Customer Marketing

Overview

Your best salespeople are your customers — and they work for free. A customer saying "we grew 3x with this product" is worth more than every ad you'll ever run. The mistake: treating customer marketing as an afterthought (sending a "would you write a review?" email once a year). The fix: a systematic advocacy program that turns happy customers into your most powerful GTM engine.

Authoritative Foundations

• Bain & Company — Net Promoter System (Fred Reichheld) — Route promoters to advocacy asks, and close the loop with detractors before asking anyone for a reference.
• Gainsight — Customer success — Trigger advocacy asks from health scores and outcome milestones, not from the calendar.
• Influitive — Advocate marketing — Give advocates a program of small, rewarding actions (reviews, referrals, references) that build toward bigger asks.
• HubSpot — Flywheel — Delighted customers feed acquisition; design customer marketing so referrals and reviews reduce acquisition cost.

When to Use