At one of our Customer Marketing Summits, Ari Hoffman, Vice President of Customer Marketing & Advocacy at Influitive, and Gillian Farquhar, Vice President of Global Transformation: Market Readiness at Qlick, sat down to discuss the steps you and your CMO can take to prioritize customer-centricity to make your marketing strategy “anti-fragile”, or “recession-proof”.
Ari Hoffman and Gilian Farquhar
Ari Hoffman
As the Vice President of Customer Marketing & Advocacy at Influitive, Ari’s human-first approach to work and passion for customer success are fixtures of his approach to his role and career. He is a seasoned veteran and trusted advisor for customer-centric businesses, primarily in the enterprise SaaS industry.
Gilian Farquhar
Gillian Farquhar is the Vice President of Global Transformation: Market Readiness, formerly the Vice President of Global Customer Marketing at Qlik, which encompassed Customer Reference and Advocacy, Customer Experience, and all Community programs. With more than 20 years in the industry, Gillian specializes in building customer-centric organizations inside SaaS-based businesses.
Why do you need an anti-fragile marketing approach?
There's no denying it—uncertainty is the current state of affairs. We've seen it in budget cuts, headcount reductions, and hiring freezes. With all this change, marketing leaders, especially CMOs, are facing tough choices.
They’re in the difficult position of determining where to make cuts, what to prioritize, and ultimately how to stay essential to growth.
Our aim here is to help marketing teams, especially in customer marketing, navigate these challenges. We want to ensure you're not just seen as another cost center but as a vital element in your company's strategy.
This anti-fragile mindset is about thriving during turbulence, not just surviving. And to support this shift, we’ll also provide data and insights that back up these approaches.
I love the saying, "Trying to predict the future is hard, but preparing for every future is better." It captures our focus perfectly. While we may not know exactly where the economy is headed, we can adopt strategies to thrive no matter what.
We need to go beyond mere survival tactics; it's time to strengthen our "immune systems" and prepare our organizations for lasting health and growth.
Video:Economic uncertainty and getting customer marketing to thrive: An anti-fragile approach
Five pillars for an anti-fragile marketing strategy
As we dive into the core of our anti-fragile approach, we’re thrilled to introduce five key pillars that underpin a resilient customer marketing strategy.
These pillars are the foundation for thriving in any market condition, allowing your marketing function to not only withstand pressure but to grow stronger through it.
I'll give a quick overview of each:
- Focus on community
- Champion authentic stories
- Rally your employees
- Mobilize your advocates
- Level up customer marketing
These five areas are invaluable, each one plays a crucial role in strengthening and future-proofing your marketing strategy.
Now, let’s turn to our first pillar: the power of community.
Strategy 1: Focus on community
Fostering a community isn’t a "nice-to-have" anymore—it's a "must-have."
Today, traditional one-way marketing is outdated. Simply pushing content out and hoping it resonates is not an effective strategy.
Community is the bridge that transforms a passive audience into an engaged, thriving ecosystem, where relationships and shared knowledge drive both customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
In customer marketing, you want to deepen relationships not just between your brand and the customers, but among the customers themselves.
A strong community provides customers with a space to share insights, solve each other's challenges, and strengthen their bond with the brand. This isn’t just beneficial for customer experience—it also alleviates pressure on internal teams, as customers often help each other find solutions without requiring brand intervention.
For Qlik, Gillian’s company, this approach began with a renewed investment in community about four years ago. Since then, the community has grown into the "heartbeat" of Qlik, integrated across nearly every department.
Support ticketing, ideation, advocacy platforms, event strategy—all these functions run through our community. By creating a space that serves as a centralized hub, Qlik has embedded customer-centricity into its entire business.
The role of community as the heartbeat of your brand
A powerful community does more than provide a support channel. It becomes the focal point for your brand's entire ecosystem.
Qlik's community is the "heartbeat" of the company. When a community is functioning well, it becomes the heart of your customer marketing strategy, pumping engagement and loyalty throughout every function.
This is why community shouldn’t be limited to support. Instead, it should serve as the nucleus for all customer interactions—where advocacy, ideation, and feedback flow freely. A truly effective community not only supports customers but gives them the chance to influence and shape the brand.
Strategy 2: Champion authentic stories
Pillar two: Champion authentic stories
With the foundation of community in place, the next step is to champion authentic stories.
Authenticity is at the heart of successful customer marketing, it shapes both the leadership styles used in Quilk, and how Qlik interacts with its customers.
As customer marketers, we aren't simply telling stories; we're amplifying real customer experiences and sending them into the spaces where critical business decisions are made.
Our role is to "activate and expose" our customers, giving them a platform to share their genuine journeys with our products. And here’s the key: if those stories aren’t authentic, they’re not going to resonate, let alone spread.
Authenticity allows for the inclusion of both triumphs and challenges in customer stories. By letting customers be honest about their experiences—whether that's with our technology or partner integrations—brands create a credibility that’s unmatched.
These real stories, complete with ups and downs, carry far more weight and shareability than polished, scripted narratives. The truth is, no marketing team, however talented, can replicate the impact of a story told in a customer’s own voice.
Authenticity isn't just a tactic; it’s a fundamental value that permeates every interaction and initiative at Qlik.
For example, the customer marketing team at Quilk uses Influitive to gather customer-authored content, like "upshot stories," where customers write their own bylines. This format allows customers to share their personal experiences and insights, often making them far more relatable and shareable among peers.
While traditional case studies have their place, customer-authored content often feels more genuine, resonating with audiences in ways scripted content might miss.
Beyond storytelling: Authenticity across the entire customer journey
Authenticity in customer marketing goes beyond simply collecting testimonials. It’s about fostering genuine involvement across the entire customer journey. This includes product feedback loops, a crucial component often overlooked.
By creating straightforward channels for customers to give feedback—whether by voting on features or suggesting improvements—customers gain a sense of ownership over the product. This involvement not only deepens their connection with the brand but also creates allies within the organization.
When customers feel they have a voice in shaping the product, their loyalty and engagement naturally grow.
From a strategic perspective, embedding this type of authentic engagement makes customer marketing far more integral to the broader organization. When customer feedback is actively guiding product development, customer marketers are no longer just storytellers—they become valuable partners in product strategy, helping to steer the ship.
Championing authentic stories and embracing customer feedback across the journey positions customer marketing as a truly strategic function, aligning closely with both product and customer success teams. This holistic approach to authenticity strengthens the brand’s relationship with its audience and bolsters the entire marketing organization.
Strategy 3: Rally your employees
Everyone wants to feel like they’re part of a winning team. There’s a natural human desire to associate with success, whether it’s in personal relationships or in our professional lives.
When employees believe they’re contributing to something impactful, something that genuinely benefits customers, that energy resonates throughout the company.
Customer success stories are powerful tools for building this sense of shared pride. However, the purpose of these stories isn’t solely to impress people outside the organization. It's just as important, if not more so, to inspire your own employees with these success stories.
When employees feel connected to the real impact of the product or service, they’re far more likely to share this enthusiasm authentically. This organic excitement comes across in their social media, in conversations with others, and in their day-to-day work.
We should aim for genuine engagement rather than turning employees into "an army of bots."
At Qlik, the team focuses on ways to rally employees around customer success stories in a way that feels genuine. Partnering with communications and social media teams is part of the strategy, ensuring that employees are empowered to share in a natural, authentic way.
The goal isn’t to prompt a uniform “check this out” response but to cultivate a sense of pride and excitement about the wins they’re helping customers achieve.
The psychology of belonging to a winning team
Especially in times of economic uncertainty, having employees who feel they’re contributing to a “winning” organization can make all the difference. This sense of pride keeps people focused on the positive impact they’re creating, which not only benefits morale but also strengthens resilience.
When employees are internally motivated by the value the company brings to customers, they’re more engaged, more productive, and better equipped to handle external pressures.
Feeling like you’re part of a winning team is powerful. It boosts morale, fosters a sense of ownership, and keeps people connected to the core purpose of the organization.
When employees are authentically engaged in sharing success stories, they amplify the company’s message in a way that feels real—not as a copy-paste “like and share” initiative, but as genuine pride in the work they’re doing.
Cultivating co-ownership of the brand’s voice
The power of rallying employees lies in their ability to become co-owners of the brand’s voice.
When employees genuinely feel part of the brand’s success, their enthusiasm becomes the “lubrication” that makes everything run smoother. This alignment strengthens every function, creating a unified and authentic brand voice that resonates across every platform and touchpoint.
With employees co-owning the message, every team member becomes a brand advocate. The goal is to cultivate this shared ownership so that employees naturally amplify the brand’s values, achievements, and mission. This collective pride enhances the entire organization, creating a cohesive force that drives growth, engagement, and resilience.
Strategy 4: Mobilize your advocates
Mobilizing advocates is about activating those customers who are deeply engaged with and enthusiastic about your brand—what we call "connected customers."
While "advocates" is often the term used to describe these champions, I prefer simply to call them “customers.The goal is to take your most delighted, engaged customers and connect them to the market in a way that amplifies your values and the unique value of your products.
It’s about harnessing their voices and letting them naturally influence other potential buyers and internal teams alike.
These advocates play a significant role in nearly every revenue-generating function within your company. Their genuine enthusiasm impacts everything from new logo acquisition to account expansion within existing clients.
However, mobilizing advocates requires more than just enthusiasm—it demands organization, clear KPIs, and dedicated resources. If you’re going to make advocate marketing a central part of your strategy, you’ll need to secure the budget and tools to do it effectively.
It’s not a casual “go out and get people talking” approach; it’s a carefully structured program that must be supported by strategic planning.
The importance of tools in scaling advocacy programs
You can’t scale advocacy simply by adding headcount; you need technology to support the work.
Like every other function in a growing organization, from demand generation to customer success, having the right tools is essential. However, tools alone don’t create impact. They need to be backed by a strong program strategy, a clear understanding of goals, and a commitment to maintaining the authenticity of your advocate relationships.
A tool can help scale, but it’s not “magic pixie dust”—you’ll still need to work on the strategy and relationships. The tool simply allows you to extend the reach and depth of your efforts in a sustainable way. This takes us to our fifth and final pillar: leveling up your customer marketing.
Strategy 5: Level up Customer Marketing
Customer marketing can be the backbone of a successful marketing organization: “all roads lead through customer marketing.” We’ve seen firsthand how shifting budget and focus towards the install base yields tangible results.
However, it often requires advocating for a “rebalancing” of resources and getting buy-in from leadership to make customer marketing a priority.
For Qlik, focusing on customer marketing was essential. With a significant portion of revenue coming from existing customers, it made sense to invest in deepening relationships and enhancing the customer experience, rather than solely pursuing new logos.
The journey to reallocate marketing dollars was one of gradual change, advocating consistently for a customer marketing budget that reflects the math: it costs much less to retain and grow an existing customer than to acquire a new one.
Through a balanced approach that incorporates both customer and acquisition marketing, Qlik has created an environment where customer marketing coexists with other functions like brand, digital, and events. The goal isn’t to replace these efforts but to build an integrated strategy that supports the entire business.
Having the hard but necessary conversations
Leveling up customer marketing involves having strategic conversations with leadership to prioritize resources accordingly. This doesn’t mean these conversations are necessarily confrontational, but they are pivotal.
When approaching leadership, bring data and insights that demonstrate the value of investing in customer marketing. This process of rebalancing may take time, but it establishes a roadmap for long-term growth.
Programs will get better as you prove your value, and as that happens, you’ll have more leverage to advocate for larger budgets and resources. The key is to start laying this groundwork early, developing programs that showcase impact while building the case for further investment.
Final thoughts
Together, these five pillars—focusing on community, championing authentic stories, rallying employees, mobilizing advocates, and leveling up customer marketing—form a resilient marketing strategy.
Each element is designed to create a deeper connection with customers, build loyalty, and drive sustainable growth. By making customer marketing central to your organization’s strategy, you can navigate uncertainty and emerge stronger.
Want to watch the full talk? Join the Customer Marketing Alliance today!
