How to Standout in B2B with Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist at Gong

26 snips

Dec 18, 2025

In this conversation with Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist and author of Courageous Marketing, he explores why B2B marketing often plays it safe and how embracing courage can create standout brands. Udi shares his journey from marketing novice to a leading figure at Gong, detailing how they achieved product-market fit and early branding success. He emphasizes prioritizing brand personality over visuals and offers insights on using high-cost media effectively. Udi also discusses the importance of measurement, psychological safety, and the future role of AI in marketing.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Playing Safe Is The Riskiest Strategy

Playing safe in B2B marketing guarantees mediocrity and prevents breakthrough attention.
Courageous, differentiated choices (tone, color, personality) create shareable distinction and recall.

ADVICE

Start With Brand Personality First

Define brand personality (authoritative + playful) before visuals to ensure congruent tone and design.
Choose fonts, colors, and voice that reflect that personality rather than copying industry norms.

ADVICE

Punch Above Your Weight With Strategic Buys

Buy the smallest version of a big-medium (billboard, TV, Wall Street Journal) to create perceived scale on a budget.
Photograph it well and amplify across owned channels and employee networks for exponential reach.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

#313 | In this episode, Udi Ledergor joins Dave to break down the ideas behind his new book, Courageous Marketing, and why most B2B marketing fails because it plays it safe. He also shares his journey from marketer #1 to CMO to Chief Evangelist at Gong, where he led category creation, brand, and marketing through massive scale. They unpack how Gong built a brand that actually stood out, what it means to punch above your weight as a B2B marketer, and how to think about brand ROI without fake dashboards.

Timestamps

(00:00) - – Meet Udi and his path into marketing
(08:16) - – Early career lessons and building marketing from zero
(15:16) - – How Gong found product-market fit and nailed positioning early
(19:26) - – Courageous Marketing: why Udi wrote it and what it really means
(23:16) - – Brand first: personality, positioning, then visuals
(28:20) - – Campaigns that punched above their weight (billboards, experiments, perception hacks)
(35:10) - – Proving brand impact: soft ROI, pipeline, and exec buy-in
(47:40) - – The future: product-led marketing, AI, and courageous teams

Join 50,0000 people who get our Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Today's episode is brought to you by Knak.

Email (in my humble opinion) is the still the greatest marketing channel of all-time.

It’s the only way you can truly “own” your audience.

But when it comes to building the emails - if you’ve ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know how painful it can be. Templates are too rigid, editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever.

That’s why we love Knak here at Exit Five. Knak a no-code email platform that makes it easy to create on-brand, high-performing emails - without the bottlenecks.

Frustrated by clunky email builders? You need Knak.
Tired of ‘hoping’ the email you sent looks good across all devices? Just test in Knak first.
Big team making it hard to collaborate and get approvals? Definitely Knak.

And the best part? Everything takes a fraction of the time.

See Knak in action at knak.com/exit-five. Or just let them know you heard about Knak on Exit Five.

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more