Customer marketing is an approach that focuses first on relationship building rather than transactional interactions. The ultimate goals of revenue generation, reduced churn, and business growth are reached through focusing on current customers rather than prospects, essentially turning them into an extension of your business.

If you want to see these results for your business, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog, we delve into multiple customer marketing methods, exploring how they can synergize with established marketing frameworks to amplify your brand’s success. We’ll also equip you with the knowledge of which platform to leverage in order to attain stellar results. 

What Is an Example of Customer Marketing?

When it comes to B2B marketing examples, customer references and referrals are most commonly associated with customer marketing. However, there are also other effective customer marketing tactics that can leverage your customers as brand advocates. Innovative customer marketing programs also incorporate the following:

• Thought leadership partnerships: B2B companies can collaborate with industry thought leaders, experts, or influencers to co-create content, participate in webinars or panel discussions, or host joint events. This helps establish the company as a trusted authority in the industry and provides valuable insights to customers.
  
  
• Account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns: ABM focuses on targeting specific high-value accounts and tailoring marketing efforts to meet their unique needs. This can involve personalized messaging, customized content, and one-on-one interactions to nurture and engage key accounts.
  
  
• Co-creation of industry reports or whitepapers: Involve customers in the creation of industry reports, whitepapers, or research studies. This can include conducting joint surveys, interviews, or case studies to gather insights and perspectives from customers, and then showcasing their contributions in the final deliverables.
  
  
• Gamification and loyalty programs: Orca champions gamification efforts with features like an advocate leaderboard to inspire healthy competition. Overlapping with the principles of gamification, loyalty programs reward customer advocates for reaching specified benchmarks. These goals can be results-based, participation-based, or a combination of the two. Rewards can include discounted services, tickets to industry conventions, and more. With Orca, creating and running loyalty programs is easier than ever for both internally- and externally-facing initiatives.

Customer marketing strategies are most effective when leveraging the synergy between multiple tactics. Orca gathers the functionalities you need in a single, Salesforce-native application.

What Are the 4 Types of B2B Customers That Respond To Customer Marketing?

The four types of B2B customers that you can reach with customer marketing are:

• Innovators
• Thought Leaders
• Loyal Customers
• Decision-Makers

By engaging with customers and showcasing their success stories, businesses can build trust, establish credibility, and attract new customers.

However, not all B2B customers respond to customer marketing in the same way. Understanding the different types of customers that are more likely to engage with these efforts can help businesses tailor their marketing tactics for better results.

1. Innovators: These early adopters are always on the lookout for new and innovative solutions to improve their business processes. They are more likely to be receptive to customer success stories and case studies that demonstrate the value of a product or service.
2. Thought Leaders: These are experts in their field who are respected for their knowledge and expertise. They may be more likely to respond to thought leadership content that showcases their expertise and promotes their brand, such as reference calls or guest blog posts.
3. Loyal Customers: These are customers who have a long-standing relationship with a particular vendor or brand and are more likely to provide positive reviews or testimonials. They may be valuable advocates for a company's products or services and may be more likely to recommend them to others.
4. Decision-Makers: These are individuals who have the power to make purchasing decisions within a company. They may be more likely to respond to marketing efforts that demonstrate the ROI of a product or service, such as case studies or customer success stories.

To optimize customer marketing efforts, businesses should take the time to understand the needs, preferences, and behaviors of each of these customer types. By tailoring their marketing messages and tactics to effectively reach and engage them, B2B businesses can increase their chances of success and establish stronger relationships with their customers.

What Are the 7 Ps of B2B Marketing?

The 7 Ps of B2B marketing are: product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence. This marketing mix acts as a framework for businesses to develop their unique selling proposition. A well-rounded B2B marketing strategy takes each aspect into account. You can also integrate customer marketing with every piece of your overall strategy:

• Product: What exactly are you selling, and more importantly, what value does your unique offering provide to customers? ​​If the product is well-received by customers, they are more likely to refer others to your company.
• Price: How does your pricing strategy compare to that of your competitors? Is your goal to penetrate the market with lower prices, or are you promoting the long-term value of a high-end product or service? When the price is too high for the quality, customers may be less likely to refer it to others, but when the price is competitive and offers good value, customers are happier to recommend your business.
• Promotion: How are you communicating the value of your offering to your audience? Do you have a mix of organic educational content, paid advertisements, and user-generated content? Are you proactively engaging satisfied customers so they advocate on behalf of your brand? 
• Place: Which channels are you selling your product or service through? Do you have an ecommerce site, a brick-and-mortar location, or do you process transactions at trade show booths? Are you leveraging a referral program to attract more customers?
• People: Who are the members of your team that interact with customers from the start of their buying journey through their continuous relationship with your brand? Are you training each team member in customer service, and are you also preparing customer advocates to appropriately represent your brand?
• Process: Is your entire supply chain optimized? Are you prepared to overcome disruptions to still deliver best-in-industry service? Does your customer pipeline include following up to encourage advocacy?
• Packaging: As part of your promotional activities, does the physical evidence of your product or service match your brand’s messaging? Will decision makers quickly see the value in your offering when comparing it against that of your competitors? Is your offering easy for customer advocates to recommend to their network?

How Do You Start a Customer Marketing Program?

To start a customer marketing program, follow these steps:

1. Define Goals: Do you want higher brand recognition, increased reviews and average customer NPS score conversion rates, or lower costs per conversion as a result of customer marketing?
2. Identify Key Customers: What are the characteristics of customers that will see value in your offering and share that value with their network and your wider audience? 
3. Create Segments and Personas: How will different personas within your key customer groups contribute to your customer marketing strategy? Which initiatives will they participate in? 
4. Gather Data: What types of messaging is your audience receptive to? Which customer marketing tactics will connect with your audience? What information already exists within your company?
5. Communicate: What feedback can you gather from internal stakeholders and leadership? What enablement processes already exist? What works and what does not work?
6. Develop Customer Marketing Content: What can your customer advocates say about your offerings, and how will you get the message out? Will you use podcasts, testimonials, or other methods?
7. Execute: You’re done all the work, now it’s time to launch the program and GO! 
8. Monitor and Adapt: What initiatives do your advocates enthusiastically participate in, and do those initiatives attract new customers? How can you better leverage customer advocacy to connect with your target market? How are your internal teams adopting the program? Simply put, what's working and what's not? Be open to re-defining your goals and to reevaluating your program with internal stakeholders (and customers). Customer marketing is ever evolving.

Put Your Customer Marketing Strategy into Motion with Orca

The key to developing a successful advocacy program is to have your customer marketing team take a proactive approach to customer involvement. While your best customers may make referrals within their network on their own, leave reviews or share their experiences within a community, what about all your other customers? With a solid customer marketing plan, you can enable all your customers to be your champions while educating them on other mutually beneficial opportunities (like speaking at events or participating in community gatherings). Get started with these tips:

• Focus on providing impeccable service. As your customers see impressive results while having a great experience, they’ll be more likely to act as brand advocates.
• Lead with compelling stories. Your current customers’ experiences answer the countless “What if?” questions that can fill prospects with concern. You’ve helped your clients find success time and time again, so put the proof of the value you provide at the forefront of your messaging.
• Futureproof your customer marketing process. Customer marketing is a multi-faceted strategy that can quickly grow beyond spreadsheets and Slack channels, which is why utilizing an all-in-one platform is so critical. Orca provides your marketing team with all of the functionality you need to engage and empower customers to represent your brand. These features are integrated with the Salesforce ecosphere, so you can hit the ground running.

Our users have seen wins like:

• 90% less time spent handling advocacy requests
• 80% less time spent scheduling reference calls
• 80% less time spent collecting feedback

Ready to see what your team can do with the time you save? Discover the opportunities available for your business; book a demo today.