#36: Create a Movement. Increase Customer Engagement.

Let's face it, we're all struggling to get customer engagement.

Companies use an average of 130 SaaS applications to run their business. This means people receive hundreds of emails, LinkedIn messages, call requests, QBR decks, event invites etc. 

It's virtually impossible for them to care about every single one of these outreaches. 

So what can you do to get your customer's attention?

You need to create a force that attracts people to you.

In this edition, I will walk you through how the best companies do this and show you 3 simple ways your CS Team can start attracting customer attention.

Let's dive in.

Pull vs. Push

The best companies I know are magnets.

They attract customer interest.

How do they do it?

They are not simply selling good products to solve real-life problems, they are offering something bigger. They create a movement that customers want to be a part of.

Take HubSpot for example.

HubSpot started as a Marketing Automation platform. But that's not what the founders were selling. They were selling a new way of doing business: Inbound Marketing. 

Before HubSpot the default way of selling was outbound and ads. 

HubSpot had a different vision. They reimagined marketing and sales and bet their house on it. 

• They drank their own champagne and grew the business using Inbound.
• They wrote the Inbound book.
• They created the Inbound community.
• They developed educational content to help marketers upskill on Inbound Marketing.
• They created the Inbound conference that brought the community together to learn.

They created a movement, helped people build careers, and in turn gained raving fans.

Gainsight is another company I believe has done this VERY well.

Watch closely how they continue to publish cornerstone Customer Success books. How intentional their leadership team is with their social content. Observe the events they curate (Pulse and the CCO Summit), the communities they nurture. 

It's all about making Customer Led Growth a movement.

How Can CS Team Help With Creating A Movement

You might think "that's marketing's job", but creating a movement is everyone's responsibility.

Think about how much of the "movement" falls into Customer Success:

• Thought-Leadership
• Customer Education
• Community

• Scaled Events (ie. webinars, user groups)

The key to getting this right is to have aligment with your business mission and to understand deeply who your customers are, and what they are trying to accomplish.

You don't need a big marketing budget and a full branding team behind you.

In fact, your Customer Success team can start creating a movement that attracts your customer's attention today.

Here's 4 ideas on how to do this: 

1. Start Creating Thought Leadership: People want to engage with other people and Customer Success folks are in a priviledged position. They know the industry, the customer and the product. A few CSMs creating content on for a Newsletter, LinkedIn or Youtube can be the spark of a movement. This is especially true in nicher markets or underserviced regions where those professional are lacking people to look up to. As a team you can dig into the key problems your customers are trying to solve and start a content calendat that helps you generate relevant content consistently. The good news is thay this content is scalable and can be repurposed over and over!

2. Create a Certification: Customers can't add the hours of content they consumed to their CV and LinkedIn profile. So what do they have to show for it? Nothing. That's why creating a certification is so impactful. Many of us are in professions we can't go to college for, so certifications are a great way to help people highlight their skills, tied to your industry and product, to their network and potential employers. They get something to show for their effort, you gain engaged and educated users!

3. Community: Invest in creating a community of professionals who have similar goals. It's not enough to just put them in a virtual forum. You need to spark conversation, encourage people with great questions or ideas to post them etc. It's not a community if people are not engaged, interested and helping others. A great tip is to make these spaces exclusive, invite-only. We're human after all. And we like feeling special. Check out Soho House as a great case study for creating an incredible tight community, based on exclusivity.

4. Events: Your team is likely already running webinars and office hours. To take this to the next level, it's important to have a "movement" strategy behind these. What are we trying to help our customers achieve? Create a content calendar based on this bigger vision. Make it all about them. Get customers to present at it and highlight their own successes, to build their networl. These events should be about how these professionals can upskill and become better at their craft and network with other professionals, not only about your business. The Gain Grow and Retain events are a great example. 

The great news is that each of these strategies can be geared to different persona's in your customer's business.

That means you can multi-thread your movement and make it revelant for people in different roles and levels of the organisation (ie. Leadership event, User Community, Admin-Focused Newsletter etc).

TL'DR

 If you are struggling to get engagement, your customers might not care enough about your product and company to prioritise it ahead of other items. 

Being part of a movement can change that.

Help transform your customer's business. Help people build careers.

That's true Customer Success.

See you next Friday!