3 ways we actually use customer evidence (that most companies ignore)

Welcome to Evidently—the bi-weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits (and get honest about my misses) as a first-time VP of Marketing. If this was forwarded to you and you like what you saw, you can subscribe here.

One of my biggest icks in B2B marketing: 

Companies talking about “customer pain points” and “best practices” that they don’t actually follow themselves.

And we wonder why buyers don’t trust vendors.

Experience has always been core to our content POV (see: one of the first posts I wrote back in 2023). Not just because it makes the content more authentic—but because it makes it easier to create. We don’t need to spin up hypotheticals. We’ve got the receipts.

At UserEvidence, we’re not just saying B2B teams should use more customer proof because it’s what we sell. We’re actually doing it—and reaping the benefits because of what we sell.

Here are three ways we use customer evidence inside our own business (and how you can steal the plays).

1. Sales: Proof points on deck

If you’ve worked in B2B for more than five minutes, you’ve heard it:

“Can you send me some customer examples?”

The need for evidence usually shows up reactively when a prospect asks a tough question mid-call and the rep panics.

We flipped that. Our team uses customer proof proactively—at the very start of the deal—to build credibility and shape the narrative.

SDRs pull stats from our ROI study or sharp customer quotes to book meetings and set expectations early. AEs rely on an on-demand library to instantly pull the right story, quote, or data point—no scrambling, no digging through Google Drive folders from 2021.

So when a prospect says, “We’re happy with our current solution,” our reps don’t default to generic “better together” BS. They can show:

✅ A customer who was in the same boat

✅ Why they switched

✅ The outcomes they saw

More trust. Faster sales cycles. Fewer deals in purgatory.

👉 Read the playbook on how our Sales team makes it work

2. Product marketing: Strengthening launches

PMMs spend weeks obsessing over messaging, personas, and enablement. But let’s be honest, none of that matters if you can’t prove what you’re saying.

That’s where the customer evidence library comes in. No waiting on net-new quotes. No Slack threads begging for references. Just type, click, drop it in.

Case in point: Alex Eaton, our Director of Product Marketing, was prepping a multi-feature launch. Instead of spinning up a survey or chasing down customers, he searched our library. Five minutes later: five rock-solid testimonials and stats to plug into messaging.

He also built microsites for each buyer persona—complete with quotes and proof points—so Sales didn’t need to memorize a 30-slide deck.

In Alex’s own words:
"Most marketers simply aren’t used to having this type of access to customer evidence. This part of projects usually takes hours (at minimum) and becomes the thorn in my side. Now it’s easy, there for me, ready to go."

👉 See Alex’s full product launch workflow

3. Content marketing: Customer-led storytelling

Nobody trusts brands that talk about themselves nonstop. That’s why we don’t.

Our content is packed with customer voices—real data, real quotes, real wins. It’s not just a feature of our content strategy. It is the strategy.

Instead of writing guides and campaigns in a vacuum, we build them around what our customers are actually saying and doing.

Example: The CMO’s Guide to UserEvidence isn’t just a pitch. It’s a collection of firsthand insights from marketing leaders using the platform to drive real growth.

The result? Content that doesn’t just sound good. It works—because it’s credible.

👉 Check out the 8-page guide

Takeaway: Your customer evidence should work harder than you do

It’s not just for case studies. It’s not a shiny quote in a PDF no one reads.

It’s embedded, bite-sized, and easy to use across every team.

And yes, we drink our own champagne.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• Case studies are broken—here’s what to do instead: ICYMI, Alex (our Director of Product Marketing) ran a webinar explaining why traditional case studies fall flat and how to fix them. He shared a new framework and real examples and apparently hit a nerve. We blew past our reg goals and even got unsolicited LinkedIn love afterward. It's not your average webinar. (Watch the replay here.)

• [Behind the Scenes] How Cognism built their Sales Companion: This post from the Cognism team nails it. It’s a full breakdown of their new product launch—with a heavy nod to how they used UserEvidence along the way. Basically a customer-led product marketing case study, written by the customer. Always cool to see our stuff in the wild.

• AI Storyboard Generator by Navattic: The hardest part of building an interactive demo is figuring out what to say at each step. This tool solves that. You drop in a URL, and it auto-generates a first draft storyboard with suggested step-by-step copy. I shared it last week on LinkedIn, and clearly, it hit home. Multiple people tagged it as a game-changer in the comments.

Opinions are cheap. Proof is gold.

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking (and tinkering) around signal-based marketing plays this year—testing tools like Common Room and Clay to see what actually moves the needle.

So I was fired up to sit down with Tom Wentworth, former CMO of Recorded Future and now CMO at Incident.io, to hear how he’s approaching signal-based plays, and a bunch of other spicy takes.

My biggest takeaways:

• If you’re chasing the “media company” model, ask if it even makes sense for you. And if it does, protect editorial independence at all costs. Reporters are supposed to write what their audience cares about—not what the exec team wants them to write.

• Signal-based plays > marketing campaigns. Tom’s all in on sales-first, signal-led motions. They get cross-functional buy-in faster, and they’re easier to pivot. Campaigns move slow. Plays move deals.

• Don’t lose touch with the craft. The higher up you go, the easier it is to forget how hard marketing actually is. Don’t.

Listen on Spotify or Apple, or head over to YouTube.

Hold up—what does UserEvidence do again?

Product marketers, marketing leaders, and customer marketers need more than generic testimonials to prove value.

UserEvidence helps create real customer evidence that Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams can use to increase buyer confidence.

We make it easy to collect and share case studies, testimonials, competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data—proof that helps move deals forward.

Need a stat to prove ROI? A competitive insight to handle objections? A case study that closes the gap between interest and decision?

UserEvidence helps you capture and share the proof buyers need.