The Customer Journey Maestro

If you can't beat them, join them. I have resigned from my own career as a freelance writer because AI is replacing people like me, and there's no point in waiting around for the inevitable. Now I'm focused on learning how business people can leverage AI. I don't yet have a service to offer around this, but I'm happy to discuss the practical applications of AI anytime.

B2B Strategy Advisor and Consultant

I specialize in building and executing content marketing strategies for companies seeking sustained revenue growth. My process is to create a customized messaging framework (aka, “brand story”), develop a content strategy and calendar, and execute the content strategy by building a content team and/or writing brand content.

Fractional Content Director

I love to write and create content of all kinds. My broad and deep experience across sales, marketing, and customer success gives me a unique perspective and the ability to write compelling content for just about any industry. My approach is to get the inside truth from the people behind each story, and I don’t believe in taking shortcuts. I write and publish for your customers, to engage them, educate them, and compel them to take action. The SEO stuff comes along for the ride. Let’s talk about your freelance writing/content needs.

Freelance Writer

I help B2B companies build and execute modern marketing strategies focused on customers.

B2B Marketing Advisor

Hire me on a full-time or part-time basis to up-level your go-to-market strategy. And it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Go-to-Market Strategy Advisor

Your customers have their own Journey that may not match your Funnel or Flywheel. If you want to understand their journey and be there when they need you, that takes work. Designing a customer experience that builds trust, now that's another level entirely. I'm here to help - on your journey.

Customer Journey Guide

On-demand expertise in marketing strategy, demand generation, content marketing, social media marketing, product and customer marketing, sales and marketing alignment, and customer success.

Fractional CMO/VP Marketing

CMO for Hire

Are you in transition? Starting from scratch or making a pivot to a new revenue growth strategy? My Virtual CMO services provide proven expertise to help you jumpstart sales, marketing, and customer experience prior to hiring executives and staffing departments. It's a low-cost, low-risk way to get the strategic advice you need.

Virtual CMO

Riptide Business Press

Ed Marsh and I have written a book, titled Common Sense Revenue Growth, that helps CEOs understand the digital and consumer disruption facing them today and develop plans to grow in spite of those challenges. Buy the book at www.commonsenserevenuegrowth.com.

Author, Podcaster and Consultant

Kuno Creative

Co-owned one of the first and most successful inbound marketing agencies, Kuno Creative. Grew the agency from a handful of talented marketers and designers to a 50+ person agency with clients ranging from national healthcare and technology companies to international consortiums and manufacturing giants. Specialized in marketing technology and sales enablement - helping companies fix leaky funnels and sales pipelines via strategy, marketing automation and optimized CRM utilization. Please visit Kuno's website, www.kunocreative.com for more information, or follow me on LinkedIn.

EVP and Co-Owner

Awakening Technology Company

Developed corporate websites from scratch using HTML/CSS, then created a proprietary CMS for creating client sites backed by a SQL database using ASP.net and later, Ruby on Rails.

Web Developer

Zydeco Energy

Independent oil and gas exploration company in Houston, TX. No longer in business.

Executive Vice President and CTO

INEXS

Exploration Geophysicist

Raytheon - GeoQuest

Product Marketing Specialist

Shell

Research professional working in electron microscopy for Shell Research and in geophysical interpretation research for Shell Exploration and Production.

Research Geoscientist

B2B Marketing Strategy Advisor With Company, Agency, and Freelance Chops

I retired in 2017 from a 40-year career, mostly in sales and marketing, for a variety of energy, manufacturing, and software companies. My penultimate position was co-owner of Kuno Creative, a digital marketing agency and one of HubSpot's first agency partners. My contributions continue as I seek to help other agency owners, professionals, and free-wheelers navigate their way through gnarly challenges in business and life.

John McTigue

Champion

Driving Customer Led Growth for Customer Marketing Teams!

Sr. Director, Customer Success

Vividly

Leading the Customer Success team with a focus on scaling and building core CS skills. Improved retention forecasting and coached the team on discovery, business acumen, and proactive engagement so we could move from reactive support to delivering real outcomes for our customers. I also built processes for account planning, renewals, and advocacy to set the foundation for long-term growth.

Interos Inc

I led product and partner marketing at Interos, driving the messaging, positioning, and launch of major products like i-Score, Ask Interos, and our AI-powered risk tools. I built the sales and customer enablement materials that helped teams shorten deal cycles and boost adoption.

I also launched customer marketing programs: from case studies and advocacy to customer advisory boards making sure our customers’ voices were at the center of the story. To scale that impact, I created and ran the Voice of the Customer program, turning feedback into actionable priorities that kept product and go-to-market teams aligned.

Beyond customers, I managed our analyst relations with Gartner, securing stronger visibility in key reports. I also shaped the external roadmap, ensuring what we shared with the market was not only clear and compelling but directly tied to customer needs.

VP Product and Partner Marketing

Sensor Tower

data.ai was acquired by Sensor Tower in March 2024

Led the global marketing function through a pivotal transition period post-acquisition. Oversaw product marketing, customer marketing, content, demand generation, insights, events, and creative teams. Aligned go-to-market strategy, brand, and customer messaging during integration. Helped lay the foundation for future growth.

VP, Marketing

data.ai

Leading a team of customer marketing, community, digital customer success and product marketing managers to spearhead initiatives and programs that drive growth, advocacy and retention.

Director, Customer Marketing and Digital Customer Success

Responsible for $20 million ACV across a team of 7 customer success managers. Improved annualized churn from 23% to 11% and NRR from 96% to 98%.

Sr. Manager, Enterprise and Strategic Customer Success

Worked cross-functionally with marketing, product, and business intelligence teams to help scale customer programs, including scaled marketing initiatives, health score frameworks, customer success software implementation, and 'voice of the customer' surveys.

Team Lead, Customer Success

Consistently exceeded renewal and upsell goals with over 95% renewal rate working with enterprise and strategic customers. Built relationships with key contacts, executed success plans, business reviews, trainings, engagement and insight campaigns to help customers achieve their goals.

Sr. Customer Success Manager, Enterprise

BirdEye

Built customer success for the Mid-Market, Enterprise, and Strategic segments of customers, including customer journey documentation, playbooks, and implementation plans. Worked pre-sale with the sales executives to build SOWs and align on success metrics.

Director, Enterprise and Mid Market Customer Success

Intuit

Led a team of 40 Customer Success Managers with 4 direct Managers. Responsible for $30M ARR and reduced annualized churn from 49% to 23% by working collaboratively with customer success operations to develop playbooks and build workflows within Gainsight to scale customer success.

Head of Customer Success, Demandforce

-Developed and led training curriculum for customer success new hires and ongoing development of existing CSMs 
-Provided weekly metric analysis to senior leadership including goal attainment, productivity, client feedback, and retention 
-Analyzed current metrics to properly calibrate ongoing team goals and adjust work flow
-Coached team members providing targeted feedback through call listening, metrics, monitoring trial cancellations and regular meetings with leaders of related teams
-Partnered with Product and UX design teams to help exceed retention and usage goals
-Mentored team on individual goals and projects specific to their interests and skill set
-Worked closely with sales management to streamline processes, monitor roll backs, and increase retention and sales
-Handled all escalated customer calls

Manager, Customer Success

-Worked collaboratively with small team to create and develop implementation process for all clients in all SMB industries 
-Raised customer trial retention from 79% to 90%+ (15+ consecutive months over 90%) 
-Increased 3-Month NPS from -60 to +22
-Implemented and maintained social media strategies for clients in varying industries
-Trained clients on platform adoption, and coached best practices
-Developed playbook and worked with sales leaders for a seamless hand off between sales and success
-Collaborated with Customer Support to help train new hires and create open line of communication between teams

Customer Success Manager

Account Executive

Trulia

Customer Success @ Champion | Customer Growth, Loyalty & Advocacy Champion | People-First Customer Success Leader

Emily Cid

This is such a strong example of what happens when customer marketing teams finally get the systems they need to drive impact.

Melanie Paddock and the Gainsight team took a process that used to drain time and energy (manual reporting, endless back-and-forth, hunting for the right data) and turned it into something that actually maps to outcomes!

What I love most about this story is how it shows the compounding effect of getting the foundation right.

A great blueprint for any team looking to operationalize advocacy and show measurable impact.

Full story below.

Customer Success @ Champion | Customer Growth, Loyalty, Advocacy Obsessed | People-First Leader

Every customer reference request felt like a marathon. 🏃‍♀️

For Gainsight’s Customer Marketing team, what should’ve taken days often stretched into weeks:
- Manual reporting
- Endless back-and-forth
- No clear path to the right data

With Champion, Melanie Paddock transformed the process into a streamlined system:
- 78% faster reference matching
- 75% faster scheduling
- $383K ARR influenced in just one quarter

Now, instead of chasing data and approvals, Melanie’s team is delivering value, winning trust, and getting recognized at the C-suite level.

Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/eEG8mRYD

Customer Spotlight: Gainsight

I was late to the dentist this morning.

I wanted to get some work done this morning before I left and I thought, “I’ve got 5 more minutes,” didn’t set my timer… and left 10 minutes late. 🤦‍♀️

Time blindness is real. Over the years I've definitely figured out some tricks that work for me (when I actually use them):

-Time blocking in my calendar. I block review, research, planning, project time, prep and follow-ups
-A visual “timed timer.” I literally borrow my son’s timer so I can see the time shrinking
-Include travel time or add an additional calendar event for travel time

What other tips do you all have for me out there?

Earning Advocacy has for a long time been one of the goals I’ve focused on in customer success.

Advocacy is the outcome of delivering value and trust. And still, at many companies, advocacy is happening in a silo at the end of the journey.

Jamie Walsh  said something recently that’s been playing in my head on repeat:
Companies need to think “beyond winning a deal to winning an advocate.”

That shift changes everything about how you build your customer experience.

The recent Forbes article, “Customer Marketing Is the Growth Engine Most CMOs Are Overlooking” reinforced this sentiment. In the article Latané Conant (she/her) shares that adoption is the renewal, expansion and advocacy top-of-funnel metric. If you are only focused at the end you are missing the mark.

My not so hot take is that Customer Success and Customer Marketing need to be partnering together on the post sales journey.

Customer Success is in the trenches every day.
They’re the ones helping customers connect what they bought to why they bought it and delivering results.

They:
-Drive onboarding that’s tailored to the customer’s goals, not just the product checklist
-Map outcomes to business priorities and measure real impact
-Identify when a customer is gaining traction or at risk of stalling
-Build the trust and relationships that make it safe for customers to be honest
-Create the space for feedback and alignment so customers see you as a partner, not a vendor

That’s the foundation advocacy is built on.

Customer Marketing turns that foundation into momentum.

It’s not just case studies and reference calls (although those are important)- it’s programs that help customers experience value, faster and together.

They:
-Build orchestrated adoption campaigns that reinforce key use cases
-Create communities where customers can learn, share, connect and grow
-Launch peer-to-peer programs that connect customers solving similar problems
-Design spotlights and recognition that celebrate the customer and give them opportunities to show their expertise
-Partner with Product and CS to share what’s resonating and what’s blocking

When CS and Customer Marketing work in sync, they reinforce value → trust → advocacy → growth.

Both teams are driving adoption, retention, and expansion. They are a team working together with shared goals.

When Marketing joins the journey early, they’re not waiting for “reference-ready.”

They’re part of the process that makes customers reference-ready and those customers are already seeing value and feeling connected.

That’s how you earn advocacy.

The next time someone says “we need more advocates,” don’t start with the ask.

Start with the journey.

Bring your CS and Customer Marketing teams together to build. Because you can’t have advocacy if your customers don’t have adoption, value, real outcomes.

Open article: Customer Marketing Is The Growth Engine Most CMOs Are Overlooking by forbes.com

Customer Marketing Is The Growth Engine Most CMOs Are Overlooking

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John McTigue

Emily Cid

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