Put brand first to make demand cheaper

TL;DR

• Win the day-one list: Most buyers start with one brand in mind. Getting on that first list is the highest leverage marketing you can do. 

• Use AI where research was slow: Synthetic audiences, call-transcript mining, and AEO lift speed, quality, and scale without sacrificing creativity. 

• Make brand fuel demand: Brand exposure before demand ads increased conversion and reduced cost in controlled tests. 

• Align sales, partners, SDR, and marketing: Weekly pipe-gen days, shared account lists, and multi-source touches correlate with bigger deals and faster cycles.

Buyers do more research, involve more stakeholders, and rely on AI to sort options long before they talk to you. The brands that win are distinct early, consistent everywhere, and integrated when it counts.

Build research superpowers with AI, then keep humans in the loop

Create synthetic audiences to test messaging, positioning, and pain points. Bryan uses Evidenza to generate buyer panels with role, company size, and region filters, then pressure-tests pillars against competitors. Results were accurate enough to overturn internal assumptions and even replace a traditional framework. 

Mine conversations to scale what works. Pull call transcripts into a central repository, map objections and successful talk tracks, and turn them into ads, email prompts, and enablement. The team also auto-surfaces praise as quotable proof and G2 review opportunities. 

Coalesce expert content, do not genericize it. AI drafts outlines by stitching labs research and PMM pieces into long-form assets and report structures. It also prototypes visual directions that creative refines. The point is breadth plus a human edge. 

Design for AEO, not just SEO. SentinelOne leans into answer-engine optimization by creating content that directly answers questions and shows up where LLMs and buyers look, then measures organic growth from that motion. 

Make brand do the heavy lifting for demand

Most decisions start before performance ads load. Research Bryan cites shows buyers bring a day-one list, often just one brand, and 90 percent buy from that short list. Your job is to be there first. 

Brand exposure lowers acquisition cost. In a controlled test, audiences who saw a brand video before demand ads converted materially higher, enough to reduce overall cost per conversion. Brand is not separate from performance. It makes performance cheaper. 

Be consistently distinctive. Choose distinctive brand assets and keep them stable across channels so recall builds. Consistency across events, social, site, ads, and seller collateral compounds. 

Stop over-personalizing, align the collective brain

The goal inside an account is a shared understanding of your brand and value, not dozens of conflicting micro messages. Broader audience targeting with consistent messaging often beats expensive hyper-personalization, both on cost and coherence. 

Run an integrated pipe engine every week

Do a weekly pipe-gen day. Marketing, SDRs, sales, and partners identify target accounts, unify intent and fit signals, assign coordinated plays, and hold each other accountable for conversion. AI ranks accounts by likelihood so effort goes where ACV potential is highest. 

Measure source overlap, not silos. Deals touched by two sources get larger and close faster. Three sources perform even better. Plan touches across functions on purpose. 

Treat inbound as intent for outbound. Use inbound actions, intent data, renewals, adjacent product footprints, and public signals to trigger coordinated outreach. Think air cover, then close ranks. 

Build the modern team and stack around data, AI fluency, and testing

Team principles.

• Central, usable data platform that unifies company, behavioral, and content signals.

• AI-fluent operators who test, learn, and iterate quickly.

• An integrated marketing function that protects distinctiveness across channels. 

Representative stack callouts.

• Research and AEO: Evidenza, GrowthX, Profound.

• Data and targeting: Demandbase, 6sense, ZoomInfo, HG Insights, G2.

• Activation and ops: Marketo, Outreach or Salesloft, website testing and predictive personalization.

• Scoring: models that prioritize accounts and leads by expected ACV, not vanity volume. 

How to buy tools in a noisy market. Peer referrals from an operator community, a time-boxed paid trial with fast onboarding, and clear success criteria cut through noise. That is how GrowthX entered the stack. 

Final word

Win the day-one list with distinctive brand. Use AI to speed research and scale insights. Integrate sales, partners, SDRs, and marketing into weekly pipeline rituals. Keep messages consistent so the collective brain inside accounts says yes faster. That is how brand makes demand cheaper. 

About the CMO

Bryan Law is Chief Marketing Officer at SentinelOne, where he leads a global team at the intersection of brand, data, and growth. He previously served as CMO at ZoomInfo, overseeing a 140-person organization that sourced hundreds of millions in new ACV and launched major platforms, and as GM and SVP of marketing at Salesforce’s Tableau, where he scaled eCommerce, demand, and analytics. Earlier roles include VP of data and analytics at H-E-B, VP of marketing at Rackspace, global business strategy at Google, and strategy consulting at Monitor Deloitte. Bryan also serves on the Meltwater board and the G2 Executive Advisory Board, and co-founded the CMO Collaborative. 

About the series

This is from Breakout Sessions, where marketing leaders unpack how AI is changing GTM and the way buyers buy.