Gaurav Tandon, Marketing Head – APAC/MEA/EU/LATAM at Netcore Cloud, shares his playbook for modern, revenue-focused marketing. He discusses his “total domination” event strategy, why “attention” is the hardest currency to earn, and the marketer’s critical role as an “integrator.”
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- A Marketer’s Most Important Role is the “Integrator.”
The critical function is to act as a bridge, connecting the product with the market, technology with creativity, and the business vision with customer reality. - The Best Career Advice: Learn the Numbers Early.
To gain a real edge and be seen as a valuable business partner, marketers must learn to speak the language of revenue and impact from the start. - Make AI Your Best Friend, But Not Your Oxygen.
Use AI as a co-pilot to handle the heavy lifting, but never let it replace the uniquely human skills of judgment, creativity, and storytelling.
Could you tell us a little bit about your role at Netcore Cloud?
I wear two hats at Netcore Cloud. First, I’m the regional marketing head for our international markets, which includes APAC, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and LATAM. In this role, I act as the CMO for these markets, strategising and planning how we can collectively hit our goals for demand generation and brand building.
Second, I am the Global Events Head. My team curates around 200 events a year across the world. You name a format, and we most likely have it in our portfolio.
What is your main marketing focus at the moment?
My main focus is threefold. First, it’s turning marketing into predictable revenue engines across all the regions I manage. What works in India doesn’t work in Jakarta or London, so the focus is on creating region-specific playbooks that tie every dollar we spend back to pipeline and revenue.
My second focus is our event-led growth journey. Events are one of our top marketing channels, and we have really scaled our efforts. Now, the focus is not on doing more events, but on how to get more out of less. The plan for next year is to do fewer events but get even more value from them.
Finally, AI adoption is a key focus. We are looking at how we can leverage AI to deliver better customer experiences and be more efficient, probably delivering 2-3x more while maintaining the same quality.
How do you define success in marketing?
For me, success is tying every marketing dollar back to revenue and pipeline impact. But we’re not just doing everything with a short-term goal in mind. A huge part of success is the long-term gain that comes from brand recall and being perceived as a category leader in marketing automation. So, it’s a combination of the hard pipeline numbers and the softer, though more difficult to measure ROI, brand perception metrics.
What would you say is the biggest challenge marketers are facing today?
The biggest challenge is attention; it has become the hardest currency to earn and the ultimate KPI for any marketer. As consumers, we are all bombarded with ads, content, and events. We live in a “swipe right, swipe left” world. The challenge is to cut through that noise by making your marketing more creative, meaningful, and personalised, and balancing the power of AI with an authentic human touch.
What is the most successful event or engagement piece you’ve hosted recently?
One that is close to my heart was the ET MarTech Summit in India. We were the presenting partner, and instead of sponsoring three different industry events, we made a conscious decision to go all-in and completely dominate just this one.
From the moment you walked in, you saw Netcore everywhere. We had the biggest booth, every chair in the conference room was branded, we had digital stands in every corner, and we took over half the VIP area. Our founder delivered the opening keynote, we launched a major product, and we even got two organic callouts from CMOs on stage who spoke about how they were benefiting from their partnership with us. We left a big impression and were the superstar of the show, which led to deals and a huge boost in brand recognition over the next six months.
What career advice would you like to share with someone starting in the marketing industry?
I have three key pieces of advice. First, learn the numbers early. The reason the sales team often gets more recognition is because they are directly aligned with revenue. As a marketer, if you can talk about business impact and ROI, you will have a very different edge in your career.
Second, get your hands dirty. Run the ads, host the events, and write the copy yourself. It becomes much easier to lead a team to do something if you have done the job yourself.
Finally, make AI your best friend, but not your oxygen. AI should be your co-pilot and your accelerator, but it should not replace your judgment, your creativity, or that essential human element. The best marketers will be the ones who let AI do the heavy lifting while they focus on imagination.
What do you believe are the biggest opportunities for marketers today?
The biggest opportunities are AI and attribution. CMOs today have the superpower to predict, personalise, and perform at a scale that wasn’t possible 10 years ago. We can finally prove marketing’s impact with data. CMOs have moved from being seen as cost centres to being growth catalysts with boardroom credibility.
What does the future of marketing look like?
I believe the future of marketing is agentic AI plus human imagination, going hand in hand. AI will take over the execution, from media buying to personalisation. But humans will have to double down on what makes us different: creativity, storytelling, and empathy. Marketing will shift from being campaign-based to context-based, with intelligent engagements running 24/7. The brands and the marketers who get this balance right will win.
How would you describe the role of a CMO or a head of marketing in one word?
If I have to choose one word, it would be Integrator.
A CMO integrates product with the market, tech with creativity, and brand with revenue. We are the bridge that translates the business vision into customer reality.
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