. So let's dive in. So
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  I'm looking at a post that Bruno, who's the head of marketing at Clay, actually did. And in this one,
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  he's talking about this idea of 6 million LinkedIn impressions from executive content in
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  the past just three months. And the problem they were trying to solve was like, hey, look, the
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  majority of the people they're trying to sell to are on LinkedIn. How do I create more on LinkedIn
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  as opposed to just running ads on it? And instead of just saying, well, let's run ads on it, which is
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  what most people do, which is why your budget is so high in your cost of acquisition, so high. They
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  said, how can we change this? They already had a couple of people that are writing content from an
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  executive team, especially Vernon, their co-founder, um, out there. But what's interesting about that is
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  when you look at all the things they did, they're really trying to build a new category. They're
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  trying to create this new role called the GTM engineer. So if I go back and look at what we did
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  at terminus was we said we wanted to build a new category called ABM. And as part of building a new
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  category, we wanted to figure out how do we get people moving in that direction again. Brand
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  drives demand. So what we started to do was saying, if you want to, we want to create this category. We
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  want to help people change their perception. So we had them the dimension people, the dimension role.
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  We started to have them change that and say, well, instead of dimension one on one, why don't you
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  role becomes ABM account is marketing. And as a result of that, we also created Flip a funnel, a
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  podcast around it. We did a daily podcast, a thousand episodes. I don't think there's a single
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  podcast in the world, in the B2B space that had a thousand episodes. We did that. You can still go
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  check it out. And then we went and said, well, if you have, you can do that. We wrote books on it. We
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  created this whole category around this idea and the role of ABM. So lesson number one, you have to
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  figure out what category you play in for play. They figured out that they need to they need to
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  spend way more time on this new role they launched. They literally locked in on this go to
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  market engineer as a role. They even hire somebody called a go to market engineer, just very much
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  like we did at terminus. Uh, we hired somebody with an ABM title because we want to we want to show
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  that this actually works. You have to practice it. So so that did that. And then I at terminus became
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  a went from a co-founder CMO to a co-founder chief evangelist, which is literally what Warren
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  is doing right now for Clay. He's becoming the evangelist speaking all these events. He's talking
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  about what's happening in the organization right now in the marketplace right now. It's a walking,
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  talking billboard of what's happening with AI and go to market engineer and doing roadshows and all
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  of those things. That's how you build brand. That's 6 million impressions that they got are their
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  story. And and when you create more brand demand counts, Clay has the highest amount of
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  demand that's getting generated for them because everybody wants to be part of that story. So this
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  is part of our go to market operating system. The third pillar of it is called brand and demand. We
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  combine brand and demand because most organizations really focus on demand as a way to
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  go to market. But in reality, if you really start thinking about it, go to market is more than
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  demand. It's actually brand companies that have great brand create demand at a fraction of the
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  cost. For example, if you got a call from somebody, let's say Salesforce, you're going to you're not
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  going to ask for Salesforce. Does they already have built a brand. So the cost of acquisition, if
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  you are the right ICP, there's been a lot lower. That's what they figured out. That's what we did.
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  That terminus when somebody called somebody for a firm terminus. Vanadium companies. If you're in B2B,
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  you knew what that meant. And the sales conversation is going to be a lot, a lot easier. So
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  brand actually drives demand. It's a brand. It's not brand or demand. It is brand and demand.
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  And that is the big distinction that everybody needs to sell. So going back to Clay, they had $6
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  million LinkedIn impressions. The bigger story is not that they got 6 million LinkedIn impressions,
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  which you can do and everybody can can put up there. But the bigger story is that with that they
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  created the highest pipeline. They became the company that everybody wants to follow along,
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  because go to market is now becoming the way the business works. And Clay has tapped into this new
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  role called guru market engineer. So why this is important, how you can look into it? Well, I just
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  shared how we did that. Thomas ten years ago created a role called ABM, had a category called
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  call called ABM and role was ABM manager or ABM director or VP of Campus
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  Marketing. So that solidified a career path for somebody coming out of the mansion. Similarly, Clay
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  has done something called go to market engineer, a career path for something that didn't exist
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  because of AI. For your category right now, you need to think about do you have a category or you
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  really create one? And that's where a brand driving demand conversation comes up. Do you have
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  a role or you don't create one? That's where ABM go to market engineer. So is there a different
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  role that you can champion and talk about it and actually practice it. That will drive it. No matter
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  where you are, it really matters what stage of the business you are in. In order to be able to do
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  that and the commitment that the founder level you have. So if you want impressions, don't go off.
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  It's not about impressions. Don't look at this story as like, well, let me get. Figure out how to
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  create my impressions. It's how do you drive demand? Clay has generated a tremendous amount of
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  pipeline and revenue there. They are a $100 million plus company now starting to grow
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  massively with all the different demand that they've created because of the way they have
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  generated their they have done their brain work. So if you want to create great demand, focus on
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  brand. That's the third pillar. So if you want to go around, that assessment will help you go
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  through that process of problem product platform. How do you create brand to demand. And you'll get
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  all ideas that that will help you figure out how your business can move from not just creating a
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  ton of demand, but creating brand that drives demand. So with that, let's get moving.