Customers have unique insights into your company, your products, your services, and even your pitfalls and successes. We’ve recently seen the rise of companies hiring for “Customer Marketing Managers.” What is Customer Marketing and why is it important? We’ll walk you though the job here…
What is Customer Marketing and why is it important?
We’ll start with the “what.” At it’s essence, Customer Marketing is all about understanding your customers and leveraging their unique experiences and insights to improve your business.
Why is that important? Recent research shows that consumer trust in brands matter. In fact, the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer found that even if customers like your product, they will eventually stop business if they don’t trust the brand. That’s why understanding your customers and acting based on the voice of the customer is so critical.
How does Customer Marketing work?
At the most basic level, customer marketing involves learning everything you can about your customers and sharing that information to key stakeholders both internally and externally. After all, customers have the biggest influence into revenues, including both direct influence into recurring revenues and indirect influence into potential sales. Here are some ways a customer marketing program can impact many aspects of a business.
How does Customer Marketing influence marketing?
Part of business strategy and marketing is understanding the market. No one knows better than your customers why you won their business. Engaging in these win/loss conversations can provide significant market and competitive intelligence and help you determine what’s most important to your customers. This can help you develop or revise your customer value proposition.
Customers can also help you win new business. They can participate in case studies, write customer reviews, or even act as a personal reference speaking to prospects making the same decision they once did.
How does Customer Marketing influence products?
As actual product users, customers have unique access to your products. Beyond the sales demos and marketing speak, they know the product in and out. They know whether it’s helping them or hindering them. Companies should encourage customers to share their experiences in order to learn and improve. Sharing the information to product strategies and leaders internally is critical. Feedback loops can include customer review sites like TrustRadius or IT Central Station, Customer Advisory Boards, or even internal message boards that allow customers to interact with each other and share feedback.
Once you have feedback from users, Product Managers can incorporate customer experiences into existing market research to prioritize product feature updates, roadmaps, or even find new market opportunities.
How does Customer Marketing influence Customer Success (CX)?
Customer success is arguably the most important part of any business. Making sure they are realizing significant value is huge to customer advocacy and retention. Part of this value is making sure customers feel appreciated and heard. This mean if/when companies request feedback, the feedback is actually considered in key business decisions or product updates. Though the action matters, a huge part of making customers feel heard is communicating the changes that were made based on customer feedback.
In addition to making sure customers feel heard, Customer Marketing Managers want to know that customers are receiving the maximum value. Sometimes, that means sharing additional products to existing customers or helping them upgrade to newer versions of outdated products.
How does Customer Marketing influence Sales?
Finally, Customer Marketing, of course, impacts sales. In the past, many buyers turned to Industry Analysts including Gartner and Forrester. And, many still purchase research to see how vendors compare on the Magic Quadrant or Wave. But, now, many buyers are also looking to user reviews to see what products people like them are using and how they feel about their experiences with that vendor. Having customer reviews, case studies, and customer references is critical for many B2B or larger purchases.
As many businesses know, retaining customers is much cheaper than finding new ones. That’s why understanding your customers, their needs today and in the future, and making sure they feel heard is critical. If you’re looking for the position to help turn customers into advocates, make sure your customers are maximizing ROI, and helping turn customer feedback into actionable business decisions, Customer Marketing Managers can help.