This article was taken from a fireside chat featuring Taylor Page at the Customer Marketing Summit, held by our sister community Product Marketing Alliance in September 2021. Since the chat, Taylor has since changed roles and is now Director of Customer Marketing and Advocacy at Kong Inc.
Like a lot of customer marketers, I came into the role sideways. My background is in nonprofits, but I’ve been working in the SaaS world for seven or eight years now. I've held pretty much every GTM role; I've been an account executive on a sales team; I created and ran a business development and strategic partnerships program; I’ve also been a customer success manager.
So I don't have a traditional marketing background, but I think having been in a lot of different roles, particularly customer-facing and prospect-facing roles, gives me a broader perspective on customer marketing. My experience is especially useful when it comes to working with customer success teams to drive positive outcomes.
Customer success versus customer marketing
The common ground between customer success and customer marketing is pretty vast. Both organizations are hyper-focused on existing customers and everything that working with them entails. We specialize in engaging these users, bringing them on board, and driving ROI so that they see the value of the product and want to expand.
