Q&A with Udi Ledergor, Chief Marketing Officer at Gong

Standing out by being better than everyone else is hard to pull off. A different approach, which often works better, is choosing to zig when everyone else zags.

MEDIA 7: Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? What prompted/interested you to pursue a career in marketing?
UDI LEDERGOR: I used to be a Product Manager, bridging the gap between the company’s R&D team and its customers. Almost 5 years into the PM role, I came to the realization that I enjoyed the outbound marketing part of my role more than the product requirement-writing part of it. At that point, I decided to pursue a career in marketing and began my transition into a full-time marketing role.

M7: What strategies and tactics have you put in place or would you like to put in place to help drive revenue at Gong?
UL: Sales & Marketing alignment is key to Marketing making sales easier. At Gong, we have a well-oiled inbound and outbound marketing engine, which creates thousands of sales-qualified opportunities each quarter. Our top channels for engaging our audience of sales professionals include our LinkedIn page, our enthusiastic list of email subscribers, and our highly-engaged audience at our virtual events. To complement our digital channels, we supplement them with a good dose of out-of-home advertising, television (you did catch our Super Bowl commercial, right?), and other mediums not often used in B2B Marketing.

Sales Enablement is a key consideration when creating and training on new messaging, pricing & packaging, competitive intelligence, and case studies.

M7: Every marketer is chasing the golden combo of personalization and privacy. How do you strike a balance between both?
UL: Our marketing communications are always authentic, even when they are automated. We write as we speak – like humans. We share information we’d enjoy consuming ourselves. If it adds no value – we don’t send it. Our virtual events and social media strategy strike a healthy balance of education and entertainment, otherwise known as edutainment. This works because at the end of the day we’re all human beings. People buy from people they trust and like. There’s no such thing as a company buying from a company. There are always humans involved on both ends. Fostering those communications with trust and enjoyment is what pre-bakes future deals.

M7: What do you think is essential to stay competitive in a market that is going through constant digitalization?
UL: Obsess over your customers’ needs. Stay in close contact with your customers and monitor their changing needs. What worked 12 months ago might be outdated in today’s world. Needs constantly change so vendors must adapt. The moment you take your foot off the gas pedal and become complacent is the moment you start dying as a relevant, innovative company. Another complementary innovation source is keeping ahead of technological changes and trends, to figure out how they can benefit your customers when embedded in your product. But the main motivation to innovate should come from solving a real-world problem your customers are experiencing.

It is estimated that 70% of the buying research is done before your buyer reaches out to you for information and pricing. So it is Product Marketing’s job to get all of that information out there for buyers to find.

M7: What do you believe are the top three product marketing challenges in the post COVID-19 era?
UL: Product marketing is constantly challenged by balancing two streams of information: explaining what the product category does, for those newly introduced to the category and differentiating against the competition. This is important for those considering a specific solution in the market, who already know the basics of the category. You cannot ignore either of these audiences.

A second challenge is packaging and pricing your product in the way your customers want to consume it, even if it isn’t the company’s first choice for how they prefer to sell it.

The third challenge is getting all the information your buyer needs out into the public domain, easily discoverable by your buyers before they even reach your website. It is estimated that 70% of the buying research is done before your buyer reaches out to you for information and pricing. So it is Product Marketing’s job to get all of that information out there for buyers to find, especially in a post-COVID world, where buyers are less likely to meet with your sellers in person or even virtually.

M7: How do you ensure that your sales team understands and presents your products in an engaging manner?
UL: Sales Enablement is a key consideration when creating and training on new messaging, pricing & packaging, competitive intelligence, and case studies. Materials need to be as self-explanatory as possible, always updated in a single, easy-to-locate system, and training needs to be frequent to address new hires on the Sales team, as well as refresher training sessions for the entire team.

M7: What is your marketing mantra to stand out in an overly saturated MarTech space?
UL: Different is better than better. What that means is that standing out by being better than everyone else is hard to pull off. A different approach, which often works better, is choosing to zig when everyone else zags. If you’re doing something different from everyone else, you’re already winning in that space. That gets noticed. We also pay special attention to sincere communications, which never sound like an impersonal corporation but always like a helpful friend you’d go to if you had a question. I believe this is the future of all B2B marketing.