B2B Doesn't Have to Be Boring with Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist at Gong
Apr 14, 2025
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Udi Ledergor, the Chief Evangelist at Gong, is a marketing mastermind who turned Gong into a powerhouse brand. In this engaging discussion, he reveals how courage in B2B marketing can ignite creativity and drive success. Udi shares practical lessons from scaling Gong to over $100 million in revenue, insights from his book 'Courageous Marketing,' and why a clear brand personality is essential. He also highlights the significance of innovative campaigns, like Times Square billboards, and how to measure brand impact effectively.
Udi Ledergor emphasizes the necessity of courageous marketing to break from mediocrity and drive creative risks for unique brand offerings.
The podcast highlights how Gong's marketing success stemmed from understanding customer needs and leveraging data-driven insights for exponential revenue growth.
Embracing AI in marketing operations allows teams to automate repetitive tasks and focus on strategic initiatives, improving overall productivity and alignment with business objectives.
Deep dives
Impact of Communication Overload on Marketers
Many marketing teams are burdened by excessive communication, spending an average of 28 hours a week on managing emails and messages instead of actual marketing tasks. This excessive focus on communication often leads to burnout and frustration, resulting in performative productivity that fails to achieve meaningful goals. By leveraging AI technology, marketing teams can reduce time spent on communication, thus freeing up resources for strategic planning and creative work. AI is showing promise in transforming the marketing landscape by automating repetitive tasks and enhancing productivity.
The Role of AI in Modern Marketing
AI is reshaping marketing operations by facilitating automation in content research, reporting, and workflow management, which allows teams to focus on higher-value activities. According to a report, leading marketing teams utilizing AI have experienced significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. This shift enables marketers to reclaim time traditionally lost to administrative chores, empowering them to engage in more innovative and strategic initiatives. Ultimately, embracing AI can lead to better alignment of marketing efforts with business objectives.
Lessons from Successful Campaigns at Gong
The experience of a notable marketing leader at Gong sheds light on the journey from marketing novice to a key player in a successful firm, emphasizing the significance of adaptability. By consistently focusing on the core values of their brand and leveraging data-driven insights, the marketing team was able to redefine revenue intelligence and grow the company exponentially. This transformation illustrates how a clear understanding of customer needs and effective execution can lead to substantial revenue growth. The lessons learned from such campaigns can serve as guiding principles for other marketers seeking to innovate within their own organizations.
Courageous Marketing as a Strategy
Courageous marketing involves breaking away from mediocrity and taking creative risks that lead to unique brand offerings. Emphasizing the importance of psychological safety within teams, successful marketers encourage experimentation, enabling team members to explore bold ideas without fear of failure. Companies that promote courageous marketing find that it cultivates a culture of innovation, where employees are motivated to deliver outstanding results aligned with the brand's vision. In a landscape crowded with conventional approaches, daring to stand out can establish a significant competitive advantage.
Measuring the Impact of Holistic Marketing Strategies
Understanding the effectiveness of diverse marketing initiatives requires a multi-faceted approach to measurement. Establishing a budget for marketing experiments can help validate courageous ideas and assess their impact on overall business outcomes. Soft ROI measures, such as employee engagement and customer feedback, provide valuable insights that help marketers gauge the broader effects of their strategies beyond just immediate financial metrics. By utilizing analytics tools, marketers can also trace customer interactions with campaigns, reinforcing the notion that cohesive marketing strategies contribute to long-term success.
#237: Strategy | Udi Ledergor (former CMO, now Chief Evangelist at Gong) helped turn Gong into one of B2B’s most iconic brands—and now he’s sharing how they scaled it to a multi-billion dollar valuation. In this episode, Dave sits down with Udi to unpack lessons from building Gong’s category, brand, and marketing engine (and why B2B marketing needs way more courage).
You’ll learn:
Lessons from building Gong from 0 to $100M in revenue
How to make B2B marketing not boring
How to measure and justify brand investments in marketing
Why you need to be more courageous with your marketing
Udi also shares stories from his new book Courageous Marketing, featuring specific plays and strategies any B2B marketer can steal.
Timestamps
(00:00) - – Intro to Udi
(07:11) - – Early career lessons and building a marketing role from scratch
(10:11) - – How Gong achieved early product-market fit
(14:11) - – The importance of picking the right company and founder
(16:11) - – Why Gong’s focus, clarity, and positioning stood out from day one
(18:21) - – Why Udi wrote Courageous Marketing and what it’s about
(19:11) - – What “courageous marketing” actually means
(22:11) - – Defining brand personality before visual identity
(25:59) - – Campaign breakdown: Times Square billboards, employee spotlights, and perception hacks
(29:19) - – The “punching above your weight” formula for early-stage brands
(32:49) - – How to measure soft ROI and prove brand impact
(36:19) - – Super Bowl ad, Michael Lewis podcast, and tying brand to pipeline
(41:04) - – How to budget for experiments and get CFO/CEO buy-in
(42:19) - – Building a courageous team: culture, process, and psychological safety
(45:19) - – Gong Labs: Turning product data into content with staying power
(48:19) - – Product + marketing alignment: the real unlock
(49:49) - – Where AI fits in the future of courageous marketing
(52:09) - – Udi’s book Courageous Marketing (and why you should go read it)
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