The customer marketing glow up | Asha May | Ep. 97

[JP] (0:00 - 0:06)

Customer marketing is like the smell of your pie. You've seen the cartoons, the smell that gets in the nose.

[Dillon] (0:07 - 0:08)

Oh yeah, on the window.

[JP] (0:08 - 0:18)

Your phone is bringing you in, right? The problem becomes if people are smelling that pie and then they get there and they open it up and it's not blueberry, you know what I'm saying? Something else.

[Dillon] (0:25 - 0:36)

What's up, Lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:36 - 0:38)

Welcome to the live show, everybody.

[Dillon] (0:40 - 0:44)

And we've got Rob with us. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:45 - 0:46)

What's up, Lifers?

[Dillon] (0:47 - 0:50)

And we've got Asha with us. Asha, can you say hi, please?

[Asha] (0:51 - 0:52)

What's up, CXers?

[Dillon] (0:54 - 0:59)

And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Asha, thank you so much for being here.

Will you introduce yourself, please?

[Asha] (1:00 - 1:51)

Absolutely. Hi, I'm Asha May. I am a principal founder of CX for Growth, where I work with companies to help them improve their customer growth motion.

My background is I've been in B2B tech for quite a few years. So the front end of that was in marketing. For the last 10 years, I've been in customer success.

And more recently, I've had the opportunity to bring those two experiences together around building out one-to-many programs that community, digital engagement, customer comms, building out programs that are either going to augment and support what CSMs are doing in their one-to-one engagement or be that digital motion. So that's me.

[Dillon] (1:53 - 2:14)

It's so interesting. It's a unique intersection that is in demand. I think it's only going to become more in demand in the coming years.

You are in a fortuitous position, I would say. So Asha, every single episode, we ask one question of our guests, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? Can you tell us what that is for you?

[Asha] (2:14 - 3:42)

Absolutely. So I think this plays off of my background and what you just highlighted. I think with all the conversation around digital customer success, scaled CS, I think that as companies start, for those who haven't, but for companies who are just starting to embark on, okay, what does this mean for our organization?

What's been top of mind for me is the missed opportunity I think a lot of companies are finding or not finding is that intersection between their marketing, their customer marketers, and their CS team. So assuming they have a customer marketing function in their organization, having CS leaders to be able to lean into what those individuals are doing, because they've got knowledge of the tech stack. They've got knowledge of how to run those drip campaigns, which let's face it, that's largely what's happening in a digital motion.

They've got knowledge of what engagement needs to look like in a community, so that it's not just question answer around support only that you're actually uncovering who your advocates are, and creating pods of conversation that are going to evolve into better engagement, better knowledge about the product, and be that sort of using marketing speak top of funnel for your cross sell itself.

[Rob] (3:43 - 5:15)

I think Asha knows my thoughts on this. I'll speak to it, because one of the themes of conversation that I've had with Asha is that we're always like baffled a little bit at how often the value of customer advocacy and customer marketing is overlooked by companies. It makes sense, really, when you break it down, because obviously, a lot of CS orgs, or CX orgs, or whatever you want to call them, customer marketing orgs even, a lot of them are built initially with the idea of firefighting.

That's just the nature of a lot of our work in CS. But when you actually carve out, when a company has enough resources, bandwidth, and foresight to carve out a role that is customer marketing or customer advocacy, like a specific job description that's focused around that domain of taking your best customers and turning them into true advocates who their logos plastered all over your website, the positive reviews are all over your website, and G2, and Captera, and whatever else, case studies everywhere, video case studies, PDF case studies. This is one of the things that can actually not only get often overlooked, but it actually impacts the sales cycle that our companies have. We don't think about that a lot.

We think about customer success. We think about NRR. We think about retention.

We think about expansion. But we don't think about how do we come full circle and actually reduce the customer acquisition cost that our sales team has, our sales and marketing teams have. But it's just one of the most impactful things we can do.

[Dillon] (5:15 - 6:42)

I want to jump in and tell you why I think that is, from my experience. I say this all understanding 100% that this is a me thing and not an anybody else thing. But when you say customer marketing, I fall asleep a little bit because I don't understand it.

And even to what you were saying, Rob, everything you said until the very end didn't mean jack to me. What clicks in my head is not customer acquisition cost, it's revenue acquisition cost. And how do we make that more sustainable, more efficient, as cheap as possible?

We can get as creative as we want about how that happens, of which your advocacy programs are one. But at the end of the day, all I want to know is, let's get that one number as high as possible while the other number gets as low as possible. And then let's work out from there.

That's where it starts to click for me. Otherwise, I'm just like, oh yeah, use cases. I spent so many hours as a CSM trying to finagle customers into use cases, or to doing video interviews, and never knowing really what the real payoff was at the end.

So that's where for me, I think we lose the plot sometimes. But JP, I want to hear what you have to say.

[JP] (6:43 - 9:05)

I love this subject because it reminds me of pie. You know what I mean? Customer marketing is like the smell of your pie.

You've seen the cartoons, the smell that gets in the nose, your floatiness bringing you in, right? So that's the customer marketing is the pie. What does that pie smell like?

The problem becomes if people are smelling that pie and then they get there and they open it up and it's not blueberry. You know what I'm saying? Something else.

It's mincemeat. Not even. So I think that's why when I hear customer marketing, I think my mind goes instantly to value proposition.

It goes to the promise of your product, which is what I feel like customer success is supposed to deliver on. I had the experience when I was one of the first companies I was working for. It was very early stage startup, right?

So we have to forgive them for changing their value proposition. But if you really radically change your value proposition, people are going to get mad because you're not going to get that positive effect that you may get from someone referring your product. You're going to start getting people going online and actually speaking disparagingly about your product, which is actually going to hinder your business.

So I do find that customer marketing I think is very important. It's about that promise. I think that I always look at it like, okay, like you said, Asha, like this top of funnel.

And I am, if we talk about a funnel or even like a bow tie, right? Me being on like the other side of that, like I, it makes me feel better about my job when I know that we are actually delivering on the promise that we have given our customers. Because as we know, like sales is in the middle.

I'm not about to trash sales, so let's not do that. But if sales is in the middle and the customer comes in with this idea of what they're supposed to get from the product and sales, maybe, you know, gives them something, maybe that's a little bit different than I come in. I'm dealing with what the customer's expectations have been from customer marketing through sales.

So that's going to affect me as the CSM. So I do think that customer marketing is actually an important thing. I'm glad you brought that up, Asha.

I think that's a good call out.

[Asha] (9:05 - 10:52)

I think both you, JP, you and Dillon brought out two things that I think it's important to clarify that there's a lot that you both shared. Rob, I think you and I are absolutely on the same page but I think the things that both Dillon, you and JP brought out were there are roles in the organization that are supposed to be clarifying use cases. That's typically what product marketing is working closely with product and marketing to do.

And it's making sure that sales in what they're selling on the use cases that are being highlighted, that those are the elements of what your product does, that sales should be selling on those. And then sales should be making sure that communication to customer success is very clear in terms of, okay, the customer bought because of X, Y, or Z use case. So that as the CSM, you're helping them achieve that in their onboarding adoption and those outcomes.

I think where customer marketing comes in is, on one hand, when it comes to digital CS or scale, it's having the skillset and the knowledge of how to use the tech, how to craft those drip campaigns to be that digital journey for the customer. But then also working with customer success in identifying the right customers, arming CSM with the right language on how to ask the customer to be that advocate because they've just experienced something amazing. It's a partnership that I think in a lot of companies is not as tight as it could be.

I think that's where there's a huge missed opportunity.

[Dillon] (10:54 - 11:07)

That's as good a place as any to put a period on it, Asha. That is our time. What a fantastic topic.

Thank you so much for coming in and sharing it with us and with the audience. We'd love to have you back in the future, but for now, we've got to say goodbye.

[Asha] (11:08 - 11:45)

Sounds good. Nice to meet you all. LifetimeValueMedia.com.

Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value, and find us on the socials at Lifetime Value Media. Until next time.