{"id":4317,"date":"2025-06-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nurseagence.com\/?p=4317"},"modified":"2025-06-14T11:55:54","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T11:55:54","slug":"how-i-applied-the-95-5-rule-to-build-gongs-brand-from-the-ground-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nurseagence.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/02\/how-i-applied-the-95-5-rule-to-build-gongs-brand-from-the-ground-up\/","title":{"rendered":"How I applied the 95-5 rule to build Gong\u2019s brand from the ground up"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I stepped into my role as head of content at Gong, I didn’t come with a decade of marketing experience. I came with a sales background and a whole lot of time spent chasing leads. That experience turned out to be my unfair advantage.<\/p>\n

Here\u2018s what I knew from the trenches: Most people aren\u2019t ready to buy when you reach out. Most of them don\u2018t care about your product, at least, not yet. They\u2019re not waking up hoping for another cold email or wondering if they should check out one more demo page. They’re busy doing their jobs.<\/p>\n

That mental model led me to a question that changed everything. What if we could earn attention before someone was in-market? What if, instead of trying to \u201ccapture demand,\u201d we could <\/strong>create<\/em><\/strong> it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s what we set out to do at Gong. And, we did it by flipping the typical SaaS playbook on its head.<\/p>\n

\"Download<\/a><\/p>\n

What is the 95-5 rule?<\/h2>\n

The 95-5 Rule,<\/a> popularized by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute<\/a>, came out a few years later and instantly validated everything we\u2019d been doing.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what it says: At any given time, only 5% of your total addressable market is actively buying. The other 95% isn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, most marketing teams invest heavily in bottom-funnel, high-intent tactics targeting just that 5%. This approach is shortsighted and easily exhausted.<\/p>\n

When I joined Gong, we took a completely different path. For the first year, we were top-of-funnel focused. So, my team had one hard rule: No talking about our product.<\/strong> None. Zero. We wouldn’t write about Gong, push features, or create comparison posts. We would leave that to product marketing.<\/p>\n

Instead, our mission was to produce the most engaging sales content on the planet. We focused entirely on our audience and their problems, positioning ourselves as peers rather than vendors.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re only marketing to buyers when they\u2019re ready to buy, you\u2019re too late. The real opportunity is to win mindshare with the 95% who aren\u2019t ready yet.<\/p>\n

What Gong Did to Make the Most of the 95-5 Rule<\/h2>\n

So, how do you actually implement this strategy? Here are some practical approaches we used at Gong that are still relevant and effective today.<\/p>\n

We got obsessed with knowing our audience.<\/h3>\n

We made a conscious decision to understand our audience better than anyone else in our category. Not just who they were on paper \u2014 job titles, company size, vertical \u2014 but how they thought, what they struggled with, and what kept them up at night.<\/p>\n

At Gong, our audience was sales reps and sales leaders. And no surprise, their primary focus was hitting quota. So, we started with that goal and worked backward. We mapped the entire journey to that goal, identifying all the barriers along the way:<\/p>\n