Ahrefs Podcast Gong's Billion-Dollar Bet Against Best Practices | Udi Ledergor (Gong)
May 12, 2026
Udi Ledergor, former CMO turned Chief Evangelist at Gong and author of Courageous Marketing, shares how data-driven, provocative content and creative stunts fueled explosive growth. He explains why ignoring best practices helped Gong stand out. He reveals clever distribution tactics, how proprietary call data became viral material, when to spend big, and how to use AI to weed out clichés.
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Show Up Where Your Audience Already Is
- Focus on where your audience already congregates instead of over-investing in an empty website.
- Gong found sales leaders on LinkedIn early, optimized content there, and repurposed for other channels to build awareness from nearly zero customers.
Use Persuasion Classics To Engineer Creativity
- Use persuasion and sharing principles as a blueprint for creative marketing.
- Read Cialdini and Made to Stick to design content that leverages reciprocity, authority, likability, and share triggers that make people look smart or insider-worthy.
Gong Labs Viral Data Story About Swearing
- Gong mined customer call data (20k+ calls) into Gong Labs to publish contrarian findings.
- The 2021 study showing swearing on sales calls correlated with up to 8% higher win rates went viral and earned massive media coverage at near-zero cost.
