Marketing + Customer Success = A CX Power Couple

By Kristen Hayer

Customer Success leaders often don’t give much thought to their marketing organizations. After all, the marketing team is usually positioned a team or two ahead of CS in the customer lifecycle. Every so often marketing team members might come around looking for a customer to use for a case study or provide a quote for the website, but otherwise they tend to stay at arm’s length.

I would argue that CS leaders who don’t engage their marketing organizations are missing major opportunities to collaborate. As the B2B tech space matures, silos between teams are starting to crumble and be reshaped to mirror the experiences that customers are receiving (and love!) as consumers. By partnering with their marketing teams, CS leaders can stay ahead of this change and drive major benefits for their own teams, their marketing groups, and their customers.

WHAT MARKETING CAN GIVE CUSTOMER SUCCESS

· A Brand-Consistent Customer Experience – Marketing teams spend a tremendous amount of time developing brands that match their company’s product, customer base, price point, and value propositions. This includes building logo, color palette, messaging, font, and image libraries that support the brand. All too often, I see CS teams abandon this branding and move forward with a voice and tone that undermines their company’s careful positioning. By working with marketing, or at least within a framework of branding provided by the team, CS leaders can keep their program consistent with the company’s brand.

· Content Geared Toward Existing Customers – Unfortunately, too many marketing teams are overly focused on new customer acquisition, rather than creating content to support and retain existing customers. This leaves CS leaders on their own to build tools for the customer base. Even when existing customers aren’t the priority, CS teams can still leverage the advice of the marketing team as they develop materials. Marketing teams have a different perspective, and by seeking their guidance CS leaders can create stronger tools today and advocate for additional marketing support in the future.

· Talking Points for New Offerings – Typically, marketing is involved in developing sales messaging and materials when their company releases new product or service offerings. Smart CS leaders leverage these materials within their own teams. Even if CS isn’t responsible for selling new solutions, they should always be responsible for talking about them and identifying areas where those offerings might help their customers. By providing their teams with talking points that match what the sales organization is saying, CS leaders create a stronger and more consistent customer experience.

WHAT CUSTOMER SUCCESS CAN GIVE MARKETING

· Refined Customer Profiles and Use Cases – It is easy to hypothesize about which customers might be a good fit for your solution and come up with theoretical use cases. These ideal customers and use cases rarely match the eventual reality, but often that information doesn’t make it back to marketing, or does, but too slowly. Companies change, and one of the goals of a strong marketing team is to continually match the messaging to value propositions that are resonating with real customers. Customer Success is in the best position to convey this information to the marketing team.

· Customer Stories, References and Advocates – Don’t make your marketing team chase you down to line up customers for case studies and quotes. CS leaders can stay ahead of this by teaching their team to follow up a customer comment like, “We just love working with you!” with the question, “That’s so great! Would you be willing to be a reference for us?” Asking this simple question will generate good will (it is flattering to be asked!) and a list of customers willing to work with your marketing team. Be sure to track this list in your CRM or CSP, and proactively share it with marketing.

· Competitive Intelligence – It is easy to assume that your marketing team is up to date on the competitors, but that isn’t always the case. The CS team is on the front lines of customer engagement, and just like the sales team is most likely to uncover information about competitors and areas of risk to your customer base. Anything your CS team learns about your competitors is useful to both your marketing and sales organizations. Share details like pricing, messaging, target verticals, and even anecdotal comments with your marketing team so that they can combat the risk.

WHAT MARKETING AND CS CAN DO TOGETHER

· Identify the Ideal Customer Profile – Often marketing teams take on the task of identifying the company’s Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) alone. This means that they are likely missing information that could help them refine the ICP based on information the CS team has from the existing client base. While there will almost always be legacy customers who no longer fit your company’s ICP, providing up-to-date customer details will make the ICP stronger for the prospects and customers who are a match.

· Provide Sales with Messaging that Resonates – As CS teams work with the existing customer base, they will often identify new messaging that appeals to customers, or current messaging that just doesn’t land right. Meanwhile, the marketing team is typically uncovering the same thing with the help of the sales organization. By bringing these two sets of feedback together, CS and Marketing can work to continuously refine sales messaging to drive revenue.

· Create Content that Increases Adoption – Customer adoption of a solution is typically one of the strongest leading indicators of retention. By teaming up to create messaging, tools and training that support adoption, CS and marketing can improve retention. It is important to track these efforts as a team since that can help create a case for more marketing support for the CS organization. It can also bolster the case for any technology you might need to drive stronger retention numbers.

By partnering with marketing, CS leaders can take advantage of the expertise offered by a team that is focused on creating a customer experience that resonates with the company’s brand and extend it across the customer lifecycle. Are you a CS leader who has partnered with marketing? Share your success stories with us!

The Success League is a boutique customer success consulting firm based out of San Francisco and the UK. We also offer coaching, as well as CSM and CS Leadership Certification programs. Please visit TheSuccessLeague.io for our full list of offerings.

Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with growth-stage tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field: Innovations in Leadership, CS Essentials with Gainsight, and Reading for Success. Kristen serves on the boards of the Customer Success Leadership Network, the Customer Success program at the University of San Francisco, and the Women in Leadership Program at UC Santa Barbara. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.