The Customer Marketing and Community Framework
Every good B2B Marketing strategy is based on a fundamental framework. While customer marketing is still emerging, in my opinion, there is a relatively consistent framework that can be applied to the discipline.
The below framework is something that I have cultivated over the past few years in the trenches. It’s simple, easy to remember and helps keep my team on the right track while ensuring the rest of the organization understands our overall charter, approach and tactics. It’s also very helpful for leadership to see a vision (a friendlier word for framework, really).
But what is the framework…not? It’s not a guide or plan or proposal. I don’t use the below to highlight “what to do first when you start a new customer marketing role” (e.g. build a reference community vs. an advisory community). Instead, I use it to level set the strategy, and then apply the strategy to meaningful tactics, tied to priorities, timelines and audiences.
Ultimately, in practice, this framework ensures we are covering the full customer lifecycle, and supporting the customer journey from onboarding > adoption > growth > advocacy (and everything in between).
The Four E’s of Customer Marketing
Educate — Support and drive adoption, time-to-value, product + industry best practices and community. An understanding of the customer journey, maturity curve, and lifecycle is critical here, and cracking the code on “customer engagement content” is a nice White Whale. This is also where you should be thinking more broadly about Community, beyond the user base, and how content, programs and tools can be applied to your broader ecosystem.
Expand — Encourage a progression from baseline adoption > maturity through more extensive usage + product growth. You can do this with the right messaging, customer “editorial content” (tied to product upgrades/launches), and the right channels. Bonus points if you can pull it off using traditional customer segments (industry/title/geo, etc) and/or traditional ABM or Demand Gen tools, such as Marketo, 6Sense, etc. Extra bonus points for segmentation tied to known product adoption and product intelligence-based customer intent signals!
Energize — Harness the energy of educated and expanding users and activate their advocacy, references, referrals and testimonials. Contrary to popular opinion, customer marketing is defined beyond this particualr “E.” But, if you can pull together a tight but vibrant customer advocacy and reference program, then it’s likely the most important one. Your education, engagement, expansion content and themes will rely heavily on what you can pull off here.
Elevate — Provide a forum for customer voice and connect it to product roadmap, vision and industry leadership through advisory, sponsorship, PR and more. This can be the toughest “E” to understand or execute, but it’s also the most essential. Your customers, and in particular, the decision markers with the purchasing power, bought your software/service because they bought in to the “story” behind you. They associate with your movement, and the impact that your technology can have on elevating their own role or career. Lean into this, and make these folks your advisors and storytellers (especially if you are creating a category).
Oh, and tie each of these “E”’s to revenue :).
I hope that helps. Let me know how you level set and structure your Customer Marketing function and approach!
