There’s the list of all the demand generation strategies you could run. And then there’s the list of the programs industry leaders would stake their reputation on. In this article, I’ll share some of the latter. We asked four CMOs, “What are your most reliable demand programs?”

What follow are four of my favorite answers.

The following excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity. For more marketing insight, subscribe to the Demand Gen Visionaries Podcast.

Anthony Kennada: The best demand tailwind is an emotive brand

Anthony Kennada has been CMO at companies like Hopin, Gainsight, and Front. Look at those companies and you’ll notice all three have a strong, cohesive, recognizable brand. That’s no accident. 

“You have to take brand seriously,” says Anthony. “If you can build an emotive brand, it’s the statement for why an audience should pay attention to your company. It’s what you stand for, what change you want to see in the world, and what they can expect.”

As Anthony explains, if you don’t have a clear and cohesive brand, demand generation strategy takes more work. Instead of five touches to get someone’s attention, perhaps you need 7-10. Across your organization, each deal requires exponentially more effort.

“Brand is a springboard from which to leverage your many marketing channels to convict that market—who already knows you—to act,” he says. “That’s the biggest demand gen tailwind you could possibly come up with.” 

Watch to Anthony’s full talk.

Jon Miller: Create content as your foundation

You may recognize Jon Miller as the founder of both Marketo and Engagio. But what you might not know was that Marketo was his first CMO role. And that despite that newness, he used that platform to change how nearly all B2B marketers think about delivering the right messages to the right audiences.

Today, as CMO at Demandbase, he still advocates what he’s always advocated: Targeted messages and high-value content. 

“I’ve always been an advocate of content as the foundation to everything go-to-market,” says Jon. “It’s just so crucial for establishing your brand as an expert and thought leader. It’ll always be my go-to. Ungated, and under the right conditions, gated.” 

Demandbase markets to many personas across many verticals, which Jon says makes branding difficult, but demand generation strategy easy. If you have the right orchestration, you can reach each group with targeted campaigns. And if you can bring people back to a property full of your own content, that can feed your targeted advertising.

“We’ve been investing a ton in the content section of our website. We launched a whole new resource center and a few weeks before that, Demandbase Television, or DBTV, which at the time, was the first streaming B2B website,” says Jon. “The value of this is that we can use our own technology to personalize the experience and use Qualified to personalize the conversations based on where visitors are in that journey.” 

See Jon Miller’s full interview.

Joy Corso: Paid search, social, and display are uncuttable

Vonage has 100,000 business customers worldwide, ranging from two-person shops on up to enterprises. That’s why CMO Joy Corso cautions anyone from placing too much confidence in demand generation strategy advice. She and her team don’t have just one demand generation strategy—they have one for every buying group. “If I could explain it all in just 30 minutes, that’d be a luxury,” she said, laughing. 

For Joy, paid search is the most reliable way to place Vonage in front of people who are searching for problems they solve.

“The world is searching. People are constantly searching. That’s why paid search is enormously important, especially for our API business,” said Joy. “Paid social is also up there. We did a study last year about how customers prefer to interact. People still love phone, and video is a fast follower, but social media is absolutely on the rise, particularly since 2020. For our API business, which is a complicated product, we have developers looking for a video API to solve a particular use case, IT people looking to solve other problems, and more. Search and social are where they converge, and we could never cut that.”

Tune into Joy’s full interview.

Sydney Sloan: Use webinars and events to showcase your innovation

Sydney is Head of Product & Industry Marketing at Zoom, and formerly CMO at SalesLoft, where she got to lead an organization whose product bridges the sales and marketing gap. Her perspective is that of a marketing leader who understands sales well enough to know that brand stories alone won’t win deals, and that some of your best communication and lead generation comes from webinars. That's why she places high value on adding webinars to her demand generation strategy.

“We still see people sending so much vanilla email, even when we all know that multiple touches over multiple channels increase your chance of connecting 4.7x,” says Sydney. For that reason, you can’t just email prospects and customers about your product innovations. You have to bring them together in real-time to show them. 

“Our webinar program—and I put our summits into that—is great for customers and prospects,” says Sydney. “The ROI is huge, and it gives you a venue to communicate all your capabilities. When we see customers engaging in that program, their likelihood to renew is higher, and their growth is higher. And prospects get a pre-sales peek.”

Listen to Sydney’s full interview.