Ahrefs Podcast

Swearing on sales calls can boost win rates by up to 8% — that's just one of the counterintuitive insights that helped Gong grow from 11 customers to over $300M in annual revenue.
Udi Ledergor joined Gong as employee #13 and marketer #1, eventually becoming CMO and now Chief Evangelist. His data-driven content marketing approach turned proprietary sales call analytics into viral marketing gold that media outlets couldn't resist covering.
Udi is the author of "Courageous Marketing" and has over 28 years of marketing experience across multiple successful tech companies. He's pioneered creative growth tactics like securing Super Bowl ads and Wall Street Journal placements for a fraction of their usual cost, all while building one of B2B's most recognizable brands.
In this episode, you'll discover why AI-generated marketing ideas should be eliminated rather than used, how to create content so valuable that university professors want to license it, and why the best way to use a small marketing budget is to show up where your audience already congregates instead of trying to build your own party.
Here's what you'll learn in this episode:
(00:00) Intro(01:00) Why Gong focused on LinkedIn and ignored their website(07:21) Why best practices are the enemy of standing out(13:31) The reciprocity principle: Give value before asking for anything(18:21) How swearing on sales calls became viral marketing gold(25:18) How to make your marketing budget unlimited(33:29) Creating websites for AI vs. humans in the age of answer engines(40:36) Why you need preemptive "marketing experiments" budget(44:18) Punching above your weight(51:23) Using AI to eliminate obvious ideas, not generate them(56:54) The Netflix test: Would people pay for your content?(1:01:31) Finding talent in unlikely places
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! As always, be sure to like and subscribe (and tell a friend).
Where to find Udi Ledergor:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/udiledergor/
X: @ledergor
Website: https://www.gong.io/
Where to find Tim:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/
X: @timsoulo
Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/
Referenced:
Robert Cialdini (Influence): https://www.robertcialdini.com/
Chip and Dan Heath (Made to Stick): https://heathbrothers.com/
Malcolm Gladwell: https://gladwell.com/
Adam Grant (Think Again): https://adamgrant.net/
Daniel Pink: https://www.danpink.com/
Peter Walker (Carta): https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwalk/
Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com
#ContentMarketing #B2BMarketing #GrowthMarketing #AhrefsPodcast

Most writers can barely publish one article per week — but what if AI could help you draft 30 articles in less time?
Ryan Law has cracked the code with an automated content pipeline that’s already producing high-quality articles for the Ahrefs blog in just 8–12 minutes each.
Ryan Law is Head of Marketing at Ahrefs and has spent years refining AI-powered content workflows. He’s built an intricate system of 23+ AI “skills” that work together to research, outline, draft, and optimize blog content — all while maintaining the Ahrefs voice and incorporating product use cases naturally.
In this episode, you’ll discover exactly how Ryan’s “blog pipeline” works, why breaking content creation into discrete steps produces better results, and how AI eliminates the drudgery of writing while preserving human creativity.
Tim also shares his own AI workflow for writing his upcoming book through voice dictation.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
(00:00) Intro
(01:37) Inside Ryan’s 23-skill AI content automation system
(07:48) The research phase: analyzing competitor content and finding gaps
(19:19) Referencing existing content to maintain consistency
(22:23) Creating exhaustive outlines using the MECE principle
(23:44) Why examples beat instructions for teaching AI your voice
(29:26) Finding natural product placement opportunities
(34:37) The critical importance of providing human context
(41:00) Using AI to update thousands of existing articles
(48:01) How AI eliminates creative drudgery, not creativity itself
Where to find Ryan Law:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinkingslow/
X: @thinkingslow
Website: https://www.ryanlaw.me/
Where to find Tim:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/
X: @timsoulo
Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/
Referenced:
Claude (Anthropic): https://claude.ai
Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com

Most SEO tools are playing catch-up with AI search while their users wonder if traditional keyword tracking even matters anymore. Tim Soulo tackles your burning questions about how Ahrefs is navigating this shift, revealing that Content Explorer is their most underrated feature despite being 10x less popular than Site Audit.
Tim Soulo is the CMO at Ahrefs, one of the industry's most comprehensive SEO toolsets with over $100 million in annual revenue. He's been with Ahrefs for over a decade, helping shape its evolution from a backlink analysis tool to a full marketing suite.
In this solo Q&A episode, Tim reveals why Ahrefs has no acquisition plans, which tools generate the most usage (Site Explorer dominates by 3x), and why they're betting big on API expansion for the "wipe coding" revolution. He also shares candid thoughts on competing with Semrush and explains why Brand Radar crossed $10M ARR in just 5 months.
Here's what you'll learn in this episode:
(00:00) Intro(00:27) Any plans for acquisitions in 2026? (from Bilal Malik)(01:13) Which are the most vs least used Ahrefs features? (from Vimala Ellappan)(08:44) What is the most underrated Ahrefs feature? (from Kristiina Jannus)(10:48) How does Tim use Ahrefs for AI visibility tracking? (from Ayesha Asif)(13:33) How does Ahrefs fit into the modern demand engine? (from Gayle Kalvert)(17:18) How is Ahrefs looking at first vs third-party data? (from Hawrry Bhattarai)(21:27) Which SEO basic skills would Tim embed in LLMs? (from Laiba Naveed)(23:30) Which Semrush feature does Tim envy most? (from Coen Commijs)(25:59) If Ahrefs exists, what problem is Semrush trying to solve? (from Ashish Singh)(27:18) What's the update on ranking data beyond position 10? (from Mia Wolf)(29:21) How does Ahrefs plan to capture future SERP features? (from Alex Nguyen)(31:05) How do you balance evergreen content with fast-moving trends? (from Esther Dien)(34:24) What are your SEO predictions for 2026? (from Nick Malekos)(35:54) Where do you plan for Ahrefs to be in 5 years? (from Ivan Palii)(37:50) What's your POV on the Indian market? (from Aryan Jalan)
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! Be sure to follow and share with a friend.
Where to find Tim:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/X: @timsouloWebsite: https://www.timsoulo.com/
Referenced:ChatGPT vs Google: https://chatgpt-vs-google.com/Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com

One of Deadpan Agency's comedy campaigns paid for the entire production cost within a single episode — and went on to influence 12 additional client deals. Luke Winter didn't get there by making polished corporate videos. He got there by making B2B brands funny.

Luke is the founder and creative director of Deadpan Agency, a London-based studio specializing in comedy video for SaaS and tech companies. After 12 years producing the kind of cinematic explainers that collect 400 views and disappear, he pivoted to a niche within a niche: episodic B2B comedy campaigns built around real customer pain — not brand ego.

You'll learn why humor lowers purchase resistance better than any production budget, how the StoryBrand framework keeps your brand from accidentally casting itself as the hero (and why that's the wrong move), and what actually happens to your brand when a joke doesn't land — the answer is less catastrophic than you'd expect, but bad audio is a different story entirely. This is also why AI can generate a video but can't replace the taste to know if it's any good.

(00:00) Intro
(01:15) Why B2B brands invest in video ads
(03:48) What a comedy video campaign actually costs
(08:35) Why humor outperforms spectacle in B2B marketing
(14:08) How to measure if a video campaign worked
(21:13) How to make the humor feel owned by your brand, not your agency
(25:07) Rooting comedy in real customer pain
(28:12) The StoryBrand secret: your brand is the guide, not the hero
(32:21) How to build a visual identity audiences recognize across episodes
(38:21) What actually happens when a video flops
(46:21) AI-generated video: useful tool or creative shortcut?
(52:33) Why taste matters more than the prompt

Where to find Luke:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/luke-winter-75a2885a
Website: deadpanagency.com

Where to find Tim:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timsoulo
X: @timsoulo
Website: timsoulo.com

Referenced:
Deadpan Agency: deadpanagency.com
Gamma: gamma.app
StoryBrand by Donald Miller: storybrand.com
Contagious by Jonah Berger: jonahberger.com/books/contagious/
ClientBoost: clientboost.com
Ahrefs: ahrefs.com

ZoomInfo powers the world's outbound prospecting — and gets the majority of its own new business from inbound. Tal Raz, ZoomInfo's CMO, explains the flywheel behind a $1.2B ARR go-to-market machine.
Tal is a nine-year veteran of ZoomInfo who joined as a marketing analyst and built her way to the C-suite by obsessing over funnel gaps, data quality, and campaign execution. She now leads a ~100-person global marketing team and is one of the architects behind how ZoomInfo actually goes to market — using its own platform to do it.
In this conversation, Tal explains why AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are doing the buyer research that used to land on your website — and what that means for inbound-dependent companies. She breaks down why most AI-powered outreach fails (it's a data problem, not an AI problem), how GTM Studio compresses a weeks-long campaign launch into hours, and what "no leaders leaders" looks like as a real operating philosophy inside a public company.
EPISODE CHAPTERS
(00:00) Intro
(01:11) Why ZoomInfo — master of outbound — relies on inbound for most new revenue
(07:18) Why AI search (ChatGPT, Gemini) is dismantling traditional SEO-driven inbound
(11:01) The execution gap: why AI-powered outreach so often gets it wrong
(15:33) GTM Studio: how to compress weeks of campaign prep into hours
(23:23) AI SDRs — real replacement for human sales reps, or just hype?
(27:42) Managing a 100-person global marketing team from Israel
(33:11) How to measure marketing by working backwards from ACV, not MQLs
(41:46) What Henry Schuck really thinks about brand marketing
(44:58) The apology billboard: turning a product failure into a campaign
(50:50) Labubu at Dreamforce: making the case for playful B2B marketing
(54:18) "No leaders leaders": why ZoomInfo's C-suite stays in the weeds
(57:56) From marketing analyst to CMO: Tal's 9-year journey at one company
(01:04:56) How AI is changing what it means to be a marketer
(01:10:22) Rapid fire: favorite book, admired company, and thought leader

WHERE TO FIND TAL
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tal-raz-46529620/
WHERE TO FIND TIM
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/
X: @timsouloWebsite: https://www.timsoulo.com/
REFERENCED
ZoomInfo: https://www.zoominfo.com/
ZoomInfo GTM Studio: https://www.zoominfo.com/products/gtm-studio
Gamma (the "Office" campaign): https://gamma.app/
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36072.The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People
Kieran Flanagan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranjflanagan
Labubu (Pop Mart): https://www.popmart.com/us
Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com