The TL;DR
Unlike most marketers, customer marketers are in the business of long-term relationships as they gather customer evidence. Three marketing leaders break down successful customer marketing programs. Their advice?
- Avoid getting trapped in a cycle of “quick wins”; take a step back and ask yourself how you can best support the team and customers instead.
- Rethink your metrics. You don’t have to have the big shiny revenue number if you have compelling program- and team-level measures.
- Struggling with buy-in? Share your early successes, and do what you can to tie programs back to revenue.
- Use technology and interviews in tandem to give potential customers as much access to customer evidence, libraries, and case studies as possible.
- Instead of starting with dozens of smaller projects, start “big” ones. It’s a kind of forcing function to get the process ironed out and get the team talking about customer evidence.
All right–I’ll peel back the curtain for a minute. We’ve always struggled with who our primary buyer is at UserEvidence.
At the surface level, we know that customer marketers are always going to be our main champions– especially the ones who are focused on these 3 core things:
- Drive impact beyond their function (i.e. drive pipeline, accelerate deals, support sales)
- Build long-term and two-way relationships with their customers (I see this done often through community-building and advocacy programs)
- Prioritize building and scaling customer evidence libraries (AKA–a library of statements or statistics, straight from verified buyers, that prove the value of your product or service)
But here’s the issue we’ve found:
Many customer marketers don’t have the budget or buy-in to invest in a platform like UserEvidence to help with that third point.
Why is that?
I have a hunch…
Or really, Jane Menyo, Head of Customer Marketing at Gong, shared her hunch with me on The Proof Point podcast, and I happened to agree.
Customer marketing can be nebulous.
“The DNA of a customer marketer is so different than anyone else in the Marketing organization,” explained Jane.
That stems from a fundamental misconception of the role and the assumption that customer marketers are no different from any other marketer.
“Customer marketers are more like salespeople and CSMs,” Jane added. “We’re in the business of building long-term relationships, both internally and externally. No one else on the Marketing team has to do that to quite the same level.”
Given that the very definition of customer marketing may be shrouded in mystery, it’s no surprise that many companies either under-value their customer marketing programs or don’t have one at all (which is why we often end up in buying conversations with marketing leadership or product marketing managers.)
That’s why I wanted to share some insights from 3 of the best customer marketers I know–Jane, Cache Walker, and Leslie Barrett, on how they create max impact in their customer marketing roles (and prove the real value of customer marketing).
A stellar customer marketer’s job is to strategically gather customer evidence–statements or statistics from verified buyers that prove the value of our products–and inject that into messaging, content…everything. It’s about transforming into the perfect mix of seller, storyteller, and relationship-builder to build loyalty that speaks for itself.
As Jane would say, “No one else in marketing does what we do, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Go beyond the quick wins
Every marketer’s been on the receiving end of a last-minute message from someone in sales: “Hey, I’m about to close a deal, but the buyer needs more convincing. Do you have any success stories, proof points, or testimonials for a company like XYZ?“
There’s no better feeling as a marketer than swooping in at the eleventh hour and making a real impact on a deal. And while these wins are worth celebrating, they won’t build the foundation you need to scale a program that’ll keep your leadership team happy.
That’s why Cache, Director of Customer Marketing at Trellix, emphasizes the importance of thinking like a consultant. “The biggest mistake customer marketers make is acting like they work for their organizations,” he explained.
Instead, he believes customer marketers should act like consultants to their organizations and focus on stacking short-term wins with long-term progression.
“To be successful in customer marketing, you need to act like a consultant,” Cache shared. “You’re already embedded on the team, so it’s not about fitting in. It’s about taking a step back and asking the hard questions, like, ‘Who do I need to get buy-in from?’ and ‘How can I build a program that’ll address the needs of different teams?’”
The best customer marketers are proactive, not reactive.
Bridge the measurement gap by rethinking your KPIs
Attribution is a made-up thing.
…I’m only partially kidding. But seriously. Find me a marketer that doesn’t feel like there’s at least a sliver of truth in this. How many times have we figured out how we were going to attribute success to a marketing initiative after it had already seen some results? Especially when it comes to customer marketing.
Unlike their marketing peers, who (loosely speaking) have more tried and tested performance metrics, customer marketers tend to lack definitive metrics because a lot of what they do, like relationship-building, is hard to quantify.
“Nobody knows how to measure customer marketing, and other teams often think it’s just a fluffy program that hands out gifts to customers,” said Leslie, Director of Customer Marketing at Tipalti.
Jane echoed that sentiment, adding, “We have more stakeholders within the Marketing organization than anybody else, but we don’t have a tangible way to show the impact of our work.” Instead, Jane explained, “We’re left with bits and pieces of metrics.”
So, how do we fill the measurement gap? Jane suggests a 3-tiered framework that helped her discover that customers who engaged with Gong’s customer stories are 4X more likely to close:
While attribution will always be complex and leave questions hanging in the air, Jane thinks this framework (or one similar) provides more than enough substance to keep leadership teams locked in.
Of the 600 buyers, sellers, and marketers we surveyed for our original research report, The Evidence Gap, 67% of sellers reported that a deal of theirs had been slowed down or lost due to the inability to provide relevant, specific customer evidence in a timely manner.
“Every leader understands that customer evidence is essential to close the deal,” Jane confirmed. “And they’ll always gravitate back to it as a way to grow revenue.”
Align with top-level executives who share your vision
Whether you have a framework or not, it’s easy to feel like you’re grasping at straws when it comes to measurement. The lack of clear metrics can also leave you underrepresented at the leadership level, making it even harder to build and scale.
That’s why aligning with executives is so important, although getting that alignment can feel like an uphill battle. To climb this hill, Jane recommended identifying stakeholders who share your long-term vision–and playing to their interests.
Two easy ways to work toward alignment:
- Sync with your Product Marketing leader and highlight how customer evidence can create buzz about new features.
- Partner with your Sales leader to explore how it can build buyer trust, shorten sales cycles, and increase win rates.
Cache said it best: “When it comes to stakeholder alignment, you’re always working on a path toward yes.” But getting to “yes” time and time again requires a deep understanding of each stakeholder’s goals and how customer marketing directly benefits them.
“If people don’t trust that you’ve considered their business unique and its importance, they’re also going to question whether or not customer marketing is helping them succeed,” Cache explained. “But when you can say, ‘Hey, here’s the impact our CSMs achieved through customer marketing last quarter; here’s what it did for our Sales team,’ that’s when people really start to buy in.”
But Cache also stressed that it’s not just about getting yourself a seat at the table–it’s about getting your customers a voice as well. “When you shift your focus to the customer and support it with metrics, it’s easier to sell internally because success comes straight from your customers’ mouths, and no one on the leadership team can argue with that,” he said.
Create efficiencies with new processes and technology
“I love that most of my good ideas come from things I hate,” Cache said when the topic of scale came up.
The thing he hates? Reference calls. His good idea? A bot powered by Trellix’s entire library of customer evidence.
Currently, the bot is only available to internal teams, but Cache has bigger plans; he wants to make it available to customers, too. “Why would our customers take our word for it when they can talk to a bot whose entire knowledge base is backed by thousands of real customer experiences.”
Like Cache, we believe AI and other technologies are the keys to unlocking scale, especially for teams with limited resources.
Technology, particularly AI, has the power to reinvent how customer marketing teams work.
I really believe that. And we’re drinking our own champagne at UserEvidence by pushing our sales team to use our AI-driven features, like our Slackbot and Evi, our new AI assistant that helps surface the right proof points at lightning speed.
With AI technology, companies can automate the collection, creation, and distribution of customer stories, and remove many of the bottlenecks that keep even the most experienced teams back from scaling their impact across every GTM team.
Creating efficiencies to help you scale is possible without bringing robots into the equation, though. Leslie shared how she’s succeeded by compiling proof points from one industry and condensing them into a landing page or PDF that Sales can easily share.
“I grouped all the stories and sent those out–it was just proof after proof after proof, all in one industry. How could a potential buyer in that industry not want to keep the conversation going?”
Start with the big rocks
“We’re maxed out on the number of programs we can run,” Leslie shared. “We get bogged down in so much minutiae that we can’t do all that cool stuff.”
Customer marketers everywhere are probably nodding along. There’s so much to customer marketing and so many amazing things they can do, but they can’t get to those things if they’re constantly managing requests and tracking down approvals.
The trick to getting to those things? Start with the big rocks.
Instead of setting your sights on a million assets, start with one big one, like a customer webinar, and use that as the foundation for future content. As Jane put it, “We focus on the big rocks and then figure out how we can generate the snackable or derivative content from that.”
For example, a 45-minute customer webinar can yield multiple quotes, a social post, and video clips. Plus, you’re building relationships with customers, which will only make it easier to get a “yes” for bigger asks down the road, like joining you on stage at a conference.
To pinpoint your “big rocks,” ask yourself a few guiding questions:
- What are the top messages or topics we can share right now?
- Which assets or content will support our GTM team’s near-term priorities?
- What themes or points are most top-of-mind with our buyers’ current needs?
This approach not only makes you more efficient by ensuring you’re focusing on core assets that align with your GTM strategy but also ensures you’re delivering content that meets everyone’s needs. Buyers who want quick quotes get them, while those who need more convincing can dive into an entire webinar.
Focus on real evidence to build credibility
All right, let’s call out the elephant in the room when it comes to case studies and testimonials.
Or, actually––I’ll let Cache do it.
“Folks have gotten lazy.” People rely on analyst firms as their proof, but those reports are only as good as the biases behind them or the time the analysts spent with the solution.”
B2B buyers need more–and no, slapping “industry-leading” or “the most trusted solution” on your website won’t cut it. As Cache put it, B2B buyers need “something factual from people who actually use your product.”
Another stat from our recent original research: 51% of buyers said statistical evidence was the most trustworthy type of customer proof they could receive. And that’s the stuff that just isn’t happening in analyst reports and one-off testimonials.
Buyers want relevant, business case-backed proof points that they can anchor their buying decisions on.
A customer evidence program can deliver that by showcasing stories and proof points from real customers who have tackled–and solved–the same challenges as your prospects.
And while building and scaling one can present challenges, the advice from Jane, Cache, and Leslie will make sure your program runs like a well-oiled machine—and keeps prospects and customers coming back for more.
Sidle up to our newly-refreshed Demo Ranch to take a test ride of the customer evidence platform that Gong, Trellix, Tipalti and more trust to scale their customer evidence libraries.
