The Gold Medal Strategy of Investing in Customer Marketing

Throughout my career, I’ve seen the role of customer marketing haphazardly absorbed into general marketing, customer success, and product marketing. While we can all appreciate a T-shaped marketer if executed correctly, customer relationship management requires a depth of knowledge only an absolute expert can provide. Otherwise, your strategy will be less effective if left to a team member with broad knowledge and competing priorities.

Your prospect marketer has their eye on the MQL prize, and most of the time, the content they’re repurposing is not relevant for existing customers. Research by CallMiner revealed that US businesses are at risk of increased churn by not valuing customers or listening to them when they have problems, with a conservative estimate of the revenue loss being $136 billion per year. According to Sprinklr, “ineffective communication” is one of the 7 common causes of customer churn, along with “inadequate customer onboarding” and “lack of ongoing value.” You will not be getting two birds with one stone—or, in this case, two personas with one content strategy—if you rely on your lead generation efforts to satisfy existing customer needs.

Customer success and customer marketing have a symbiotic relationship. While the CSM is the business representative, the message comes from the marketer. Along with the teams' respective training and strategies being vastly different, marketing can implement a one-to-many communication approach and offer a playbook of on-demand solutions that satisfy the CSM's top recurring customer tensions.

The predictable product marketing and customer marketing tango treads the fine, gray line of who is responsible for communicating what to which customer. Alex Ruddock (former-Influitive) has an exceptional breakdown of the difference between these customer-obsessed sister roles and how they ought to work together, saying, “Customer marketing and product marketing reinforce each other. Together, customer marketing and product marketing play key roles in putting customers at the center of your company.”

As I’ve said before, if you’re good at something, you’re probably making it look so easy that anyone can do it. Don’t underestimate the power of work experience. Anyone can learn how to ride a bike, but it takes years of practice, research, and dedication to qualify for the Olympics. So, does your business want to implement a novice approach or a gold medal strategy?

The Gold Medal Strategy - Invest in a Dedicated Customer Marketer

Customer marketing contributes to decreased CAC, higher CLTV, and the opportunity to focus on true ROI. The depth of knowledge needed to manage the customer experience comes from an immersive understanding, a test-and-learn approach, and devoted time to plan, monitor, and adapt. Enlisting the assistance of a customer marketer can alleviate the professional squabble about who has the authority over customer communication and cadence. This essential role will impact cross-team collaboration by analyzing the customer journey and implementing proper touchpoints to leverage customer feedback, improve upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and amplify product value. Customer Marketers are designed to foster community relationships, facilitate peer-to-peer connections, translate VOC into actionable product improvements, and generate new campaign ideas.

“Customer marketing engages your existing customers. Customer marketers work to ensure your product’s users succeed, grow as individuals, and have a voice in your company. They build a journey that nurtures your customers into becoming brand advocates.” - Alex Ruddock, Antler, Influitive

Here are 5 Examples of When Customer Marketing Was Critical to Business Success:

1. Identifying the need to improve customer education: Adding linkbacks to other company content based on important keywords. Find the opportunities to link to a customer case study for social proof, a how-to guide for more in-depth training or a product page to influence customer spending.
2. Adding relevant CTAs to customer-centric content: Your existing customers don’t need to book a demo, but they do want to learn how to implement the latest software update. Be mindful of your audience.
3. Crafting an immediate follow-up to NPS responses: Your customers can love you or hate you, but don’t leave them hanging. Immediately ask promoters to write a review or join your customer community. Automatically send an in-product message or email outlining a solution to a detractor’s reasoning for their lackluster experience.
4. Closing the customer champion funnel: CSMs aren’t gatekeeping their customer champions; they’re just not trained on the opportunities to funnel those folks to the appropriate channel. Incorporate a customer community invitation or advocacy nomination within your CRM to make it easy for CSMs to flag their happy customers.
5. Delivering a prepared social media strategy for cross-network promotion: Whether you have a customer speaker or hired an industry influencer, give them a custom toolkit to blast their collaboration with your business with pre-written social media messages, speaker cards, images, and links.

If you liked this article, you'll love this one: The Art of Community Relationship Management

Let’s Work Together! Kristin Blye is a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a mom of two little girls, and an absolute expert in Customer Marketing, responsible for launching global advocacy communities, leveraging the voice of the customer to position companies as thought leaders within their industries, and developing customer-centric content, campaigns, and events that empower trust and drive engagement.