Bridging the Gap: How Marketing Can Support Customer Success

Summary

While customer success may own the post-sales customer experience, they don't have to bare the revenue responsibility of customers alone. Marketing can support customer success through implementing the strategies needed to drive their efforts forward.

By Michelle Voznyuk, Marketing Specialist at Heinz Marketing

Customer success leaders today face an increasingly challenging task of navigating post-sales efforts. Not only are they pressured to mitigate churn, but they must also simultaneously drive revenue through upsells, cross-sells, and advocacy. As marketers, we have a unique opportunity to support customer success. By aligning our efforts, we can create a seamless experience and set the foundation for long-term customer satisfaction and revenue growth.

Bridging the gap

Here are 5 ways we can help close the gap between marketing and customer success:

1. Recognize the Importance of Customer Success

Lead generation alone is no longer enough to sustain growth. To build efficiency, we must start by tapping into our existing customer bases. Customer success leaders play a pivotal role in nurturing customer relationships and ensuring their satisfaction and loyalty. By acknowledging the importance of customer success, we can combine our efforts with the overarching goal of driving customer-led growth.

2. Implement Customer-Led Initiatives

While customer-led growth is not a new concept, many B2B organizations have yet to fully embrace it. By implementing customer-led initiatives, we can contribute to the success of post-sales efforts. We can do this by leveraging customer insights to inform marketing strategies, creating personalized content and experiences that resonate with customers, developing tailored campaigns to drive upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and more.

3. Unlock the Full Potential of Customer-Led Growth

Collaboration between marketing and customer success leaders unlocks the full potential of customer-led growth. By combining the deep understanding of customers held by customer success teams with our strategic marketing mindset, sustainable growth can be achieved. We can provide innovative strategies and resources to optimize customer experiences, identify pain points, and deliver solutions that address them effectively.

4. Create a Predictable and Scalable Approach

One of the key challenges for customer success leaders is maintaining a predictable and scalable approach to their efforts. As marketers, we can help implement systems and processes that streamline tasks, freeing up time for customer success leaders to focus on high-value activities. By leveraging sales and marketing tools, customer success teams can nurture customer relationships at scale, delivering personalized experiences and communications based on customer preferences and behavior.

5. Collaborate and Communicate

Building a strong partnership between marketing and customer success leaders relies on open lines of communication and collaboration. Regular meetings and brainstorming sessions can foster a shared understanding of goals, challenges, and opportunities. By working together, marketers and customer success leaders can align their strategies, ensuring that marketing efforts support and enhance customer success initiatives.

Conclusion

Customer success leaders bare a lot of responsibility when it comes to driving revenue growth through existing customers. But they don’t have to face that burden alone. By collaborating with marketers, customer success teams can tap into innovative strategies, resources, and technologies to optimize customer experiences and pave the way for success in the post-sales journey.

Need help getting started on the path towards customer-led growth? We can help! Reach out to our team to learn more info.