What is the best definition of customer market you

·Apr 28, 2026 05:30 PM(edited)·

What is the best definition of customer marketing you’ve seen? Customer advocacy? Community? Lifecycle? Voice of Customer? Customer education? Executive engagement? Customer communications? Looking for a definition for each pillar as well as customer marketing overall. Something that would make sense to professionals both inside and outside of marketing. Thanks!

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5 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Abbas Safdari
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Best definition I've landed on: customer marketing is everything that drives value from and for existing customers post-sale. Sales brings them in; customer marketing helps them stick around, grow, and advocate. The pillars you listed are mechanisms and they all serve three things: retention, expansion, advocacy. Lifecycle, education, and comms mostly drive retention and product adoption. Community and advocacy programs drive advocacy (and feed retention). Executive engagement is expansion and senior-buyer relationships. VoC feeds all of them. All of this travels well outside marketing because retention, expansion, and advocacy are how CS, product, and execs think about the customer base too. Happy to compare notes on how I've seen orgs map team structure to those three outcomes.
Gabrielle Herrera
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All of those ?s are under the umbrella of customer marketing. I wouldn't use any as the sole definer.
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Jennifer Lyons
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(edited)·
The context is telling non customer marketers what we do.
Nicole Saunders
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I define community as the programs and spaces that are focused on connecting members/users/customers to one another.
Tamie Zrecny
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Executive engagement turns executive conversations into revenue. The largest deals close on trust between senior people, and trust gets built deliberately through programs designed for the purpose. Another way to describe it is: Executive engagement is how you expand inside your largest accounts through direct relationships with the senior buyers who control budget and renewal. VoC guides you on what to talk to them about.

Abbas Safdari
·
·
Best definition I've landed on: customer marketing is everything that drives value from and for existing customers post-sale. Sales brings them in; customer marketing helps them stick around, grow, and advocate. The pillars you listed are mechanisms and they all serve three things: retention, expansion, advocacy. Lifecycle, education, and comms mostly drive retention and product adoption. Community and advocacy programs drive advocacy (and feed retention). Executive engagement is expansion and senior-buyer relationships. VoC feeds all of them. All of this travels well outside marketing because retention, expansion, and advocacy are how CS, product, and execs think about the customer base too. Happy to compare notes on how I've seen orgs map team structure to those three outcomes.
Gabrielle Herrera
·
·
All of those ?s are under the umbrella of customer marketing. I wouldn't use any as the sole definer.
👆🏽1
Jennifer Lyons
·
(edited)·
The context is telling non customer marketers what we do.
Nicole Saunders
·
·
I define community as the programs and spaces that are focused on connecting members/users/customers to one another.
Tamie Zrecny
·
·
Executive engagement turns executive conversations into revenue. The largest deals close on trust between senior people, and trust gets built deliberately through programs designed for the purpose. Another way to describe it is: Executive engagement is how you expand inside your largest accounts through direct relationships with the senior buyers who control budget and renewal. VoC guides you on what to talk to them about.