I've worked in customer marketing since 2008, and I've done pretty much everything the discipline covers.

When I started at Hitachi, customer references were the big thing. I was handed a spreadsheet of 7,000 customers and asked if I could do something with it. There weren't many options on the market back then, so we built a homegrown database. It's been interesting to watch the industry evolve to reflect some of that early reference work.

Since then, I've built customer marketing programs at AWS, Google Cloud, and Stripe. Most recently, I led customer marketing at JPMorgan, where I built the reference marketing and advocacy program from the ground up.

One thing I've noticed about the new generation of customer marketers is a move away from scale and volume. That was very much how we worked at JPMorgan. I hope you'll still find something here that applies to your own program.

Below, I'll share how we defined the work at JPMorgan, what two very different client relationships taught us, and the core truths I still build everything around. All of it serves the same goal I think we all share: lifelong customer relationships.

How we defined customer marketing and advocacy

At JPMorgan, we defined customer marketing and advocacy as a programmatic approach to engaging, nurturing, and cultivating client relationships. The purpose was to integrate the customer into our sales and marketing activities so we could build credibility and advocacy for our brand and products.

You'll notice the definition said very little about what this work can do for sales, pipeline, or revenue. That's because we weren't at that stage yet, so this was the definition we worked to.

When we talked to stakeholders who'd never come across customer marketing, we kept it even shorter:

We build real relationships with real clients so we can tell real stories that make buying decisions easier for our target audiences.

Those target audiences included our own colleagues. We thought about what our product marketers were trying to do and what our sellers needed when they talked to prospects and clients, and our work reflected those needs.

What our program covered

Our work fell into three areas:

  • Customer references: I've used every reference platform on the market, but at JPMorgan I was back where I started in 2008, with an Excel-based reference database. We ran a fully managed program with no self-service. People came to us because the spreadsheet wasn't easy to navigate, and it was mostly used by marketing. We supported our sellers too, with a focus on helping them deepen client relationships as an extension of their teams.
  • Customer marketing: This covered the traditional work: case studies, videos, and campaign integrations. We also produced a magazine in collaboration with Wired, integrated clients into tier-one events, and ran experiential activations at events.
  • Customer advocacy: This is where we spent most of our time. It was about building relationships and seeing them through over time as we nurtured them and helped account teams build their own client relationships. It was also where we saw the best results from our programming.