Customer marketing is on the rise. According to Koyne Marketing’s 2017 State of Customer Marketing Report, 93% of organizations agree that customer marketing is important or very important to their revenue growth, and more than two-thirds are planning to boost their investment in customer marketing over the next year.
In spite of this, many organizations still haven’t clearly defined the role of the customer marketer. Rather than placing it at the forefront of their growth strategy, customer marketers are often left to their own devices. In addition, the research shows 27% of companies still aren’t fully tracking the revenue resulting from their customer marketing efforts.
This explains why it’s tough to find a comprehensive customer marketer job description. Most simply focus on the tactical, day-to-day tasks of a customer marketer, without taking into account the strategic importance of the position.
That’s why we decided to crowdsource a more inspiring customer marketer job description. We asked our own advocates in Influitive VIP—an open community for forward-thinking customer marketers—to share the skills and experience needed for customer marketers to boost client engagement, brand advocacy, and (as a result) drive revenue.
Job overview:
- Customer marketers are pioneers. This position is part of an emerging marketing field that is becoming a strategic necessity at customer-focused companies (especially in B2B) to help brands gain a competitive edge.
- Customer marketers delight and engage customers. The customer marketer builds stronger relationships with customers through engaging marketing campaigns. Their mission is to build a community of fanatic brand advocates.
- Customer marketers create value. This position directly benefits sales and marketing teams by increasing customer advocacy (including referrals, testimonials, references, etc.), identifying cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and increasing loyalty and retention. Good customer marketers don’t shy away from proving how they drive revenue. (Learn about the metrics and programs successful customer marketers are using in this report.)
- Customer marketers flex their creative muscles. This position requires creative marketing and communication skills to engage and motivate customer advocates.
- Customer marketers are human bridges. These personable, outgoing marketers are effective communicators who act as a liaison between customers and the rest of the organization. While they need to be able to work independently, they know the importance of collaborating with other departments to create an incredible customer experience and reach business goals.
Personal qualities:
- Strong passion for serving and understanding customers
- Interpersonal skills to help them nurture customer relationships and work with cross-functional teams
- Incredibly creative marketing and communication skills
- Analytical skills to determine marketing effectiveness and ROI of customer engagement efforts
- Strategic thinker that can see beyond the day-to-day grind to help reach marketing and sales goals, create a stronger brand, and improve the customer experience
Knowledge & previous experience:
- Bachelor’s degree with emphasis on communications, marketing, and business
- Previous Customer Service, Customer Success, or Account Management experience
- Technical knowledge of the latest digital marketing tools and channels, including Customer Relationship Management platforms and marketing automation platforms
- Experience creating and executing marketing campaigns and programs that drive customer engagement and advocacy
- Ability to write effective copy is a necessity; graphic design capabilities are a plus
- Familiarity with B2B marketing, lead generation, and sales processes
Strategic responsibilities:
- Build rapport with customers to increase renewals, referrals, and cross-sell and upsell opportunities
- Lead and manage customer engagement and communication programs, such as in-person/virtual events, workshops, annual conferences, awards programs, onboarding and ongoing nurture campaigns
- Connecting with customers to ensure continued education and success throughout the relationship lifecycle
- Identifying key customers that can act as a marketing channel through case studies, speaking opportunities, etc.
- Help marketing and sales meet business objectives through customer advocacy initiatives
Tactical responsibilities:
- Compose and send customer emails
- Manage and maintain engagement and advocacy programs; continually recruit new customer advocates
- Manage a library of up-to-date customer success stories
- Manage annual/biannual/quarterly customer satisfaction surveys to drive change throughout the organization
- Develop a customer lifecycle campaign program and work with marketing operations to implement
- Create special marketing content for account management/customer success to help at-risk customers with training
- Target happy customers for upsell, cross-sell, and advocacy opportunities
- Provide product feedback given by advocates to the Product Management team
Growth opportunities:
- Director of Customer Marketing
- Director of Advocate Marketing
- Director of Customer Success/Customer Success Manager
- Customer Acquisition Manager
- CMO
- VP of Marketing
- Audience Segmentation Manager
- Chief Customer Officer
- Chief Digital Officer
Want to learn how top B2B customer marketers are showing the value of their work? Check out the following stories and resources:
- Get advice from the creator of HubSpot’s advocate marketing program, Victoria LaPlante, with 6 tips how to build and launch a successful program that drives results.
- Learn how Danielle Camara, Senior Manager, Customer Marketing at Marketo, used an advocate marketing program to boost customer retention to 95%.
- Find out how Mary-Leslie Davis, Director of Field Marketing and Customer Engagement at Staples Business Advantage, uses her advocate community to increase upsell opportunities.
- Learn how Michael Beahm, Blackbaud’s first Customer Advocate Marketing Manager, increased referral pipeline 40X between 2013 and 2015.
- Our complete guide to community marketing
This blog post was originally published on Sept. 22, 2015 and updated on June 15, 2018.