If you’ve ever tried to build a customer marketing charter from scratch, you know the challenge isn’t the work itself – it’s getting your executive team to believe in it. Customer marketing is still misunderstood in a lot of organizations. Leaders want retention, advocacy, and community magic, but they’re not always sure how those pieces fit together or what the team behind them actually owns.

A customer marketing charter is your North Star — a clear, strategic plan that outlines what your team owns, why it matters, and how your work drives business impact. That’s where most charters fall apart. They get stuck in tactics, miss the bigger picture, and fail to tell a clear story about impact. And without that story, you won’t get the buy-in, budget, or resources you need to scale.

The good news? Building a charter that earns executive approval is 100% doable. You just need a clear path – one that connects your work to company priorities, gives leadership confidence, and shows exactly how your programs will drive revenue, retention, and customer love.

That’s what this article is here to help you do.

I’ll walk you through the seven steps that will help you build a charter your executives want to support – because it solves real business problems and creates measurable impact.

Here are the seven steps at a glance:

  1. Start with the right questions
  2. Do the research
  3. Validate your findings
  4. Focus on the big cross-functional challenges
  5. Prioritize the big three
  6. Create your success system
  7. If all else fails, try it before you buy

Step 1: Ask the right questions

Whenever you’re building a new program, initiative, or charter, start by asking yourself the right questions:

  • What problem are you actually trying to solve?
  • What jobs need to get done?
  • What does your C-suite care most about?
  • How can you make your line manager’s job easier?
  • What can you realistically launch and execute in 90 days?

Don’t forget, your Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) thinks in quarters, so if you can show momentum inside that window, you’ll earn attention fast.

Step 2: Do the research

Okay, next on your agenda is to follow the data. This is where you become best friends with:

  • Data and analytics: For customer trends, churn insights, and product usage
  • Finance: To validate numbers, quarterly performance, and revenue mix
  • SOPs and MOPs teams: For marketing influence, pipeline, deal insights, and adoption data
  • Voice of customer channels: NPS, surveys, reviews, and more

These teams help you understand what’s actually happening with your customers. Once you have the data in hand, you’re ready for step three.

Step 3: Validate your findings

Yes, data is important, but it’s only your jumping-off point. Data alone isn’t just sterile; it’s irrelevant to getting leadership buy-in. You need real customer conversations to bring it to life.

Talk to a meaningful sample of customers – maybe 20, 30, or even 50, depending on your scope. Use a mix of one-to-one and one-to-many conversations, and don’t forget to listen to existing recordings like EBRs or survey feedback.

Your goal is to uncover:

  • Hot buttons
  • Needs and wants
  • Desires and motivations
  • Pain points
  • What’s working and what’s not

It’s also the perfect time to test early ideas: share what you’re thinking, get reactions, and see what resonates. Trust me, if there’s one thing I’ve picked up from my career, it’s that customers love being part of something early.

Step 4: Focus on the big cross-functional challenges

Alright, now it’s time to turn inward and talk to your internal stakeholders across your other marketing teams, sales, customer success and customer support. It’s vital before we progress to understand their priorities and leadership’s priorities.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received is simple: listen to your executives on analyst calls and earnings calls. You’ll hear what actually matters to them.

Common themes may include:

  • Cost savings
  • Efficiency
  • Growth
  • Retention

When you align your charter to these priorities, your work will immediately resonate.

I’ll also add that you should build a strong point of view on how your programs can solve real challenges. My suggestion is to use benchmarks, highlight gaps uncovered through customer insights, and turn those challenges into shared company-wide initiatives. I’ve found that this is the best way to build alignment and momentum.

To truly bring this home, I love this quote from Nick Mehta: “Retention really is the new growth.” It’s become one of the most important metrics in SaaS, and if it’s not part of your charter, you’re missing a big opportunity.

Step 5: Prioritize the big three

At this point in your charter, you should already have insights, alignment, and a clear understanding of cross-functional challenges. 

Now it’s time to focus on the core pillars that will carry your entire customer marketing strategy. I call these the big three, because they’re the foundation for scale, deeper relationships, and long-term retention.

The big three are:

  • Community: The heartbeat that connects, educates, and inspires customers
  • Advocacy: The fuel that amplifies customer passion and stories
  • Lifecycle retention: The engine that drives adoption, value, and expansion

If your charter isn’t anchored in these three pillars, you’ll struggle to scale. These are the areas that consistently matter most to customers and executives – and they’re the clearest path to business impact.

Step 6: Showcasing programs that put customers at the center

Some of the strongest examples come from programs we launched at Marketo and other companies. These include iconic initiatives like Marketo Champions, Adobe Insiders, Adobe Heroes, and Salesforce Trailblazers. They all share one thing in common: they put the customer at the center of everything.

Use programs like these to inspire your own charter. Show your leadership what’s possible and how you can drive the same kind of momentum.

Show what great experiences look like

Great customer experiences aren’t just about sending swag. It’s about creating moments customers want to talk about:

  • Encouraging customers to share their swag on social
  • Building ambassador-style experiences where customers feel proud to represent your brand
  • Partnering with customers to highlight their wins at user conferences and events

We hosted champion bars where customers educate and evangelize best practices and created personalized moments like gifting Nikes to celebrate milestones and spark connection. These experiences gave our customers a platform to shine and create real networking opportunities.

Creating raving fans

When customers feel seen and celebrated, they become your biggest advocates. At our Summit, for example, we highlighted customers across digital signage and event experiences. Members of our Marketing Engage Champion Program proudly displayed how many times they’d earned champion status. That simple visual cue builds social proof and inspires others to join the ecosystem.

And as our product lines expanded from Marketo all the way to the full Adobe Experience Cloud – we used the same playbook to build successful programs across new solutions.

Step 7: Try it before you buy it

This final step is all about piloting. Before you fully invest in a new program or initiative, test it with a controlled audience so you can validate the value, collect customer feedback, and decide whether it deserves broader investment.

One of the clearest examples of this is F5 Insiders, which we launched in the APAC region by partnering with field marketing, sales leadership, and the product team. Our goal was simple: build an advocacy ecosystem for security operations professionals. We created a dedicated nurture, offered meaningful incentives, and highlighted the opportunities customers could unlock by getting involved.

The pilot was a huge success. It became a strong indicator that this advocacy model had the potential to expand into additional territories and eventually scale globally.

Customer-led retention workshops

We launched these during the pandemic to help users adopt Marketo features more effectively – not through us, but through each other. We invited expert customers to teach practical workflows, share real examples, and break down how they were using the tools day-to-day. Between 500 and 1,000 users attended each session, and the learning felt more authentic because it came from peers who lived the same challenges.

The workshops worked so well that we expanded the model to Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Manager, and other solutions.

“Try it before you buy it” isn’t just about experimenting. It’s about showing early wins, reducing risk, and proving that an idea is worth resourcing before you take it to scale.

And there you have it! I hope these examples and frameworks gave you the insights you need to build a customer marketing strategy that earns CMO buy-in and drives meaningful impact.