This is a past send for The Outpost, a weekly newsletter filled with realtime insights and tactics for building more impactful customer marketing programs. To get The Outpost in your inbox every week, subscribe right here.
When we launched The Outpost, the whole premise was simple: build something for customer marketers, by a customer marketer.
The “by a customer marketer” part was always the goal. But we had one issue: we didn’t have a customer marketer…. YET.
I’ve loved standing in for that role as we’ve gotten The Outpost up and running. But let’s be honest, I’m not a CMA practitioner. I’m a content person who cares a lot about this community. (You can be real, I know you feel the difference.)
So when we hired Brayden McCleskey as UserEvidence’s first-ever customer marketing and advocacy leader, I knew exactly what had to happen.
I called dibs on interviewing him first.
Brayden has spent the better part of a decade building one-to-many CMA programs from scratch. From user group programs to advisory boards, review sites to referral programs, he’s touched nearly every corner of the customer marketing umbrella. VoC, case studies, you name it. He gets the blank-slate feeling. He’s lived the “prove it deserves to exist” pressure.
And starting in July, he’s taking over The Outpost.
That means from now on, you’ll be getting the real Outpost. The one we imagined all along. The one where you’re riding shotgun alongside one of your peers who’s building his own program in real time. Who’s sharing the reality of what he’s doing and learning along the way with full permission to be honest.
So, as an official pass off, I sat down with him a couple weeks into his new role to get the download so you could get to know him right alongside me.
Here’s our first ride with Brayden:
You’re UserEvidence’s first customer marketing hire. What was the first thing that went through your head when you sat down on day one?
Honestly? Where do I start? And I don’t mean that in a panicked way. I mean it in the very literal, practical sense. There’s no playbook. There’s no “here’s what the last person did.” It’s just: here’s the function, here’s the company, go build something that matters. I’ve been here before, but it doesn’t get less humbling. Throw in the added element of building a CMA program for CMA practitioners, and you’ve got a whole new flavor of “no pressure at all”.
Okay so… where DID you start?
The first thing I did was audit our message. Before I built anything, I wanted to understand: are we going to market with the right story? Are we speaking to the day-to-day pain points of customer marketers? I have this unique advantage of actually knowing the customer marketing motion from the inside. So I could look at our messaging and spot where the proof was thin, and where it was ignoring frustrations I’ve felt myself in this role. Where’s the customer evidence we don’t have yet? What’s the gap between what we’re saying and what we can actually back up? That was step one.
And once you had a sense of the gaps?
You figure out what proof needs to be built. Messaging is only as strong as the evidence behind it. So I started threading that gap-thinking into some of the research work we were already doing, trying to make the work do double duty. Surface the gaps AND start filling them at the same time.
One of the fastest wins there was running our annual customer census. It bought me some quick internal credibility, and the timing worked out well for double-dipping on filling the gaps too. We’re still elbow-deep in it, but there’s already new competitive positioning, strong testimonials, and first-ever verified evidence for our newer products. I’ll save the full story for its own edition of The Outpost as there’s a lot to unpack, including a few pitfalls I’d rather our readers avoid. Keep an eye out for that one.
Can’t wait for that one. Who were the most important conversations you had internally in those first few weeks?
Sales, honestly. Sales and CS areis a customer marketer’s #1 internal “customer”, and before I talked to almost anyone else, I wanted to spend time with those teams. They’re closest to the real objections. The real language customers use. The real places where our story doesn’t quite land. If you’re new to a role and you want to understand what actually needs to be built,. Ttalk to the people who are out there trying to sell the thing every single day.
That tracks. What else has been top of mind for you in this new seat?
Don’t skip the enablement work while you’re building the big stuff. I’ve been pretty consultative early on. Jumping into sales calls, weighing in on messaging, helping with competitive decks. It’s not glamorous program work. But it builds trust fast. And it buys you the runway to do the bigger things well.
Ok, last one: who’s Brayden outside of work?
I’m a hobbyist by nature, mostly because I need somewhere to put my brain when I’m not being out-negotiated by our two ginge-tinge boys (3½ and 1, both undefeated).
My wife and I are huge AFOLs – Adult Fans of Lego (yes it’s a real term) – which has become our version of a couple’s hobby that doesn’t involve a Peloton. I play a handful of instruments, mainly piano and drums, but love to dabble in anything that makes a sound. Speaking of sound, I enjoy singing and can, allegedly, carry a tune pretty well, though you wouldn’t know it from what my wife actually hears most days. I shoot clays, ride longboards, and watch movies with the specific joy of someone who will absolutely tell you what didn’t work about the third act. I’m also a massive theater buff and a comedy nerd who’s been quietly workshopping a stand-up set for an open mic night that I will, one of these days, actually go do.
Lastly, I love to cook and have an apron collection that would make Gordon Ramsay blush. Lately that means hopping on the homemade Neapolitan pizza train much to my family’s delight and my counter space’s dismay.
The Outpost is in good hands. I’m not going anywhere, but I am so glad we finally found the right person to build this thing the way it was always meant to be built.
Welcome, Brayden. 🤠
He’ll be back in your inbox next week.
