Antu Buck (00:02)
make sure you're giving your customers and prospects the right message at the right time. But also you're also onboarding them in a successful way, partnering with the customer success team to ensure that they're renewing and they're expanding. And when you treat it as that way, no one's looking at you as the customer content team, you are the customer marketing team.
Ben Ard (00:48)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Antu. Antu, welcome to the show.
Antu (00:53)
Thank you, Ben. It's great to be here today.
Ben Ard (00:56)
Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show. It's going to be a ton of fun. This is a subject I actually really care about. And I feel like I've been doing it wrong. Having like gone back and forth with emails, I feel like I can take myself up to the next level. So I'm excited to learn right here. But before we dive into that, I'm to tell us about your background, work history, all that fun stuff. So the audience gets to know who you are.
Antu (01:20)
Yeah, good question. So I'm Antu. So before stepping into customer marketing, I built my foundation and experience in sales, which gave me deep insights into customer. And as a customer marketer leader, I really focus on exceeding customer goals by building trusted partnerships and driving measurable success. So currently I'm at Gigamon.
So I built the customer marketing pillar from scratch. I joined about four years ago. So really creating that customer first culture. And prior to that, I led customer marketing programs at both McAfee and Intel.
Ben Ard (01:59)
Very cool. I love that. Well, what's so fun is you can tell you have passion for this subject. And it's so cool. I'm excited to dive in. What we're talking about today for the audience is the voice of the customer. Now, when I hear that, and in my past, what that has looked like is this idea of saying, OK, cool. I'm just going to go collect some testimonials and case studies, and I'm just going to put them out there.
But that's not really the right way of doing things. Like what does truly effective customer marketing look like with the voice of the customer? That's not just case study testimonial, you know, kind of boring stuff like that, that we may have done in the past.
Antu (02:39)
Yes, I need to calm down because I'm definitely super, super passionate. Like this is something that I feel like I was born to do. But I do agree a lot of teams treat customer marketing has just a content function. They're like, you're just going to write a case study or get a quote for us or a logo on the website. And even when I talk to people, even though we've come so far in customer marketing, people still tend to think of it just as a content function, but it's so much more.
And I would say the best way to position is, and is actually has a growth driver. So the way I've set it up at Gigamon, the way we do customer marketing, we've broken it down to three customer pillars. So you have that customer advocacy. This is where you're amplifying the voice of the customer through testimonials, case studies, and reference programs. This is the more of the traditional one. But has you seen just the way we've seen the way we engage with our customers?
the attention span of just everyone. We all sound alike on AI. So there's the two second aspects of customer marketing that really makes this a driver growth is the community engagement. So the community offers your customers a place where customers can connect, share insights. And it's like a platform outside of a company, but it is on yours.
And then also through like executive briefings, advisory boards, social engagement. So it also, it gives so many different opportunities for your customers to kind of become loyal and just have these positive engagements. And the last piece, which is something newer because customer success tends to lead this. But when you think about the customer lifecycle management, this is where I put my sales hat on is.
You have prospects, they're looking at you even before they talk to you, whether they're getting on the website. And then there's a whole customer lifecycle management that goes with the whole onboarding.
So again, so the lifecycle management is a newer part of it, but it is to make sure you're giving your customers and prospects the right message at the right time. But also you're also onboarding them in a successful way, partnering with the customer success team to ensure that they're renewing and they're expanding. And when you treat it as that way, no one's looking at you as the customer content team, you are the customer marketing team.
Ben Ard (05:00)
I love that. That's such a cool distinction that I've never heard said so well. I love that definition. I like that. I'll have to come back to that to describe the differences and that side of things. So when it comes down to like the tactical side, how do you capture the authentic voice of the customer and really make sure it stays genuine, like really authentic, especially as you scale those efforts across different marketing channels?
Antu (05:26)
No, that's a good, really good question. And I think this is something that everybody talks about. And then, because we are living in this AI polish world and where you can make everything look great. And I've even had like, I mean, I use tools that help me manage my reference program and just how we track activities. But they also will offer me the option of writing a case study. And I'm like, no, we are not going to do this. I want to have a real story.
And then the other thing, which I'm sure the rest of I said in corporate marketing, they won't like me saying this, but I keep it real. know, brand has their messaging. They're always saying, can you get this and their peers? Like, can you get the customer to say this? But if we do that, then we're not being authentic with our customers. Like not am I only building the voice of the customer externally, but I'm also building the voice of the customer internally. So a lot of the some, you know, the stuff that I do, I was asked like,
you know, tell me more about you. What made you even consider us or what made you almost stop buying from us? And I also talk about like, you know, just sharing, like if someone's in your position, what would you tell them the journey you went on with us that starting this journey six months ago? Like, what would you share with them?
I mean, of course, we're going to talk about the products, the business outcome solutions. have to do that. I that's part of my job. But it's also just taking it beyond. And then also the other part, I think that's important and why I think our team is so successful in making it is a lot of our customers, they want to get recognized. They want to be seen as thought leadership. And because how do you build genuine connections if they're just doing stuff for you and you're not giving it? So
There's a small section that we talk about what keeps you up at night. What is your goals? What is your security goals? And that really also helps bring that authentic story. So we're not just going and going, gig them on. And this company did a joint store. They bought these solutions here, the business. But you actually get to hear their voice and they get to hear what their challenges was, what the business outcomes is. And also you get to know them as a person as well, too, which is very important. And people will read that because
Let's be honest, are you gonna read a generic case study or are you gonna read a story where it talks about that human aspect of
Ben Ard (07:45)
I love that. think that's cool. And I love how you have so purposely decided I'm not going to force the narrative down one pathway. No matter how much people want the story time and time again to be X, you know, value prop or benefit or whatever your questions, the examples you shared are open ended. It allows them to speak freely. It allows you to learn freely from them.
and have this authentic story. And I think that's cool because if every customer voice piece, you know, whether it is a case study or whatever kind of format you're using, they all sound the same. They all sound fake. And I love that you've really embraced that idea of every customer is different. Let's get their story. I think that's so cool. Now I know that as a team and you've mentioned part of this already, you can't do this all by yourself.
Antu (08:26)
Yep.
Ben Ard (08:38)
You need internal buy-in, you need cross alignment across the different groups. How do you prove the value of the voice of the customer internally in a way that you can get other people in the business to rally around you, help do this, see the value around it and really make it kind of a company wide initiative.
Antu (08:56)
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge customer marketers face is buy-in, because it is something that's a new group under marketing, because you always have corporate, you have brand, have PR and AR, and customer marketing is kind of just like left there. But the way I see it, and I think if you're not doing it, you're not driving ROI.
So, and I kind of go back to it, even though we say customer marketing might just be like me or my team, but in order to be successful, everybody has a company needs to do customer marketing. It is a cross-functional collaborate initiative, otherwise you're not gonna succeed.
And then the easiest way, mean, what's the best way? What do executive care about? You need to tie your programs directly to business outcomes. What are we doing as a company and how is customer marketing gonna support that? I think that's like the easiest way. And then it's great to have like number of assets and everything, but you wanna tie it to revenue. Like kind of, said, I'm not just creating an asset just to check the box. I am trying to drive.
get that voice of the customer, what do our customers care about? Are they caring about the private cloud or the public cloud or are they going into the hybrid cloud? So lot of the stuff that we end up talking to our customers gives you insight to the PM team, the product management. So I think showing like not only are you just trying to get to the business outcome, of course we do reference calls when sales is buying and RP calls, we do all of that, you know, that's always done.
And then just the experience with our customer, we give them the white glove service. So they want to continue to retain with us and be champions. But I also think just being able to close it out to the business outcomes, collaborate with everyone. And the other thing that I always say, we talk about champion customers, but we got a champion for ourselves. So I'm the queen of sharing out and communication. So everything we do, we share it out.
It goes like, have an executive dashboard that comes out saying, this is what the team did, this is the impact it made, and this is tied to the business goals. And that's so big, because if you're doing great things and you're not sharing it out, nobody knows that visibility aspect really helps you to know that, because otherwise it doesn't matter, you're just doing it behind the scenes, even though we love what we do and do it, but you have to do that.
It is something that's uncomfortable, but on my kit, we're shining the light on all of our customers. We need to shine the light on what we're doing internally.
Ben Ard (11:29)
Yeah, 100%. And I like how the promotional side internally to get the extra buy-in. It's cool because you don't have to be in a weird position where you feel like you're just bragging about yourself. It's really like amplifying the voice of the customer internally, showing the value that you have. So it's kind of a cool way to do that. Now, you kind of mentioned a little bit with product and all those kinds of things as well. How are you taking these insights, this voice of the customer,
And disseminating that information to the various departments and group around the business in a way that like it can impact your product or your processes or whatever it may be. How do you distribute and make that happen and make the voice of the customer really amplify inside of your organization as well?
Antu (12:13)
This is, I'll give some real life examples of how we've done it. Again, it goes back to sharing. So what we learned from our customers, whether it's good or bad, we want to share it. Cause everyone thinks, oh, customer marketing just loves the happy customers. No. So we do win wires. We also track the losses to knowing why did we lose? What didn't work and share that feedback. So that's one aspect of it.
And then the other aspect was a couple of things that I'm really proud of. So when I first joined the company, they're like, we need so many public cloud case studies. That's what we're going to go after. And I need you to do it. But before I could do it, being coming, joining new to the company, we didn't actually have like a lot of customers. So then we started off with all of our wins. We started talking to the customers and our sweet spot wasn't actually public cloud. It was a mix of private cloud and hybrid.
And I was like, you guys want to go after this, but we don't have that research. Our customers are not buying it. So that was something that went back. I partnered with a PM on this project. We did this whole research and then we actually changed our messaging to go from public cloud to hyper cloud. that's, you know, so that's another way of sharing the inside. And again, like advisory boards, not only do we talk to our customers and give them.
what's coming, but a lot of our chief product officer is there and they actually go back and go, okay, if I gave you $100 or something, what feature would you want? What would you want to bet on? Where are the gaps? And the one thing we just don't take that. I build an executive summary and then we follow up on it. And we've actually launched features that the customers voted on higher than, so like precryption is a product that we kind of launched two years ago, but it was voted in the cab.
Ben Ard (13:54)
Nice.
Antu (14:01)
So again, going back to it. And I think that's why everyone's like, how did you build like such credibility? But it's sharing that knowledge. It's just like, it's so important. A lot of times we do stuff and we hold onto it. I don't know why, but if you communicate to the right channel, you make such a big impact.
I know my customers know what they're sharing. It's gonna get listened and that builds credibility with them, but also it builds your credibility with the product team as well. So it's a win-win. If you do it right, you can win in this role across the board.
Ben Ard (14:36)
I love that. That's so cool. So I always love to end on this kind of a note. If I'm sitting here listening to this episode thinking I need to do a better job of collecting the voice of the customer, how can I start today? How can a marketing team or anyone inside of a company actually take necessary steps to do a better job of collecting, disseminating, sharing, taking advantage of the voice of the customer?
Antu (15:01)
So if you follow me, I do actually do, I have a big presentation and podcast on how to launch your customer marketing program, whether you're a small startup to a large company. So not that I'll do a plug, but someone new starting out is, the biggest thing is communication, both internally and externally. But I also think it's important when we think about customer marketing and when you're about to join, you get overwhelmed. You're like,
Do I work on the case study? Do I work on this? What do I do? You really need to go to the company and go, what's your business goals? What are we trying to do? Kind of what I talked about earlier, when we were trying to see as public cloud the route we go to. But I also remember when I first joined, we didn't have any tools or any way to automate and do anything we did. So the first 30 days I remember coming, it's like, okay, we need to get a bring a tool on board.
and then let's focus on first the case study library, the reference program, and then doing the internal research, then came win-loss, then came the advisory boards. So you build off of your foundation from each program, but at the same time, as you're going on this, make sure you share the small wins to the big wins.
always communicate that internally and externally and that's going to help grow the programs, give you more budget, give you more headcount because I started at this place as a team of one and now we're team of five. So you have to kind of work, it works parallel to everything but I do have a playbook on it so I'm happy to share that because this is something generally I care a lot about.
Ben Ard (16:43)
Love it. And we're all the way open for plugs of any sort. So what we'll do is what we'll, we'll include that in the show notes for anyone who's interested in looking that up. This is amazing. Well, Antu, thank you so much for the time energy for all of the advice, sharing something you're passionate about. This has been great for anyone listening. He wants to reach out and connect with you online. How and where can they find you?
Antu (17:06)
love it. Thank you, Ben. I want to first thank you for this opportunity. I was really excited when you reached out and it's been such a fun afternoon. So thank you. And I'm sure we'll do some more stuff together in the future. But yes, find me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Antu Buck. It's super easy. You will not find anyone with that name. And yeah, I love to build communities. I'm part of a lot of groups and everything. This is something that I'm passionate about.
I jump on calls to someone goes, I'm about to start a cab. What are some best practices? And I don't mind helping out because I know how challenging customer marketing is. And if I can help one person to 10 person, then I feel good about myself that, you know, being, I think just as we build customer advocates, I want to be an advocate for customer marketing.
Ben Ard (17:57)
love that. That's amazing. Well, Antu we're so excited that you shared this again, anyone listening, scroll down to the show notes, regardless of what platform you're on, go ahead and click on the links in the profile and connect again Antu. Thank you so much. This has been amazing. Really do appreciate your time today.
Antu (18:13)
Thank you.
