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In today's volatile B2B landscape, where customer acquisition costs are climbing and budgets are under scrutiny, CMOs are re-evaluating their growth strategies. 

The traditional obsession with top-of-funnel is giving way to a more holistic approach that emphasizes the entire customer journey. At the heart of this shift is Customer Marketing, a function that's rapidly gaining prominence for its role in driving retention, expansion, and advocacy… along with a host of other business-critical insights and impact across the organization. 

From Funnel to Flywheel: Why the Journey Doesn’t End at Closed-Won

Winning by Design's Bowtie Model, a customer-centric framework for recurring revenue businesses, redefines how we approach revenue growth. Unlike the traditional funnel, which ends at "closed-won," the Bowtie recognizes the most critical stages of the customer journey: onboarding, adoption, impact, and expansion, all of which begin post-sale.

This model reinforces a truth CMOs are embracing: Sustainable growth depends on continuous customer value. A company I recently spoke with realized that they were spending more than 80% of their marketing budget on new customer acquisition, yet over 50% of their growth came from existing customers. That disconnect led them to rethink their approach, and models like the Bowtie helped reorient their strategy around lifetime value.

Customer Marketing: The Most Underrated Growth Engine in SaaS

Customer Marketing professionals are uniquely positioned to orchestrate the post-sale journey. Their work bridges marketing, product, sales, and customer success, aligning the organization around customer impact. 

They deliver against retention, expansion, advocacy, and product-market fit, because deeply engaged and aligned customers stay longer, buy more, and provide critical insights, guidance, and support when they feel heard and you’ve built trust.

Customer Advocacy in Practice:

Strong advocacy programs identify and nurture customer champions to amplify credibility through peer influence and create authentic, customer-voiced assets such as case studies, testimonials, and peer stories that support demand gen and sales enablement.

These programs deliver assets like video testimonials that are used in demand gen, customer references that help close deals, and referral programs that generate warm leads. 

A Simple 5-Step Customer Advocacy Program:

1. Identify your most engaged and satisfied customers
2. Engage them in a mutually beneficial way - not just transactional requests! 
3. Reward them with recognition, access, visibility, and true partnership
4. Activate them by inviting them to speak at events, on webinars, and in their preferred forums
5. Measure impact across metrics like NPS, referrals, & content engagement

When done right, Customer Marketing doesn’t just celebrate the customer, it mobilizes them. Satisfied customers become collaborators, advisors, and advocates, which accelerates retention and unlocks expansion.

Customer Advisory Boards (CABs): The Hidden Force Behind the Best B2B Brands

When you’re ready to take things to the next level, it’s time for a Customer Advisory Board. 

Every major B2B company you admire - the Fortune 100’s like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, & Salesforce - the newer tech juggernauts like Snowflake, Braze, ServiceTitan - and the growth-stage unicorns & soonicorns like Movable Ink, 6Sense, Botify, Fivetran - all run formal CAB programs.

Why? Because CABs offer a structured way to tap into the strategic intelligence of your best customers and leverage it across your company’s go-to-market strategy, marketing and brand positioning, product roadmap, and of course, develop loyalty and advocacy.

CABs stand out for their ability to influence strategy and drive measurable outcomes. The best CABs are far more than executive roundtables, they are structured programs that offer:

• Product Development Feedback: Ground-level input that helps prioritize roadmap decisions. 
• Strategic Market Insights: Candid perspectives on trends, pain points, and competitive positioning. 
• Customer Engagement: A sense of partnership that strengthens loyalty and deepens account penetration.

Consider the aforementioned industry leaders who rely on CABs to shape enterprise product strategy, improve retention, and fuel long-term growth. These companies don’t run CABs reactively. They treat them as evergreen assets always-on.

As one Executive Managing Director at Microsoft put it: “One of the most effective ways to enhance your product and organizational strategy is by actively engaging with customers through Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) and structured feedback loops. These advisory groups provide valuable insights that help shape product direction, refine messaging, and address evolving customer needs.”

Starting Small: When is your company ready for a CAB?

You don’t need 50 enterprise customers and a million-dollar budget to launch a CAB. For Series B companies, we’ve helped launch lean CABs with a handful of key customers. These early boards often focus on a single goal, like shaping product direction or validating messaging, and can be run virtually on a quarterly cadence. It’s about creating intentional dialogue that delivers mutual value - strategic insights for you, influence, and access for them. 

Why Now?

Today’s CMOs are under pressure to prove impact across the full funnel, and the pipeline alone is no longer enough. Investing in existing customers drives predictable, efficient growth at a time when new logo acquisition is tougher than ever.

Customer Marketing & CABs drive growth by: 

• Lowering Churn: Engaged customers are 2-3x more likely to renew. 
• Increasing Expansion: Voice-of-Customer insights uncover upsell opportunities
• Accelerating GTM Alignment: Real-time feedback informs product, marketing, and sales strategies. 
• Multiplying Advocacy: Happy customers amplify brand reach and influence peer buyers.

We’ve seen CABs help clients: 

• Reduce churn by 15–25% 
• Increase the expansion pipeline by 20%+ 
• Accelerate roadmap validation by months 

When structured well, CABs don’t just improve customer relationships, they deliver material business outcomes.

Customer Advisory Boards are the connective tissue between your best customers and your biggest opportunities. 

They turn customer voice into strategy, alignment, and revenue. 

Done right, a CAB is a strategic operating system for your business.

And in today’s climate, that’s not optional. 

It’s the new CMO playbook. 

About the Author

Evan Kraut is a seasoned B2B marketing and revenue leader with more than twenty-five years experience at high-growth technology startups and global advertising agencies. As cofounder and managing partner of Boardstream, Evan works with world-class B2B companies to develop, manage, and optimize their Customer Advisory Board programs.

About RevelOne
RevelOne is a leading go-to-market advisory and recruiting firm. We help hundreds of VC/PE-backed companies each year leverage the right resources to achieve more profitable growth. We do 250+ retained searches a year in Marketing and Sales roles from C-level on down for some of the most recognized names in tech. In addition to our Search Practice, our Interim Expert Network includes 250+ vetted expert contractors – executive-level leaders and head-of/director-level functional experts – available for interim or fractional engagements. For help in any of these areas, contact us.