#announcements

At my org and my previous 2 orgs, customer expansion marketing materials (case studies, blogs, infographics, best practices, etc.) live with customer marketing as well as customer upsell nurtures.

Customer Marketing has rolled up to demand gen leaders in my past org, and roles up to vp of marketing at my current org.

I have been co-managing the case study process this year, but will take over entirely in 2023 as we build out an upsell program within customer marketing. I will be leveraging a lot of information generated as part of demand gen activities, but tailoring the delivery of the content to existing customers. We're also working on what go-to-market means for customers as we focus on product actions. I report to the VP of Corporate Marketing to the CMO with a dotted line to Chief Customer Officer.

We (customer advocacy) owned the case study process in full until recently when our content team took it over. This is a decision I disagreed with and it's not going well so far in that they don't have any goals connected to sales or account expansion. Advocacy here sits inside PMM who reports up to the CMO.

same as @Kristine Kukich and @Rachel Ward that customer marketing owns this practice. we work very closely with PMM and content on these efforts. I report directly to CMO. I will say content for customer expansion is where we lack the most so always trying to get more content!

IMO the best run customer marketing programs have their fingers in any activity that engages a current customer. I think that's a great way to think about it when evaluating what tasks fall outside of the CMA purview.

I agree with Alexie - Customer Marketing should own lifecycle, advocacy and community. I put anything expansion/retention related under lifecycle. The Customer Marketing leader should report to the head of marketing (VP or CMO) and should be a peer to Demand Gen, Product Marketing, etc.

As I interview, I will tell you that the responsibilities vary widely across companies, as does the reporting structure I am seeing. Some roles I interview for report to Product Marketing, some Demand Gen, others to the VP/CMO.

I agree with @Rebecca Grossman fully on the ideal scenario here. What CM should look like and what CM/Advocacy does look like are often two different things.

Probably not going to be surprising the I suggest Customer Marketing owns these and not other teams.

CS is typically focused on the relationships in front of them, not scale. Demand Gen and ABM can be partners in execution and distribution, but if it focuses on the customer, I think CM should drive it. In my experience, most people on marketing are going to be focused pre-sale, not post-sale. That work will always get prioritized. Customer Marketing owning expansion stories & campaigns means there’s an owner who will actually prioritize making it happen.

These are great answers - thank you all! and thanks for saying where CM sits in your orgs.

I would also add that there should be a dotted line to customer education - if we're focusing on scale, CE and CM are a great team to align with CS to make a knockout CX. (just liked all the letters 😉 )

I know @Jan Young has thoughts here!

Excited to join the conversation...

Hi @Jan Young - do you have any words of wisdom to add?