Customer marketing isn’t a “nice to have” in 2025

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.

Back in 2021, I hired a customer marketer for the first time at my last company. 

The goal was simple: help customers use more of the product, partner with CS, and lead with customer stories in our marketing. 

The kind of content that doesn’t feel like it was written by a marketer and sent over at 5pm on a Friday, with fingers crossed the customer wouldn’t ask for edits.

It made sense. But the function was hard to define. It bounced between marketing and CS. So when budget cuts came, it was the first role to go.

We treated it like a “nice to have.” That was 100% a mistake.

If you stripped away the title and just described what customer marketing actually does (builds trust, fuels expansion, arms sales with proof) every exec would say “yes, we want that.” 

But somewhere along the way, we overcomplicated it. Wrapped it in vague job descriptions and fuzzy metrics. Made it too easy to dismiss.

The customer marketing technology landscape doesn’t help. 

You’ve got advocacy platforms. Reference management tools. Customer evidence platforms. 

And most of them pitch like they’re the Cheesecake Factory. Endless menu. Everything sounds great. But you’re not quite sure what you’re getting—or if it’s actually good.

Most teams only get budget for one tool. So if they pick wrong, it’s not just a bad buy. It’s a credibility hit.

And a lot of customer marketers are doing this alone. Building a function from scratch. Trying to show impact. Trying to not get told “can’t CS just do this?”

That’s what makes this group stand out.

Customer marketers are the most helpful, resourceful people I’ve met in B2B. They’re swapping playbooks in Slack, building templates, jumping in to help someone they’ve never met. 

It’s one of the few corners of B2B marketing that still feels collaborative, not performative.

The work isn’t the issue. The framing is.

Customer marketing still gets boxed into case studies, testimonials, and reference calls. But when it’s done well, it creates pipeline, drives expansion, and makes your marketing more believable.

The problem is, the true impact of customer marketing won’t always show up on a dashboard—so it gets sidelined.

That’s why we partnered with customer marketing and advocacy agency Captivate Collective to publish the 2025 Customer Marketing Tech Landscape Report.

We wanted to get a read from the people in the seat—not vendors, not analysts. We surveyed 200+ customer marketing pros about what tools they’re using, what’s working, and what’s still a mess.

A few highlights:

Customer marketing isn’t a side project. It’s a real budget category. A real part of your GTM motion. And the highest-performing B2B marketing teams already know this,

If you’re doing the work (or trying to support the people who are), this report cuts through the typical vendor noise and tells you what actually matters.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• Highline: our own IRL event this August—You’re getting this a day early (because you’re a subscriber). Tomorrow, we’re announcing Highline: our private event in Jackson Hole this August for in-house B2B marketing leaders. Two days to get outside, think bigger, and talk shop with people who get it.

• Season two of The Long Game is back—I met up with Evan in Jackson Hole to kick off Season 2 of The Long Game, where I sit down with impactful leaders in their element to talk personal growth, leadership, and the stuff that doesn’t show up on a LinkedIn resume. Episode 1 goes live this Friday.

• Captivate Collective’s Advocacy Vendor Speed Dating—We’re joining this two-day event (April 29–30) alongside 16 other CMA vendors. If customer marketing is on your 2025 roadmap, it’s a fast, zero-pressure way to explore tools, hear real customer stories, and maybe win a $1K adventure package.

Opinions are cheap. Proof is gold.

There’s a big difference between playing with AI—and building systems that scale it.

In this episode of The Proof Point, I sat down with Dave Boyce, executive chair at Winning by Design and author of the upcoming book Freemium. We talked about what it really means to lead in the AI era—and why most GTM teams are still stuck in AI 101.

My biggest takeaways:

• Curiosity is the new charisma. One CEO asked every exec to report weekly on how they were using AI—across every function. The result? Curiosity became culture. In AI-led orgs, leaders need to model the behavior, not just talk about it.

• AI won’t fix broken processes. Dave’s advice: treat AI like a new hire. Define its job. Measure performance. Tweak as you go. Scaling without clarity just automates dysfunction.

• Agents are coming—but system design still matters most. AI agents are exciting, but without clear inputs and baseline metrics, it’s just noise. Start small. Measure everything. The real upside isn’t just efficiency—it’s compounding growth.

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.