Hacking Platform Mechanics for Engagement

Udi Ledergor is the Chief Evangelist at Gong and is firmly amongst the upper echelon of the, as yet to be founded, B2B marketing leader hall of fame, having led outstanding teams as both a Vice President of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer at five B2B SaaS companies for over two decades. Alongside steadfast co-hosts Craig Rosenberg and Matt Amundson, Udi shares how he has crafted one of the top SaaS brands without losing its exceedingly human touch, how Gong thinks about the content they create as part of their marketing strategy, and to use AI to raise your bar for creative thinking by filtering out the obvious crap.

Plus, Udi unpacks the three critical marketing leadership lessons he learned the hard way when a mistake in an email marketing campaign almost spiraled into a massive issue for one of the premier B2B SaaS brands in Silicon Valley today.   

Also, Craig admits to claims he confused someone on a call, Matt waxes poetic about a B2B SaaS company he doesn’t work for, and Producer Sam revels in an ever-elusive mention of the show notes. 

Critical Takeaways

• When a marketing mistake goes public, marketing leaders need to act decisively within hours, not days, and own it personally. A swift action paired with a personal response can de-escalate most complicated situations and help to quell even irate customers. By quickly taking personal accountability for the issue, you can turn a brand crisis into a trust-building moment.
• Teams should treat complaints as a signal, not the sample size. If a dozen people took the time to complain, many more probably felt the same way and stayed quiet. That is a strong operating principle for brand, product, and customer comms teams: they should respond to the unseen audience, not just the visible inbox.
• A key to building Gong’s human-feeling brand was deliberately connecting "trusted thought leader" with "relaxed, friendly person who wants to help you out" during an early brand workshop. Most B2B brands default to authoritative-plus-stuffy; product marketers and brand teams should explicitly codify an approachable, human counterweight in their brand guidelines.
• Use AI suggestions to find and filter out the obvious crap that everyone else would do in their marketing strategy. LLMs are a synthesis of (pretty much) everything on the internet, which means they’re great at telling you about what’s already out there. The next time you’re coming up with ideas for a marketing campaign, ask your LLM of choice for its recommendations and use those as a guide for what not to do.
• Rather than going fully with either gated or ungated content, using them in tandem can increase visibility and conversions. When sharing ungated content publicly, link to relevant gated assets and resources from within the ungated piece of content. This way, you get the visibility benefits of ungated content while getting your gated assets in front of a larger target audience.

Chapters

00:00 - Episode Preview

00:56 - Craig Flounders While Filibustering to Find an Excuse For His Profile Photo Fiasco

03:16 - Introducing Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist at Gong

05:46 - 3 Critical Marketing Lessons Learned from an Email Campaign that Almost Ruined a Massive B2B SaaS Brand

17:02 - How Gong Intentionally Built an Authentic, Sincere, & Human Brand for A B2B SaaS Startup

22:06 - Reimagining B2B Marketing Events To Optimize for Guest Experience

28:48 - Using AI as a Quality Filter for Marketing Ideas

33:36 - The Two Ways to Use AI in Your Work

35:19 - Where Gong Lands in the Gated-versus-Ungated Content Debate

45:26 - The Basics of Email Marketing That Still Work in B2B

47:45 - The Bait & Switch Twitter Play for Boosting Web Traffic For Startups

51:31 - How Gong Develops its Content Marketing and Distribution Strategy Together

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Epic Quotes

• “We're sometimes over-reliant on all this automation crap. We like that it saves our team work, but we don't realize what we're giving up in return.” - Udi Ledergor
• “The worst thing that can happen to you is not that some people hate what you're doing. The worst thing that can happen to you is indifference.” -  Udi Ledergor

Connect with Udi

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/udiledergor/ 
• Gong’s Website: https://www.gong.io/ 
• Udi’s Book: https://a.co/d/0Cix9Ll 
• Udi’s Website: https://www.udiledergor.com/ 

Shoutouts

• Ruby James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubyjameslinkedin/ 
• Chris Orlob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisorlob/ 
• Chris’ Episode: https://open.substack.com/pub/thetransaction/p/solving-the-go-to-market-skills-crisis
• Maria Pergolino: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariapergolino/ 
• Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/ 
• Jon’s Episode: https://open.substack.com/pub/thetransaction/p/building-trust-and-reputation-in
• Brent Adamson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentadamson/ 
• Brent’s Episode: https://open.substack.com/pub/thetransaction/p/rebuilding-b2b-customers-confidence
• Kyle Lacy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylelacy/ 
• Top Swear Words - Gong: https://www.gong.io/blog/how-cursing-impacts-sales 
• Alec Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecjpaul/ 
• Alec’s Episode: https://open.substack.com/pub/thetransaction/p/becoming-a-linkedin-master-with-alec 
• Danny Hutto: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyhutto/ 

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