This article comes from our 2022 State of Customer Marketing panel from our April Summit. Check out similar events here.
Are you ready to revolutionize your customer marketing strategies?
In today's competitive landscape, where customer engagement and loyalty are paramount, traditional case studies and testimonials just don't quite cut it anymore.
The field of customer marketing has evolved, and it's time to explore the exciting new frontiers that lie ahead in this rapidly expanding industry.
Join us as we dive into the minds of industry experts who are reshaping the customer marketing landscape. Speaking at our Customer Marketing Summit, it was an honor to be joined by:
- Dan Cote, Chief Marketing Officer at Influitive
- Gillian Farquhar, Global Head of Customer Marketing at Qlik
- Sterling Jackson, Vice President of Customer Marketing at UserTesting
Let’s investigate some of their valuable insights, practical tips, and actionable strategies that will take your customer marketing initiatives to the next level.
Their key takeaways will cover: How has customer marketing evolved?
- Our expert’s responsibilities
- Measuring the value of customer marketing
- The power of advocacy and community
- Securing budget growth
- Final thoughts
Read on to find out more! 👇
💡 How has customer marketing evolved?
Gone are the days when customer marketing solely revolved around static case studies and testimonials.
Budgets are increasing, and there are opportunities for customer marketing professionals to advance their careers, it's time to embrace a new era of customer marketing that goes further.
Today, it's all about creating immersive experiences, fostering meaningful relationships, and building vibrant communities.
By tapping into the power of storytelling and leveraging the voices of your satisfied customers, you can drive engagement, loyalty, and business growth like never before.
As Dan Cote neatly summarized, ‘customer marketing is in the mainstream, and it is maturing and growing faster than ever’.
He’s absolutely right here, as a role and function, customer marketing has seen significant growth in recent years as businesses have come to recognize its importance.
In fact, he recently asked his audience how important customer marketing is to the overall success of an organization, and received an almost unanimous response of either important or very important.
For Dan, he pinpoints three key reasons for this evolution and growth of customer marketing. Firstly he highlights the way that the pandemic accelerated digital transformation, refocusing everyone’s attention on the customer.
It is this customer-driven model that is extremely successful and profitable for businesses, leading to more businesses investing in customer marketing.
Secondly, buyers are more in control these days, doing their own research and self-educating online, with up to 80% of buyers making their decisions before ever reaching out to sales.
Thirdly, experiences matter, every touchpoint matters and customer marketing plays a very pivotal role in orchestrating these touchpoints across an organization, keeping customers coming back, and growing business.
Gillian Farquhar stresses that customer marketing is the only part of marketing that has adjusted to the way people buy today, and this is why its growth has been so rapid.
Similarly to Dan, she points out that, aided by social media, high-speed internet, and developments in tech, people have more control of their own buying process.
This has also aided customer marketing, as a huge part of the role is exposing customers to existing customers that are happy and getting a lot of value out of your product who use social media and other platforms to expose potential customers to the market in organic, credible ways.
Sterling Jackson, citing his background in customer marketing, has seen its evolution and expansion into a broader set of content and programs that drive customer adoption, renewal, and advocacy.
For him, these programs and a focus on authentic customer evidence are the driving force behind the evolution of customer marketing.
He explained that ‘they are able to connect with people in a very human way’ and executives and management have ‘realized the return on investment that customer marketing programs deliver’.
So it is the heightened awareness in recent years of the importance of the expanded customer marketing function that has aided its evolution further.
