What Is Customer Marketing? Your Complete Guide

Marketing usually focuses on getting new customers through the door. But what happens after they buy?

That's the part that gets overlooked.

Yet your existing customers are your most valuable asset. They’ve already said yes. They know your product. And if you do it right, they’ll buy again, refer others, and become your loudest supporters.

Customer marketing is the way to nurture those relationships.

In today's guide, we'll break down what customer marketing is and how you can use it to grow faster, retain more customers, and turn your brand into a movement.

What is customer marketing?

First, a quick definition:

Customer marketing is the practice of marketing to or with your existing customers, not just to sell more, but to build loyalty, increase retention, and turn happy customers into brand advocates.

It’s different from traditional marketing, which focuses on acquiring new leads and closing sales. Customer marketing is about deepening relationships with people who already use your product or service.

It includes things like:

• Customer newsletters
• Loyalty and referral programs
• Exclusive product updates
• Community-building efforts
• Advocacy strategies

It's powerful because it taps into trust. Your customers already know you deliver. That makes it easier to cross-sell, upsell, or invite them to share their experience with others.

Why customer marketing matters in B2B

Buying decisions are long, complicated, and full of noise. Prospects are bombarded with ads, sales pitches, and cold emails all day, every day.

But a warm referral or glowing testimonial? That cuts through.

According to data from Forrester, more than 90% of today's buyers trust their industry peers. The least trusted group? Salespeople. Less than one-third of study participants said they trusted sales reps at all.

Social proof is something you can use to drive more web conversions with your marketing content, and it's something your sales reps can use to become more credible.

On top of that, most B2Bs are retention-focused, either because they're a SaaS company with a recurring revenue model or another type of company with high-value, multi-year contracts.

Customer marketing provides a clear pathway for both customer-retaining engagement and customer-getting social proof, at scale.

Who owns customer marketing? Marketing, Sales, or Customer Success?

Here’s the short answer: Customer marketing should be owned by marketing, but powered by everyone.

Let’s break that down.

Marketing leads the strategy.

Customer marketing is still marketing. It requires messaging, segmentation, campaigns, and content. That means it should live under the marketing team’s umbrella, with a clear owner responsible for execution.

They’re the ones best equipped to turn customer stories into case studies, build email nurture flows, launch referral programs, and manage brand experience post-sale.

Sales provides insight.

Sales teams have direct lines into what prospects care about and what wins deals. That insight is gold for shaping customer marketing content.

• What case studies help close enterprise deals?
• What product benefits are most compelling?
• What objections come up most often?

Customer marketers can use that intel to craft high-impact campaigns that speak to future buyers using the voice of current customers.

Customer Success builds the relationships.

CS is on the front lines. They know which accounts are thriving, who’s ready for a case study, and where upsell opportunities exist. They’re also the bridge to turning satisfied users into advocates, community members, and referral partners.

If they’re looped into customer marketing efforts, they can flag champions before anyone even raises their hand.

The goals of customer marketing

Customer marketing isn’t just about sending a few newsletters or posting a case study. It's a start, but the real focus is on how you can turn your existing customers into long-term growth drivers.

Boosting customer retention

Keeping customers happy keeps revenue stable. And customer marketing reinforces the value of your product long after the sale. It helps you stay top of mind, share helpful resources, and build stronger relationships through personalization.

This is also a way to bring acquisition costs down. Retention is, on average, up to five times more cost-effective compared to acquisition.

Increasing CLV

Customers who feel connected to a brand are worth 306% more over their lifetime. And loyal customers are 5x more likely to make repeat purchases and 4x more likely to refer your brand to others.

In SaaS, the longer someone stays subscribed, the more they're worth by default.

By consistently engaging users and educating them on new features and use cases, you prevent churn, which, by extension, makes every customer worth several times more.

Driving advocacy and referrals

Customer marketing gives you a way to generate those referrals at scale. When a happy client shares their story on LinkedIn or brings you up in a Slack group, it carries real weight. No ad can compete with that.

Tapping into upselling and cross-selling opportunities

When a customer already trusts you, it's easier to expand that relationship. Customer marketing helps your CS team highlight new offerings and additional features that align with what they’re already using.

Making growth scalable

You can’t rely on 1:1 relationships forever. Customer marketing gives you the systems to engage hundreds (or thousands) of customers with the same level of care. Whether it’s through automation, content, community, or all of the above, the right strategy lets you scale without sacrificing quality.

The tangible benefits: Why invest in customer marketing?

In general, a customer-led growth strategy yields growth, profitability, and long-term sustainability in a way other strategies cannot. Because your customer is at the center of both your marketing and your overall experience, you can innovate for them faster and differentiate yourself from the pack.

Customer-led marketing tactics are a critical aspect of this because (a) they engage your existing customers through personalization while (b) getting them more involved with your brand via advocacy and (c) making it easier to bring in and close new business.

There are several benefits to this:

• Higher close rates
• Shorter sales cycles
• Lower acquisition costs
• More predictable revenue
• Long-term sales, marketing, and CS efficiency
• Stronger brand reputation (and eventually brand equity)

Customer marketing also gives you a competitive moat. Anyone can copy features or undercut you on price. Nobody can (easily) replicate a loyal customer base that’s actively talking about how much they love your product.

The pillars of an effective customer markeitng strategy

If you want results, you need structure. These five pillars are the operational backbone of high-performing customer marketing strategies:

Customer segmentation

Don’t treat your entire customer base the same. Build segments based on behavior, product usage, lifecycle stage, industry, or account value. Then map specific marketing actions to each.

• High-value but low-engagement accounts? Trigger re-engagement campaigns.
• New customers? Serve onboarding content at specific product milestones.
• Power users? Invite them into your advocacy program.

Use tools like your CRM, product analytics, and NPS responses to continuously refine your segments. Segmentation is useless if it doesn’t drive specific action.

Personalized engagement

Use the data you have (purchase history, usage patterns, support tickets, product interest) to deliver 1:1-feeling messages at scale.

Examples:

• Trigger a feature-specific guide when a user hits 70% usage of a core tool.
• Send upgrade prompts only to accounts consistently maxing out their current plan.
• Launch customer-specific QBR recaps through automated video or email templates.
• Remind users of important upcoming deadlines or changes that involve your product.

Personalization is timing, relevance, and context. Creating triggers based on these kinds of identifiers makes your communication feel natural, even though it's going out to thousands at once.

Customer feedback and insights

Customer marketing listens as much as it speaks. Build feedback loops into your strategy:

• Use CSAT and NPS to identify promoters (for referrals or case studies) and detractors (for churn prevention).
• Pipe feature requests into your roadmap content.
• Interview happy users and turn their quotes into marketing collateral.

Then act on the data.

Community building and loyalty

Communities build trust and stickiness. Set up forums, user groups, or a Slack/Discord channel where your customers can connect with each other and your team.

To make it work:

• Seed the community with content, prompts, and discussion.
• Highlight top contributors.
• Share sneak peeks, private betas, or early access opportunities.

Notion is a great example of a company that does this better than its competitors. Their ambassador program, local meetups, online forums (Notion Communities), and content hubs increase product stickiness, generate organic UGC, and drive serious word-of-mouth.

Bonus: Customers will often answer each other’s questions faster than your support team can. That’s scalable support and marketing in one.

Customer education and enablement

More education = more value = less churn. Don’t assume customers know how to use everything they’ve paid for. Create a structured path to mastery.

Build content based on real usage patterns and friction points:

• Short videos on underutilized features
• Webinars targeting advanced use cases
• Playbooks tailored to verticals or roles
• Reminders and alerts for important info

Tie every piece of education to business outcomes, and connect the how to the why.

Essential customer marketing tactics and channels

Tactical execution across the right channels is how you win the customer marketing game. The best programs use a mix of personalized communication, educational content, and community to engage users and drive long-term value.

Personalized communication strategies

It should feel like a conversation, not a campaign. That means personalization at every level, especially when it comes to email and CRM.

Email remains one of the highest-leverage channels for customer engagement. But blasting everyone with the same newsletter won’t move the needle. Instead, build sequences around key customer moments like onboarding, product milestones, inactivity triggers, or renewal windows.

For instance, Intercom sends emails like these to make sure ever user finishes onboarding:

Your CRM already holds the insights you need: feature usage, support tickets, expansion readiness, satisfaction scores. Use that data to create meaningful interactions.

For example, if a customer is close to hitting their usage limit, trigger an upsell campaign before the friction. If someone gave you a 9/10 NPS score, invite them to join a referral or advocacy program right away (you can set this up with Deeto).

Content for every stage of the post-sale

Most customers only use a fraction of your product. Close the gap with deep-dive guides and advanced strategies tied to real business problems.

For instance, a database/PM tool like Airtable might send vertical-specific playbooks that show exactly how to use it in marketing ops, product launches, or inventory tracking, depending on the user profile attached to the email.

Product update announcements are another big one. Every month, Slack sends out an admin update talking about new features. For big changes, they send a notification out immediately.

And remember that your customers often create better content than you do. UGC is one of the most effective ways to drive deal closure, so you need to make it easy for them to share how they use your product.

• Reviews
• Testimonials
• Product tutorials
• Live use cases and demos
• Short-form clips on TikTok and Reels

The more you can get people talking about your product and using it in front of others, the better.

Community building platforms

Online communities give users a place to ask questions, get feedback, and share ideas.

Webflow’s community forum integrates docs, discussions, and a wishlist voting board to make customers feel heard and involved.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud hub mixes tutorials, peer content, and design showcases to inspire and educate.

Live events are another great idea, whether in-person or virtual. They create powerful loyalty loops because you're giving your customers a stage, not just a seat.

Gong hosts customer-led roundtables where revenue leaders share real-world tactics. And Atlassian goes even further: their “ACE” (Atlassian Community Events) program lets customers run events in their own cities, with Atlassian supporting behind the scenes.

That’s community-led scale.

Key customer marketing metrics to track

Maybe it goes without saying, but you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Tracking the right metrics guarantees your efforts are driving real value across retention, revenue, and advocacy.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures how likely a customer is to recommend your product to others. It's a direct indicator of satisfaction and loyalty and a strong predictor of organic growth.

• Track NPS by customer segment to find your top promoters.
• Use promoters as fuel for referral campaigns, testimonials, and case studies.
• Use detractors as early churn signals and route them to Customer Success.

A rising NPS usually means your customer marketing is resonating. A declining one signals gaps in value delivery or communication.

Customer retention rate

Retention is the backbone of customer marketing. It tells you how many customers are sticking around over a given period and how well your efforts are reinforcing product value.

Tie retention changes to marketing campaigns. Did a recent onboarding series reduce early churn or increase product adoption?

Then, break it down by segment to see where you're winning or losing.

Customer churn rate

This is the inverse of retention, and it's just as important to monitor. High churn often points to gaps in education, onboarding, or ongoing engagement.

• Monitor churn at key lifecycle stages (e.g., first 90 days, post-contract renewal).
• Analyze exit survey data and close the loop with targeted campaigns.

If churn is creeping up, your customer marketing efforts aren't focused where they should be.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

CLV tells you how much revenue the average customer generates over the course of their relationship with your business. Customer marketing is all about retaining users longer, increasing upsells, and keeping them engaged enough to stay and grow with you. All these things increase CLV.

Start by segmenting CLV by customer type to identify your most valuable personas. Then, use that insight to tailor content, rewards, and outreach where you see the biggest opportunities and which will have the biggest overall impact (e.g., "Basic" users upgrading to your "Pro" tier that's 2x the cost).

Referral rate and customer advocacy score

Your customers should be your best sales channel. These two metrics help you track how often that’s actually happening.

• Referral rate measures how many customers are actively referring others.
• Customer advocacy score looks at the number of case study participants, community contributors, or social sharers.

With a platform like Deeto, it's easy to track your referral program's performance. Who’s sending leads? What’s the conversion rate? It'll tell you everything you need to optimize your referral strategy.

You should also measure how many customers are taking advocacy actions after key milestones (e.g., feature adoption or positive NPS).

The Role of customer marketing in product-led growth (PLG)

In product-led growth, your product is the main driver of acquisition, activation, and expansion. But even the best product can’t speak for itself; your customers have to.

Turning users into evangelists

In PLG, your most valuable growth asset is a happy, active user. Customer marketing helps identify those users and turn them into loud supporters through case studies, testimonials, reviews, social proof, and, most importantly, user-generated content.

Example: Figma’s superusers are creators inside the Figma Community and on their own respective social media profiles, They share templates and show off designs that inspire others to sign up.

Driving word-of-mouth growth

PLG relies on virality: one user gets value and brings in others. But this doesn’t happen automatically.

Customer marketing accelerates word-of-mouth with:

• Referral programs tailored to power usersa
• Public recognition (badges, features, social shoutouts)
• Campaigns that give users tools to share their success

Example: Notion turns everyday users into ambassadors by showcasing their workspace setups, templates, and productivity tips across YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter. They're even allowed to monetize their expertise by selling Notion templates on its marketplace.

Using advocates for GTM motions

Go-to-market is like any other sales strategy in the sense that advocates who've already proven your product's value are a critical driver across sales, onboarding, and expansion. In fact, with new products that haven't hit the market, even more so.

Customer marketing provides Sales with:

• Real-world case studies tailored to each use case
• References and intros from existing champions
• Community-driven momentum that lowers friction during the buying process

Example: Deeto's users use Deeto's AI-powered widgets and smart-matching algorithms to present prospects and sales reps with the most relevant references and social proof content at any point in the sales cycle.

Tools and technologies used in customer marketing

Of all the things you can't miss, technology has to be the most critical. Manually managing these things will all but guarantee you stay disorganized and fail to execute consistently across hundreds (or thousands) of users.

CRM and marketing automation platforms

These are your backbone. They hold all your customer data and communication workflows. You'll use them to centralize customer profiles and activity, trigger personalized campaigns based on behavior, and align Customer Success, Marketing, and Sales around a single source of truth.

Tools worth checking out: HubSpot, Salesforce, Customer.io

Analytics and feedback tools

These are the platforms you'll need in order to track NPS, CSAT, and feature adoption. They're also how you'll identify promoters and churn risks and collect insights that shape campaigns and content.

Tools worth checking out: Pendo, Hotjar, Delighted, Mixpanel

Email and engagement software

You need consistent, personalized communication to stay top of mind and drive value post-sale. An email software will automate the process of sending lifecycle emails, feature tips, and upsell offers. You can create journeys based on user behavior, and even blend email, in-app messaging, and SMS if you need to (with the right platform).

Tools worth checking out: Klaviyo, Iterable, Customer.io

Customer advocacy platforms

Advocacy is where customer marketing compounds. These tools help you turn satisfied users into active promoters.

Deeto is unique in this category because it helps you scale word-of-mouth by turning customers into on-demand advocates. You can invite users to share feedback, join reference programs, refer new leads, and take part in case studies, all from one dashboard.

That same platform presents segment-specific content to your marketing and CS teams and prospect-specific references to your sales team. And generative AI allows you to repurpose and share content across your entire ecosystem almost instantly.

Want to see it in action? Request a demo and we'll show you how it works.

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