Customer marketing is about turning your happiest customers into your biggest growth engine.

Taylor Bogar, founder of Social Animal, shares how she helps B2B brands build community-driven marketing strategies that generate real revenue. With a wealth of experience leading customer marketing at Apollo and Chili Piper, Taylor explains how to design advocacy programs that go beyond post-sale activities and create value for both customers and prospects.

Taylor offers practical advice for building programs that start with truly knowing your customers, making them the hero of your story and creating social proof that resonates in the market.

What you’ll learn:

• How to design customer marketing programs that drive both community engagement and revenue
• Why making your customer the hero creates stronger social proof and brand trust
• How to tie advocacy and social strategies back to tangible business outcomes

Episode Outline:
(00:00) Introducing Taylor Bogar
(01:43) Taylor's journey from Apollo to Social Animal
(03:00) The entrepreneurial leap
(06:20) Balancing entrepreneurship and family
(12:23) Building successful customer advocacy programs
(14:27) Revenue attribution in customer marketing
(18:30) Mindset shifts for effective customer marketing
(21:40) Getting started with customer marketing
(24:49) Leveraging social media for customer marketing
(25:32) The role of creativity in marketing

Customer marketing is about creating meaningful connections with customers and building advocacy programs that drive business growth.

Brittnee Dawson, Director of Customer Marketing at AlphaSense, shares her expertise in the world of customer marketing and building impactful advocacy programs. With over a decade of experience, Brittnee discusses her journey from product management to customer marketing and the importance of connecting with customers in a human-centered way. She shares valuable insights on balancing creativity with business metrics, the power of data-driven decision-making, and how to leverage AI to enhance personalized customer connections.

What you’ll learn:

• The importance of balancing creativity with data in customer marketing
• Tips for building internal alignment and trust across teams
• How AI is reshaping customer marketing and personalization strategies

Episode Outline:
(00:00) Introducing Brittnee Dawson
(02:59) Defining customer marketing
(04:03) Brittnee's career journey
(05:04) Building customer marketing programs
(06:28) Advocacy programs and success stories
(12:04) Balancing human connection and AI
(13:40) Internal alignment and communication
(21:24) Future of customer marketing
(27:45) The power of timing and the right message

Customer trust is built through life cycle marketing.

JoAnne Baldwin, Senior Manager of Customer Lifecycle Marketing at Bitly, shares her journey in customer marketing and how she’s transformed onboarding programs into revenue-driving engines. She discusses the importance of building cross-functional relationships, creating programs that feel human, and the power of truly understanding the customer. JoAnne also explains how we can use empathy and data to drive retention, align teams, and enhance customer experience.

What you’ll learn:

• How to foster cross-functional collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer success
• Practical tips for using empathy and data to enhance customer experience and communication
• The importance of listening to the customer voice and how it can shape successful marketing initiatives

Episode Outline:

(00:00) Introducing JoAnne Baldwin
(01:20) Joanne's personal passions
(02:33) Defining customer marketing
(04:24) Onboarding success at PitchBook
(07:15) Building trust with customers
(11:36) Onboarding program at Bitly
(15:44) Incorporating AI in marketing
(23:54) Building internal trust and collaboration
(41:17) Data is not clean

Customer marketing is all about turning your customers into champions who help drive growth. Taylor Page, Director of Customer and Growth Marketing at Kong, shares her journey in customer marketing and why having a broad skill set can be so valuable. She shares how to create effective advocacy programs, how to get sales and marketing teams working together, and why it’s so important to keep the customer voice at the forefront of everything you do.

What you’ll learn:

• Strategies for building impactful customer advocacy programs
• How to align marketing efforts with customer success
• Practical career advice for customer marketers

Episode Outline:
(00:00) Introducing Taylor Page
(02:04) Taylor’s career path into customer marketing
(07:09) The importance of cross-team collaboration
(09:16) Growth marketing and its lessons for customer marketing
(12:04) The importance of iteration in growth marketing
(17:51) Balancing growth marketing with customer retention
(22:23) Multi-threading relationships within customer accounts
(33:25) Advice for advancing in customer marketing careers

If customers don’t know how to use your product, they won’t stick around—and they definitely won’t advocate.

Shannon Howard, Director of Customer and Content Marketing at Intellum, shares why customer education is one of the most overlooked drivers of growth. She explains how aligning customer education with marketing creates a stronger strategy. Education delivers the content that drives behavior change while marketing ensures it reaches the right people at the right time.

What you’ll learn:

• Ways to drive behavior change through content
• Career advice for customer marketers and educators
• Building internal influence as a customer marketer

Episode Outline:
(00:00) Introducing Shannon Howard
(04:24) The advantages of a diverse career path
(09:55) Combining customer marketing and education
(12:46) Mapping the customer journey for success
(16:14) Aligning across teams through shared goals
(22:37) The education-led growth maturity model
(26:38) Shannon’s hot take in customer marketing

Hi, I’m Jeff Reekers, CEO of Champion, and I’m excited to welcome you to Customer Champions, the podcast where we explore how the best marketers turn their customers into powerful growth engines.

In each episode, I’ll explore customer advocacy and why it’s the game-changing strategy that can unlock budgets, improve ROI, and create real impact for your business.

If you’re looking to learn how to turn your customers into true champions from industry leaders and customer marketing experts, this podcast is for you.