Interview
The Gist
- Customer Advocacy Drives Revenue. Strategically focusing on existing customers through structured marketing and advocacy efforts can unlock significant revenue opportunities and deepen long-term relationships.
- Cross-Functional Alignment Is Crucial. The success of customer marketing programs depends on tight coordination between marketing, sales and customer success teams, with transparency and continuous communication.
- Micro Events Create Macro Opportunities. Small, targeted events are a powerful way to build trust, amplify customer voices, and open new business conversations—offering value to both the customer and the brand.
In this episode of The CMO Circle, seasoned marketing leader Christine Dart explores the often-overlooked world of customer marketing and advocacy. She shares her journey of shifting strategic focus from acquiring new business to maximizing growth from existing accounts, creating formal customer advocacy programs and executing high-impact micro events.
This conversation offers practical insights on cross-functional collaboration, building customer trust and turning customer success into scalable marketing wins. Whether you’re just starting your customer marketing program or looking to scale it, this conversation is a must-listen.
Table of Contents
- Episode Transcript
- Gaining Stakeholder Buy-In Across Departments
- Strategy & Cross-Team Collaboration
- Engagement Through Micro-Events & Advocacy
- Lessons Learned & Success Factors
Episode Transcript
Michelle Hawley: Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of the CMO Circle. I'm Michelle Hawley, your host and senior editor at CMSWire. Today we have with us Christine Dart. Christine is a marketing leader with a proven track record of driving revenue growth, enhancing brand visibility and implementing data-driven strategies across global markets. We're going to be picking her brain a little bit about customer marketing and advocacy.
Hi Christine, thanks for being here today.
Christine Dart: Hi Michelle, thank you so much for having me, I'm very excited.
Michelle: One of your focuses is customer marketing and advocacy. So I wanted to ask you to start out with sharing a bit about your journey and what led you to make that a priority.
Christine: Yeah, so I do want to start off by saying I'm certainly not an expert in customer marketing. I'm just a marketing leader who has found it to be an important priority and really made sure that we got the discipline launched and executed well because I saw the importance of it. So what kind of started me on that journey was the company I was working for at the time. We really kind of realized a lot of our work as a go-to-market team needed to be shifted a little bit more towards how do we grow our existing accounts versus solely, at least on the marketing side, how do we bring in new accounts, which is kind of where more of our KPIs were, you know, like what I was measured on as a marketing leader was a little bit more on the new business side.
But then, we realized we really need to kind of deepen what we have going on with our existing customers. That's where we were in like kind of a single vertical field. That there's a lot more money to be made there versus trying to pull it in through new customers and a rather niche field. So I started learning all about it. I kind of did a deep dive on customer marketing. What does it look like to kind of start this from not necessarily scratch, but start something formal from scratch because we had elements of customer marketing.
Of course, we were doing things like case studies in conjunction with the customer success team, but we didn't really have a formal plan in place. It was more kind of ad hoc if we kind of got lucky enough that a customer was willing to do a case study versus being a bit more proactive and how do we make that actually a win and a benefit for our customers. How do we get them excited about sharing their stories with our audience, how do we make sure it's beneficial for them, and also just looking at them as people, you know, what's beneficial for their careers, so kind of bringing in the advocacy component and realizing how much there was there available to work with to help deepen those relationships, which then, you know, helps you to kind of do a little bit more with some of those great customers.
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Gaining Stakeholder Buy-In Across Departments
Michelle: So what does that conversation look like when you go to stakeholders or you go to other departments to get them on your side with this plan?
Christine: Yeah, so in my case, a lot of it was kind of common sense since we are already doing some of it. Just maybe the responsibilities were shifted across different departments. It was kind of figuring out, how can marketing support this or even take the reins and lead this? And you know, on our part, making sure we had what looked like a pretty organized plan in place of what, you know, we felt we should be doing and then kind of presenting that to those other departments that would be involved.
And of course, you know, explaining, hey, like there's a lot of ways marketing can actually help deepen these relationships with existing customers. There's a lot that we can do and we're really not putting our efforts there. And just painting that picture. Sometimes other leaders don't necessarily realize that that's something that marketing can support because customer marketing really just started surging in popularity the last few years.
And so I think once you can kind of draw out why this is important, why it can help, you know, basically just showing how it contributes to the bottom line, it gets a little bit easier to get buy in. The other important thing to consider is making sure that you're working with those other teams after you have at least an outline of a plan together to really kind of refine it and make sure you're not stepping on anybody's toes because, you know, a customer success team or the sales account management team. They've worked really hard on developing those relationships. They don't want somebody talking to them on the side and then they don't know about it and then they're missing information and you kind of talk to them about maybe doing some press release and they have no idea, they're in the dark and then they kind of feel silly.
It makes us look disconnected as a company on the back side. So you really want to make sure that that communication is there, that they're in the loop, that you run things by them first to ensure that they feel comfortable that they're going to be involved in the whole customer marketing planning.
Strategy & Cross-Team Collaboration
Michelle: So once it's decided to put a formal plan in place, what are some of the first steps that need to be taken?
Christine: Well, you have to be clear on the why, to sound a little cliche and redundant. But customer marketing is one of those things that can be quite broad. There's so much you can do with it. So it can be really easy to kind of run down chasing shiny objects. Being like, well, we can also improve our onboarding after our new customers have kind of gone through the free trial and signed up. And we can help them adopt new features. So now let's make this whole video library and these courses for them and that can of course take a lot of resources and time.
So you just want to make sure you have a clear plan of, what are my first priorities and how do I want to start with them? Is it just, you know, a little bit more on the revenue piece and you have in mind a few different accounts that you kind of want to target and focus on to begin and maybe, you know, for the first year you just focus on that and have a very solid plan for those accounts. Or maybe you are more of a PLG company and you really want to grow those PLG accounts and figure out which ones are going to be those enterprise customers eventually. You know, that might be maybe their business is growing really fast and you want to have sight on that. So maybe that's part of your customer marketing plan is you just don't want to let those potentially really good opportunity customers fall through the cracks.
So maybe you are focused a little bit more on say like that video library and education and user groups and things like that. So it's really knowing your why are you doing this and where do we start so that you can know walk before you run.
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Engagement Through Micro-Events & Advocacy
Michelle: You had mentioned micro-events being a big part of your strategy. So what do those events look like through a customer marketing lens?
Christine: Yeah, so again, it kind of depends on what the goal is. Micro-events, I feel like that's a little bit of a trending term lately. Technically, I think it's any event under like 50 people or something. So that can be anything from an executive dinner with some of your top customers that you're trying to maybe sell a new product or service to that you think would really benefit them in their business. And you want to kind of get them all in the same room together. It could also look like maybe a bigger than a micro-event, but a small event that's for a very niche audience. And you want to provide an opportunity for folks that work in those job titles to be able to come together and get some education. So perhaps you're putting together a full day worth of panels and talks with industry experts in those fields. And maybe that's a field that doesn't always get so much of that kind of attention when you're going to like a conference, for example.
So for us, we were working in customer service platform technology, so, you know, the customer service leaders don't always get as many opportunities to speak at something like a game developers conference, which was a really big event for us. A lot of the kind of GDC panels are going to be more towards marketing and, you know, revenue and things like that. Or maybe even, you know, new video game technology, and there's not so much on the customer support side of things.
So for example, that was something that we decided to do with some of our partners, a group of us to put together something that would be valuable for that audience since it's not catered to as much and ended up going really, really well because one, there was a demand for it because it was a niche that wasn't really tapped yet as far as providing education. And two, it gave our customers opportunities to sit on panels and be able to talk. So, you know, kind of developing their public speaking repertoire. But also some of our customers that were really involved wanted to help to design the program structure and what are the topics going to be that day and turn it really into a customer advisory board that they could participate in throughout the year. We made these events recurring.
That's kind of one example. Micro-events can look like all kinds of things. Sometimes they're also local user groups. So again, if you're maybe more on that PLG side of things where you're trying to kind of help people develop their use of the tool, find out what more they can do with the tool, know, small user groups might be a really great way to do that.
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Michelle: So it sounds like providing something valuable to the customer or letting them share their expertise is a big part of these events, but what other ways do these events help deepen the relationships with customers?
Christine: Yeah, so you really want to do this in conjunction with your sales team. So for us, we had planned this with the sales team. The sales team was a really big part of this, the customer success team as well. And so they helped kind of decide which customers we really wanted to make sure came there if possible. They helped figure out who might be good to speak at these. And of course, the sales team was present as well and the customer success team so they could spend time face-to-face, because we're working in a digital world, there's just something missing when everything's kind of over a screen and you know sure enough when you're kind of face-to-face you just find that these relationships can deepen in a different way than when you're always kind of talking over a computer.
So maybe not as tangible of a factor but it's something that I think anybody that's been to in-person events lately after kind of doing the Zoom thing for so long, you'd probably understand what I'm talking about.
Michelle: So when it comes to planning these events, how do you identify the right customers and then motivate them to come to these events, like speaking on a panel or something similar?
Christine: Yeah, so, it's not going to be for everybody. You really have to make sure this is something that is exciting to them and an opportunity that they want to do. You certainly don't want to push somebody into that if you don't think that they're going to be really comfortable or they're expressing that it might not be a comfortable thing for them. So yeah, that's the first thing. Is this something that they would want to do? Is it helpful for their career? Do they need to get approval from their company?
Oftentimes that's the case, know, because their company name is going to be behind it. So, you know, they need to make sure that they're like, our team is okay with it, for example. So just being able to work with them on that, making sure that they can see kind of the outline of the talking points ahead of time so that they don't feel like they're going into it blind. You just want to make it as comfortable as a process as possible and help them as much as possible.
For example, we had a couple of customers that were doing a panel together and they had the talking points all set. They were very confident about what they wanted to talk on, but they just didn't really have time to do the slides. And they're like, hey, we're not designers. Is there anybody there that could help? And I actually just stepped in and I did their slides for them because I like to design things on occasion. And I was like, I can do it. I can do it this week.
Just being able to step in and help with whatever and make it as easy as possible is I think the the best thing you can do to make it great for them.
Michelle: Once the event is over, how should marketers measure if the event was a success or how much of a success it was if you're looking at a scale?
Christine: Yeah, it's tricky. So from a purely customer marketing standpoint, what we did is we kind of had which accounts had representatives show up at the event. And we also tracked, you know, were they involved in speaking? Were they just an attendee? Were they part of the customer advisory board? So kind of knowing how they were involved and having a dashboard to just keep kind of track that. So then we were looking at this as a touch point. So after we've added them to a Salesforce campaign, you know, in the next like six months, well, probably not even that long, but you know, the next few months you see kind of a new deal come up in the pipeline.
Generally, the account rep that is in charge of that knows that like, hey, we had this conversation while we were at such and such event. And we probably wouldn't have had that conversation if we weren't face-to-face there. So we're attributing this deal that's in the pipeline to that event. So then it's kind of listed that way in the campaigns, so if when that deal closes, that's something that customer marketing can say that they supported. And basically, it's pipeline that you're measuring.
Touchpoints, it's tricky because at the end of the day, know, a CEO doesn't necessarily care about how many touchpoints, but also a really savvy CEO that understands that marketing and sales are not just, you know, the most recent activity you've done or the first activity you've done, but it's an amalgamation of all the touch points. understand how important those are, especially when, you know, it's a face-to-face interaction. And we did, we saw some deals that were worth a couple million dollars come into the pipeline and close that.
The sales team also agreed or attributed to the time spent at those events. So again, that's like also the alignment with the other stakeholders is making sure everybody kind of understands like this isn't just like you're going to close that day, you know, $6 million, but this is a touchpoint along the way. And, you know, you got to kind of keep the relationship going at that point. But also, for us, the success of the event wasn't solely on what was happening with existing customers, but also new leads, because we're using the events to bring in new leads as well. So that was kind of an easy, slightly more measurable KPI to be able to throw out of like, we spent this much, took this much planning, but we also had this many more leads in the funnel.
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Lessons Learned & Success Factors
Michelle: Stepping back from the events themselves and looking at the customer marketing advocacy program as a whole, what would you say are the most critical factors that go into making it a success?
Christine: I would say making sure that you're really in-sync with your sales and customer success teams. And that can be tricky too because sometimes you all have a different idea of how maybe things need to be done. The sales team doesn't understand, you know, what needs to go into it from the marketing standpoint as well. And, you know, maybe they don't always see how important everything is. I'm not saying that was the case for us, but sometimes, you know, we know that happens.
Just having a lot of conversations and making sure like nobody's kind of in the dark, I would say that's the most important thing. Second is listening to the customers and their feedback on the events. So we always made sure that we collected a lot of feedback after the fact, both from existing customers that participated, also just from even strangers that were brand new that kind of walked in that day and making sure we got feedback from everyone that was willing to contribute it and really taking that to heart and using that to kind of develop our content for the next one or even like content in between events that happens virtually and really making sure that we're doing that.
The other thing is making sure that you're not like overtapping any accounts for these things, especially if you're doing events as a series. Sometimes when you have one customer that's really excited to participate with you in these things, it's kind of easy to want to be like, so and so loves doing this, we'll ask them again. And then you ask them like three times, and they're like, okay, whoa, I'm really busy at my own job. I can't keep doing this. Just give me a little break. So you don't wanna kind of overwork your customers either just because they enjoyed it one or two times.
Michelle: So one last question before we go. In all of your efforts in customer marketing and advocacy, are there any lessons or challenges that came up that you could advise other marketers to avoid?
Christine: Yeah, and it's still in line with kind of this cross-departmental communication.
The way that my team was structured is I had one individual that was a specialist in customer marketing that kind of ran the show on all of that. She would run things by me when she wanted to try something new or make sure that she was pursuing the right goals that I had in mind.
And then, you know, she was working with whoever needed to, you know, help out from the customer success team and the sales team and kind of managing all of that. And once you start kind of getting spread out through the different departments and there's different people contributing different things, it can be a little bit easier to forget to mention to like, hey, so and so, by the way, we're doing this, this and that, because you just kind of feel like, they know we're working on this. So sometimes somebody ends up getting left in the dark accidentally and then that can cause a little friction.
So you just want to make sure that you are really having a lot of transparency in your customer marketing program. So at the end of the day, customer marketing, it's on you. It's on marketing to make sure that everybody's kind of happy in this and feels comfortable and like they're not in the dark. So you just want to make sure you do whatever you can to give everybody visibility and transparency and you know, anybody that's an account owner.
Michelle: Thank you so much, Christine. It was great talking with you today.
Christine: Yeah, thank you, Michelle.
Michelle: Thank you everyone for tuning into this episode of CMO Circle. Check back next time with us next month for an all new episode. And if you're looking for more great content, don't forget to take a look at our other CMSWire TV shows, The Digital Experience and Beyond the Call. See you next time.
