All businesses need customer marketing, as this relationship-centric approach is one of the most effective and powerful ways to promote your products or services. Yet like any great marketing strategy, it doesn’t come without its difficulties. Perhaps you’ve pondered such challenges, like:

• How do we pinpoint the right brand advocates from our large and diverse customer base? 
• Which customers would participate in a case study or share genuinely about their experiences with us?
• How do we determine the ROI of such a program to demonstrate results when the feedback is largely qualitative or anecdotal?

If these questions feel familiar, then you’ve felt the common stressors of creating customer marketing programs. Keep reading to discover the latest trends and real-life success stories that can help you elevate your customer marketing game.

B2B Marketing Trends for 2023: The Rise of Customer Advocacy

In the coming years, the best B2B marketing campaigns will continue leveraging the power of satisfied customers to drive growth, increase brand awareness, and build stronger relationships with target audiences. Here are a few popular types of customer marketing and how they fit into the latest B2B marketing trends:

Customer References

A robust customer reference program involves cultivating a pool of delighted customers who are eager to share their positive experiences with prospects. Recent studies have identified various ways businesses utilize customer references, such as:

• Capitalizing on them as a pivotal sales and promotional advantage
• Sensing the market to effectively anticipate shifts in demand
• Developing templates for refining internal competencies and organizational learning
• Establishing a framework for creating and developing new products and offerings

Many companies use customer references as the foundation for the larger customer marketing program. Establishing a foundation of quality, trusting relationships with a core customer group allows for future program expansion into other areas of customer marketing.

To build such a robust campaign, many marketing teams find success using Orca. The Orca platform empowers businesses to build and expand customer reference programs with features like advocate campaigns, loyalty programs, rapid adoption, and much more. 

Influencer Marketing

In today's hypercompetitive market, building trust and credibility with potential customers is crucial for any business. A recent Global Nielsen Marketing study shows that influencer marketing can generate brand recall rates of over 70% following exposure to advertisements, surpassing the effectiveness of conventional media content. 

Influencer marketing is often thought to be reserved for consumer-facing brands and social media stars, but B2B companies can also reap the benefits. By leveraging satisfied customers to share their experiences with their followers, businesses reach new audiences and boost their credibility.

Case Studies

73% of the most successful content marketers have already harnessed the power of case studies, according to the Content Marketing Institute. And, interestingly, nearly half of SaaS companies report that case studies are the prime ingredient to driving sales. 

These studies are a crucial element of customer advocacy in B2B marketing because they provide tangible, published proof of a company's success. They function as compelling narratives of how your business solved a real-world problem, including concrete evidence that can inspire and attract others facing similar challenges. 

But how do you get customers to agree to participate in a case study? By using Orca, you’ll have detailed metrics on your entire customer base, so at any point, you can select an eager candidate for such a request. Orca also offers automated advocate usage management, so you can ensure you’re starting the conversation around content creation at the right time. 

What Is an Example of Customer Marketing?

Let’s explore a popular enterprise customer marketing example and a smaller scale use case, as approaches may vary depending on the size of the customer base. Nonetheless, the potential for customer marketing to drive growth and enhance brand recognition remains a formidable force, irrespective of the scale of the customer base.

The Marketing Champions: Salesforce's Army of Brand Advocates

Salesforce has a powerful customer marketing program—aka, the Marketing Champions program. These individuals have demonstrated their expertise and leadership in using Salesforce's marketing solutions, and they actively promote and educate others on the benefits of these products through their own channels and networks. 

Salesforce has recognized these individuals by creating the Marketing Champion program, which provides them with exclusive access to events, training, and resources. The program also gives these Champions opportunities to share their experiences and insights with other Salesforce customers. By leveraging the passion and knowledge of their customers in this way, Salesforce is able to not only build stronger relationships with these customers but also attract new ones through the power of advocacy and word-of-mouth marketing. 

Building a Stronger Foundation: How Buildr Uses Customer Marketing to Expand Its Reach

Buildr, an out-of-the-box construction CRM company, is quite familiar with the power of customer marketing. However, as they grew, they realized they needed a solution to manage their growing customer advocacy base as well. And while they had a promising group of veteran customer advocates, they sought a smoother transition of knowledge to newer ambassadors. 

Enter Orca. With Orca, Buildr created a strong resource library for new and existing customer advocates to utilize. By equipping new advocates with the same knowledge and reference materials as their seasoned counterparts, Buildr saw an uptick in the effectiveness of its customer advocacy program. This approach not only prevents the overuse of Buildr’s star references, but it also accelerates the ramp-up time of new advocates, allowing them to gain expert-level knowledge and skills quickly.

Additionally, Orca's analytics and reporting capabilities enable Buildr to monitor the outcomes of their customer advocacy initiatives and fine-tune their approaches as necessary. They can now identify the most impactful types of customer narratives in terms of generating conversions, as well as determining the most effective channels and tactics for reaching out to potential customer advocates.

How Do You Attract New Customers in B2B? Turn Your Customers into Advocates with Orca

At Orca, we believe that one of the most effective methods of attracting customers is through the voice of your current and satisfied customer base. That's why we’ve developed a platform that helps businesses transform their customers into advocates.

By empowering your Sales and Marketing teams with Orca, you can channel the strength of social proof, personal recommendations, and so much more. Some of Orca’s many dynamic features include:

• Fatigue management features to track your customer advocates in real-time, ensuring that they are not overused and that they remain engaged and energized. 
• Workflow management options with custom nominations and advocate requests processes as well as streamlined scheduling capabilities, saving valuable time on traditionally manual tasks.
• A Salesforce native platform, so there's no need to worry about data integration between external systems and Salesforce.
• Advanced reference call functionality to easily find and connect with the right references for any scenario.
• A metrics dashboard to monitor and compare critical metrics such as Win Rate, Deal Velocity, and ASP.

Ready to turn your best customers into ideal customer references? Book a demo with Orca today and discover how our advanced customer advocacy platform can help you transform your satisfied customers into an unstoppable marketing force, driving growth and success for your business.