Transform 2021

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July 12-16

Enterprise sales enablement platform Gong.io today raised $250 million in a series E funding round valuing the company at $7.25 billion, more than triple its previous valuation ($2.2 billion). CEO and cofounder Amit Bendov says the new capital, which brings Gong’s total raised to $584 million, will be put toward product development, hiring, and customer acquisition.

Forty-six percent of business-to-business (B2B) sales reps list lead quantity and quality as their top challenge. That’s perhaps why Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of B2B sales organizations will transition from experience- and intuition-based selling to data-driven selling, merging their sales process, sales applications, sales data, and sales analytics into a single operational practice. The stakes are high, given that suboptimal and delayed leads can have catastrophic effects. Harvard Business Review found that there’s a 10 times drop in lead qualification when reps wait longer than 5 minutes to respond and a 400% decrease when they respond within 10 minutes versus 5 minutes.

Gong’s solution is designed to uncover patterns in sales data, leading to insights that ostensibly help increase sales, reduce churn, and increase market share. It captures customer interactions over the phone, video, email, and face-to-face and integrates this with customer relationship management data, mining messaging for potentially relevant topics of conversation and info on the competition. Using Gong, reps and managers can audit the data analytics pipeline, customizing departmental dashboards for heightened confidence in forecasts that support other teams’ productivity.

Above: Gong.io’s sales analytics dashboard.

Image Credit: Gong.io

Gong reveals how sales reps are performing on an individual basis, including the sorts of questions they ask, how they discuss pricing, and their “talk-to-listen” ratio. It juxtaposes this against the rest of the company’s (and industry’s) benchmarks and provides personalized recommendations, while at the same time capturing and indexing every word from conversations to make them easier to find. Users, who the platform automatically sets up with the right data permissions, can program alerts for any time a particular keyword comes up in deals.

Gong offers out-of-the-box integration with all office suites and video call systems and with most cloud telephony systems, as well as an extensible API that allows it to be used with any on-premises or legacy system. The process starts with a G Suite or Outlook 365 calendar integration that scans sales reps’ calendars for upcoming sales meetings, calls, or demos. A bot joins each scheduled call as a virtual meeting attendee to record the session’s audio and video, which it encrypts and uploads to Amazon Web Services servers. Each call is transcribed from speech to text automatically (with 85% to 90% accuracy), and once a call is finished, Gong employs machine learning to perform analysis at the individual and aggregate level.

“Gong uses more than 20 different models that span speech, natural language understanding, prediction, and success analysis. Data is trained across half a billion customer interactions, including emails and calls,” Bendov told VentureBeat via email. “The most popular use cases for Gong include onboarding, coaching, deal execution, and measuring strategic initiatives. Our customers are very innovative and frequently discovering new ways to use Gong which inspire and motivate us every day.”

Continued growth

“The pandemic has increased the demand for Gong’s technology. As remote and hybrid work continues to increase for organizations across the globe, Gong’s platform can help revenue teams make collaborative decisions based on data, not opinions, even among distributed teams. Although the pandemic is waning, remote work is here to stay,” Bendov said. “A lot of companies have implemented hybrid work models and many folks left large business hubs like San Francisco and New York for more affordable regions. We’ve learned it’s no longer necessary to be in-person to close million-dollar sales deals, and the traditional sales tactics are no longer reliable.”

According to Bendov, Gong has over 84,000 paid users and upwards of 2,000 customers, up from 1,300 in August 2020. Annual recurring revenue increased 2.3 times between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, and the company’s global workforce grew to over 550 people.

“With this round of funding, Gong will be able to accelerate product development and innovation as the demand for our revenue intelligence platform continues to escalate,” Bendov continued. “As Gong has grown tremendously over the last year, this will allow us to continue providing top-of-the-line capabilities to our customer base to enhance their success.”

Franklin Templeton led Palo Alto, California-based Gong’s latest tranche, with participation from existing investors Coatue, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia, Thrive Capital, and Tiger Global. Since its last round, Gong acquired Vayo, an Israel-based startup specializing in data analytics for sales teams, and launched a sales coaching solution for remote work as well as integrations with Microsoft 365 Dynamics, Zoom, and Slack.

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This article is part of a Gaming Insights series paid for by Facebook.

When it comes to games app advertising, the key to continued growth is user acquisition and audience expansion. But with such a vast and diverse audience, it can be tricky to know where to begin. Many games advertisers also face the challenge of finding new players among an already over-saturated market. Similarly, creative approaches might not be varied enough to motivate someone to download your game, while changes and disruptions within the advertising landscape can make personalization more difficult.

The answer? It’s time to tap into gamer motivations.

Over the past few years, many gaming companies have been targeting their advertising campaigns to the same group of audiences. It ends up slowing down their growth, as everybody is trying to grab this rather small group of gamers, so it gets harder to convert them. Expanding beyond this overfished pond becomes critical to gaming companies.

Your pool of players is changing

Gaming has become a mainstream culture, with more and more people playing. According to research, 86% of internet users now play mobile games, and 80% of self-described “non-gamers” actually play games on their phones. This signals a much larger pool of potential players that gaming companies can tap into.

Source: GlobalWebIndex Q3 2018 Base: 113,392 Internet Users Aged 16-64 

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic drew millions more to gaming. We’ve seen an influx of new mobile gamers around the world as well as reengaged lapsed players, with many of them embracing gaming as a new outlet for much-needed connection and entertainment in isolation.

Source: “Mobile Gaming Behavior Post COVID-19” by Interpret (Facebook IQ-commissioned online survey of 6,238 mobile gamers ages 18+ across DE, KR, UK, US, Jul/Oct 2020) 

And this audience is more diverse than ever, with 50% of recent and established mobile gamers in the U.S. identifying as female, 43% of established mobile gamers 45 or older, and 39% of recent adopters under the age of 34. All these new players create new opportunities for game growth, and new ways to evolve your digital advertising strategy and creative approach.

Source for all stats: online survey responses of 1,434 mobile gamers in US, from “Mobile Gaming Behavior Post COVID-19” by Interpret (Facebook IQ-commissioned online survey of 13,246 mobile gamers ages 18+ across BR, CA, DE, FR, KR, UK, US, VN Jul-Oct 2020) 

This diversity includes the reasons why people play as well as who is playing. Recent surveys have shown the reasons people play vary greatly, which is why it’s so important to understand their motivations, and we’re going to show you how to do just that.

Source: Online survey responses of 728 established mobile gamers in the US, from “Mobile Gaming Behavior Post COVID-19” by Interpret (Facebook IQ-commissioned online survey of 13,246 mobile gamers ages 18+ across BR, CA, DE, FR, KR, UK, US, VN Jul-Oct 2020) 

Introducing The Big Catch Playbook

In 2020, we collaborated with 16 global gaming advertisers to build an advertising creative framework called The Big Catch. We discovered that by experimenting with different ads based on player motivations, you can expand the pond in which you’re fishing for new players. This was effective in converting different players in 100% of our tests, and attracted and converted higher-value audiences(1). Big Catch digital ad creatives also had 26% higher Ads Quality Ranking than control creatives(2), meaning ads performed better in the auction and saw greater distribution at a reasonable cost.

The 4 steps to get started

We have identified eight player motivations, which we’ve explored in great detail in the free-to-download Big Catch Playbook. They are:

That’s not to say these are the only eight motivations, but they provide a solid starting point to begin examining your games, and how to use your ad creatives to attract players with different motivations.

Take Relaxation for example. This applies to players who just want to kill time, relax or calm down. 62% of established mobile gamers in the U.S. play to relieve stress(3). We’re talking about gameplays like puzzles, repetition, and zen mode. Some players are motivated by constantly making progress in the game, whether building or improving things, while some just love to connect and bond with friends.

This Merge Dragons ad below showcases relaxation by positioning its merging gameplay as a therapy — clean your land to clear your mind.

When it comes to escapism, we know that 30% of gamers in the U.S.(4), 30% in the U.K.(5) and 17%(6) in Korea play to immerse themselves in a character/world. Players who are motivated by escapism often seek distraction and relief from possibly a potentially unpleasant reality. Role-playing, fantasy, and alternate worlds all speak to this motivation. Look for the extraordinary in your game and show wild adventures and non-humanoid characters to appeal to players looking to escape.

As this ad creative for Happy Color demonstrates, upbeat music and scenes becoming washed with colour. Even leading with a positive reason to play the game “When days are darker, fill them with color.”

Discovery is also a powerful motivator for curious gamers, who play to learn something new. Creative that shows gameplay with big maps, multiple worlds, and hidden objects can spark a potential player’s interest. Consider showing side quests, enigmas, and escape rooms to instil the thrill of discovery.

This creative for Klondike shows how to pique their curiosity. After a brief intro, it shows sweeping landscapes, prompting the viewer to “Explore and discover many secrets and breathtaking adventures.”

This innovative new framework for games advertising will help you significantly expand your reach and impact. Gaming companies of any size can benefit from the Big Catch advertising approach. It’s an ongoing process of learning what works and why, and incorporating these learnings into your everyday advertising methods.

To get started, get our free-to-download, in-depth Big Catch Playbook to learn more about the eight player motivations, how to test and learn, and key considerations, as well as info on expert regional partners who can help you bring this to life if needed.

Sources

1. Source: Chi-squared test of 16 Gaming A/B tests
2. Source: Creative Shop analysis of ads quality score, new vs. BAU creatives, 18 gaming AB tests.
3. Source: Online survey responses of 728 established mobile gamers in the US, from “Mobile Gaming Behavior Post COVID-19” by Interpret (Facebook IQ-commissioned online survey of 13,246 mobile gamers ages 18+ across BR, CA, DE, FR, KR, UK, US, VN Jul-Oct 2020)
4. Source: Online survey responses of 728 established mobile gamers in US, from “Mobile Gaming Behavior Post COVID-19” by Interpret (Facebook IQ-commissioned online survey of 13,246 mobile gamers ages 18+ across BR, CA, DE, FR, JP, KR, UK, US, VN Jul–Oct 2020).
5. Source:  Online survey responses of 1166 established mobile gamers in GB, from “Mobile Gaming Behavior Post COVID-19” by Interpret (Facebook IQ-commissioned online survey of 13,246 mobile gamers ages 18+ across BR, CA, DE, FR, JP, KR, UK, US, VN Jul–Oct 2020).
6. Source: Online survey responses of 1318 established mobile gamers in KR, from “Mobile Gaming Behavior Post COVID-19” by Interpret (Facebook IQ-commissioned online survey of 13,246 mobile gamers ages 18+ across BR, CA, DE, FR, JP, KR, UK, US, VN Jul–Oct 2020).

Rodrigo Zannin is Creative Industry Lead, Creative Shop at Facebook

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