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Most B2B companies overlook their biggest growth opportunity: investing in the customers they already have. Yet, customer marketing leaders struggle to secure budget, prove ROI, and drive growth.
In a world obsessed with more (more leads, more deals, more revenue), how do you make customer advocacy a non-negotiable growth strategy?
This show is for marketers who want to turn customer advocacy into a strategic growth engine. Each episode features customer marketing pioneers, revenue leaders, and industry experts sharing actionable strategies to engage, retain, and expand your client base. And not just through content, but through meaningful connection.
Because customers become champions when you make them feel valued first.
Shannon Howard (00:00):
No new customer comes in that didn't touch an existing customer, and I firmly believe that customer education is critical to any go-to-market strategy that you have. You can have a product-led strategy, but if people don't know how to use your product, good luck keeping them. Good luck getting referrals, good luck expanding them into other product modules. If they don't know how to be successful, why would they stay and why would they advocate?
Jeff Reekers (00:23):
Welcome to Customer Champions where we explore how the best marketers turn customers into their biggest growth engine. Alright, welcome back to another episode of Customer Champions. Today's guest is someone who doesn't just build programs, she builds people. Shannon Howard is a 3x Top 100 customer Marketing & Advocacy Strategist, and currently the Director of Customer & Content Marketing at Intellum. She's the leading voice in two worlds that are rapidly converging customer marketing and customer education, and she's helping to define how those functions can come together to drive measurable growth. Shannon has developed frameworks like the education-led growth maturity model, which has just launched, which we'll talk on a little bit further in the episode here. She's held organizations think more strategically of how they can elevate customer voices, deepen engagement and scale advocacy will never losing sight of the human side of work. She's also a connector, a mentor, and someone who just shows up for others inside and outside of work, and that's really one reason I was so excited to have Shannon on the podcast here today. Shannon, thanks so much for joining us today and welcome to the show.
Shannon Howard (01:29):
Thank you, Jeff. Wow, that is a very honorary intro.
Jeff Reekers (01:32):
Let's just jump right into it. You've been a top 100 customer marketing advocacy strategist three years in a row as mentioned there, and that's huge, but what's something that recognition doesn't capture about just how you show up and how you lead in this role?
Shannon Howard (01:45):
I think there's so many amazing people in this world and people who have been running incredible programs and who have been doing it for a long time, and I think the amazing thing is sometimes customer marketing, it seems like who else is doing it? And then you see a program like the top 100 and there was almost 700 nominations, which is incredible just to see not only 700 people in the space, but people worthy of recognition. For me, the top 100 has just been I think about recognizing not just great work from people, a lot of people there, but also kind of that contribution to helping others who are doing the same thing.
Jeff Reekers (02:25):
Loved on your LinkedIn profile as well, I'm going to have a trouble saying this out loud, but you described yourself as a WYSIYG, which is "What you see is what you get." How has that helped you lead in your role? How has that helped you lead? How has that helped you just show up at work more broadly in life and just championing those inside and outside of work?
Shannon Howard (02:49):
I wrote that because I think integrity is really important to me and part of integrity is being who you are and not showing up differently in one context. Another, which I think is really easy. We have our family face, our friend face, our professional face, and for better or for worse, I've always just wanted to be me and show up, which I think has been a gift in a lot of ways because when someone is themselves, it gives people permission and freedom to also be themselves. I've had the privilege of working in some really amazing and incredible teams, so little known fact my husband and I eloped when he got married and our witnesses were people from my team and the photos from our wedding were people from my team. It was just that kind of tight knit, I know people don't like the idea of work being a family, but people who really are close friends, I officiated someone else on the team, their wedding, so that kind of relationship building and so that's always been important to me is just building relationships, allowing people to be themselves, seeing the gift in each person.
Shannon Howard (03:53):
Like Lord knows I'm not the most detailed person in the world. I need those people, I need the numbers people, I need the detailed people to offset the things that I'm good at. Some things but not good at other things.
Jeff Reekers (04:05):
Yeah, amazing. One thing that resonates there is my wife and I when we got married, individual that officiated our wedding was also a colleague of both of ours at one point, so we share that in common as well. And there is something unique when all that comes together and you really just live one life kind of transitioning into more career arc. You've worn a lot of hats throughout your career, which I think is really amazing and very curious on the perspective that that's helped build into where you're at now in your role now, but you've worn hats and content, product management, digital marketing, education, customer marketing. I'd love to just go through that career arc a little bit and how did that evolve into customer marketing and what kind of drew you into customer marketing? And I'm curious with all that sort of background, how did that help give you a unique vantage point in the role that you have now and today? Yeah. How'd customer marketing become the through line of your career now?
Shannon Howard (04:57):
So another little known fact is that I did not go to college. There's a whole story behind that, but it ended up kind of being like where there's a will, there's a way, if there's a backdoor, I'll find it. And so just kind of rolled up my sleeves and went to work and learned. And I think early in my career, and I advise my students of this, I just said yes to as many things as possible. I think everything is figureoutable, and so if I had a degree of confidence that I could figure it out, I think the amazing thing about the customer marketing community is if I am doing something I've never done before, I can go talk to other people who have done it and learn from them and learn what works, what doesn't work, what pitfall should I avoid? So just a willingness to do that.
Shannon Howard (05:41):
So I started kind of really working for myself freelancing gigging for a while and got my first corporate job in 2015 working for an online school and they asked me to come in and build curriculum, which led to in the saying yes, it was building curriculum and then it was marketing and go to market for that. And then all net new course development and then referral on affiliate marketing. Just kind of whatever came up was a little bit of my job description. And then ended up going from there, kind of did a little bit of freelancing consulting again back into the corporate space in content marketing. Someone from my team at that school had gone to this tech company and I started freelancing for them, writing for them, and that went well. So they hired me full time. And then after a year in content marketing there I had created an astronomical amount of content, which people say a lot of content isn't a content strategy, but when you're starting from nothing, it is because you're trying to corner the market on a topic or a category.
Shannon Howard (06:46):
They moved a bunch of people into growth product management. So it was a bunch of people who had no product management experience and we're kind of brought in to run growth experiments or build out different products. So I built with one of my colleagues a learning product, so it was all of this educational content. Ironically, despite a background in curriculum development, was on the technical side, which was like, who put me in charge of running a team that builds technical things? I don't know anything. I cannot build these things. And so you learn to trust your team and ask the right questions and talk more about solutions and end results of like, Hey, here's what we're trying to accomplish and here's what the user needs to be able to do and how might we facilitate that or what does it look like to build something that can do that?
Shannon Howard (07:35):
I don't technically know how that happens, but I can tell you what I expect the experience to be like for the user. I think every marketer would benefit from learning about product management just because the way that you think about MVPs and iterative development and testing, launching, experimenting. I think all of that is really helpful for marketers. And after that ended up more in customer marketing and then at didn't, they kind of created this role for me that was a little bit content marketing and evangelism and then also customer marketing. So a little bit of everything. There's so many different parts of a business and having an appreciation for all of those things. I think it's very easy within a company to think that your job is the most unique. It's the hardest for different reasons, but sales is hard. Account management is hard. Building product is hard, marketing is hard.
Shannon Howard (08:26):
Customer marketing is hard. They're all hard in their own way. So it gives you an appreciation for that and an understanding of what matters to other parts of the business so you can build those relationships. You kind of know where in the organization you might need to go to build allies and friends and bridges. So that I often think in customer marketing, a lot of our role is to influence not just customers, but also internally we're leaning on influence to get some of what we need or want to run our programs. And I think that background gave me the ability to speak moderately intelligently to other parts of the business, but also gave me an appreciation for how it all works together.
Jeff Reekers (09:06):
I love that. A word that comes to mind behind all this is empathy and your experience across those roles have given you a lot of empathy for what goes into those roles, how to speak their language, all these things. I'll just mention this quickly, I started my career in customer support, and that's been part of my DNA since the last 15, 20 years or so. You hear every challenge a customer has and you take that into your next role, and that always gave me a different vantage point as a marketer because it's coming at it from sort of a different angle. So it's amazing to have that sort of background, those building blocks, so you can start to build on that throughout your career. And it sounds like it's been a huge advantage for you now in customer marketing to really understand how to be able to connect with all these different roles, functions, and truly connect through empathy because you have that shared experience behind it. With your role today, customer marketing, customer education, you've really helped bridge two traditionally separate functions often that exist in silos. And so how do these two kind of fuel each other and how do those two come together for you and what happens? And really curious on when all that comes together, what does that look like and how does that sort of one plus one equals three come about combining these two different functions?
Shannon Howard (10:19):
Sure. Yeah. Kristine Kukich and I talked a lot about this, and we're doing the Mixology podcast of that intersection of customer education and customer marketing. So I think of customer marketing is how do we communicate, interact with customers at scale? There is a lifecycle component, advocacy component and an expansion component. And education is all about creating content that drives behavior change is how do we get people to think differently and then ultimately to do differently using our product. I see the two working really well together because education, it's its own unique skillset and marketing is too. So I think of education is doing this needs analysis of what do those customers need? So even looking at those support tickets and saying, what are those common questions, concerns, complaints, what challenges are people running into? What questions are we answering over and over again? And is there a way to maybe reduce some of that ticket volume?
Shannon Howard (11:16):
Is there a way to answer these questions proactively? And so we're kind of sourcing all this, creating content, creating education that's helping people to answer those questions. So it could be onboarding content, it could be content around new product releases, it could be ongoing skills and enablement. And then I think of customer marketing in terms of their partnership with customer education is how do we serve up and deliver that content? How do we market promote this content to the person, the right content to the right person at the right time? And so customer marketing is kind of looking at the journey. There's a part to play for all of it, right? Education content can build advocates and it can help people onboard and adopt the product and it can help people be exposed to a new part of the product that they don't have access to today, and we can use it as part of expansion campaigns.
Shannon Howard (12:02):
So I really see this partnership here, but I think what tends to happen is customer education could live in any number of parts of the organization, and so they might be creating content, but they really don't have this mechanism to distribute it market and promote it because often they're sitting in customer success or customer experience. And then customer marketing is usually in marketing, maybe it's sometimes in other parts of the company and they may not know what content exists or what is it that people need to know. So I think as much as we can build bridges, I just really think that these are sister teams that need to be working really closely together because one can inform the other, and I think the two of them together creates that one plus one equals three.
Jeff Reekers (12:46):
You said something that we talk a lot about at Champion as well, the right person, the right content. That's like a never ending journey to accomplish and to create that personalization. How do you go about architecting that customer life cycle and finding and really defining right person, right moment, right content? How do you distribute it? How do you create that journey? Who else is involved in that process as a whole?
Shannon Howard (13:12):
One time in my career, got to do the full on cross-functional executive sponsorship, big old customer journey mapping exercise. I think often it's who are the people who are most interested in solving this problem and have input, and I think customer marketing can often be a quarterback or driver for these types of initiatives of maybe what are those personas? So it might start in the early days of what are our personas? So we have buyer personas like the people who actually sign the contract or make the decision. We have program owners and we have admins who are the people who actually end up using our platform, and then what are those stages of the life cycle? So they might have implementation, onboarding, just kind of general being a customer, and then maybe they're up for renewal, they're eligible, or there's an opportunity to expand into a new module, new business unit.
Shannon Howard (14:04):
So we're kind of mapping out what does that look like, and then going around the company saying, well, what is it? Who has involvement in these different parts of the customer journey? And what are those things that they're doing? What are the communications that are going out? What is it that people need to know? So we have a down downmarket content creation product called Evolve. So it was a content authoring tool kind of rise or captivate. So when we were kind of redoing onboarding for that said, okay, well walk me through what are the things that people really need to learn how to do and evolve and what's the order in which they need to learn how to do those things? Let's look at some of the reviews and support tickets and the questions in the community. What are those things that they're getting hung up on?
Shannon Howard (14:46):
And then we're starting to say, okay, how do we order and structure this to deliver a series of communications but also educational content that helps them to learn these basic skills? So what is it you need to learn for second, third? And I don't want to inundate you with information. You don't need to know it. All right, you will learn more over time, but what are those basic things that people need to learn to get on board? And so I just do a lot of, I call it quick and dirty journey mapping of whether it's by persona or by lifecycle stage. Just quickly, what are those things that people need to know? What resources currently exist and we're starting to build this out more. I think it can become very complicated very quickly depending on how much you're trying to tackle. But when it comes to customer marketing, customer education content, I think you do have a little bit more control not getting involved in implementation, we're just looking at content and communications and I think that's where that partnership between customer education and customer marketing, y'all can just get on the same page. I'm sure that there's a future world where AI does all of this for you. It looks at your content repository. It somehow captures information from your customer about where they're at, have they been? Because something I think we probably don't often consider is have they used another tool similar to yours before? Have they ever used something like this? Are they a former customer who moved to a new company and now they're using your product? Get three totally different experiences, but we don't have to get that complicated today.
Jeff Reekers (16:14):
Amazing. A couple of thoughts and questions kind of spark off of that one as you're just describing that exercise of the right person in the right moment and the right content, there is a lot of alignment that happens across the organization to even accomplish that and much less everything else that you're working towards. How do you think about how you approach that topic of alignment internally, whether it's it's with C-suite customers for that matter, what is your kind of approach to creating alignment and breaking down those silos? You've done it within customer marketing education directly, but with the other peers, stakeholders, how do you approach that as a whole and make sure that other teams understand the importance of the work that you're doing and are meaningfully contributing to those efforts as well? Because it does require all that alignment and work and contributions from other teams.
Shannon Howard (17:07):
I think that's probably easier said than done. I've talked before about being a Kool-Aid man and just burst your way into things and not waiting for permission. And so something I've tried to do is one, build executive relationships. So I talk to our sales account management executives pretty regularly, so I can ask, Hey, can I come into a team meeting? Can I share what we're working on? Do a lot of internal marketing just to share. And I'll also just schedule one-on-ones with people. So I'm meeting with executive leadership, but I'm meeting with individual reps as every new person joins a company. Doesn't matter what department they're in, I'm on their calendar the first few weeks like, hi, welcome. I'd love to learn more about you. What are the things that you're going to be working on that you're most excited about? Here's how I can help or what my function does.
Shannon Howard (17:58):
So I'm starting to build those bridges pretty early on. So again, talking about influence. We lean a lot on influence to get what it is that we need. I'm someone who loves to solve problems. I love to get into things and I think something that was really hard for me to reconcile in my career is not every problem is it's not the time to solve it. And I think that's sometimes so hard when you're in customer marketing is you see this glaring thing that you really want to get your hands into and you want to fix this problem, but it may not be the number one business priority. And so I really tried to stay close to my CMO and other executives to understand what's number one for you? What's top of mind? What are the things that are keeping you up at night? And then there are times that I'm quietly in the background chugging towards something and laying the groundwork.
Shannon Howard (18:48):
Actually my friend Daniel Pale who's at Grafana, he was telling me about one project where he had kind of mapped it out and planted the seeds two or three years before the time was ripe. It was the right time for that initiative to take place. And so I think that's something I've been thinking about with alignment is when is the right time to surface something? And we have a tool internally that's like a strategy brief, and so it's meant to be an alignment thing where if you feel like an initiative is really significant enough that it deserves attention and effort, we're filling out this brief and we're saying, okay, here's the problem. Here's the impact that it's creating. Here's what we think a potential solution might be, what kind of resources might need to be involved? And then you can kind of get a group together to walk through that brief, answer any questions and then say like, yes, worth it.
Shannon Howard (19:37):
No, not worth it or not right now. So that's something Intellum has kind of created to create more of that alignment. But I think even just in the day-to-day, it's figuring out what are those things that matter most? And then how do I socialize as much as possible where there may not be a day where I get everybody in the same room and I get a thumbs up and people are nodding like, yes, this sounds great, Shannon, keep going do that. But one of the things I learned in product management too is if I have 80% confidence that I'm moving in the right direction, I will just keep going. In the absence of a clear yes, if there's confidence, we will keep going. I don't want to pause waiting for that.
Jeff Reekers (20:15):
Following you. The last few years now since we were first connected, I've gotten to see bits and pieces of that communication and action in the external world through say LinkedIn as an example. You've done an incredible job building your personal brand and your voice through LinkedIn and other mediums. And I know this is a hot topic among many others who are looking to do the same and kind of transitioning gears here, but any advice for those that are looking to build their voice, build their personal brand, and what have you seen successful there? How did you get started going down that avenue? And any advice that you have for others, they're trying to do the same thing.
Shannon Howard (20:52):
Consistency is the most important thing. And it's the same in relationship building too. You have a closer relationship with people that you consistently connect with than sporadically, so that even just from an algorithm perspective, LinkedIn is going to reward people who post more consistently. Second thing I would keep in mind is more than you think you do chief among them of imposter syndrome of what do I really know? I feel like I've done a bunch of little things all over the place, but there are people who know so much more than I do about or references or reviews or advocacy programs. There's a place for all of those voices too. You think about how many personal finance books or self-help books are out there, they're saying the same thing, but it's a different voice. And so someone might be interested in your voice, they might learn best from you, they might resonate with how you talk about something.
Shannon Howard (21:41):
I wouldn't hold back. You think you don't have a lot to share. And then I would also just think in the vein of consistency is how can you repurpose? I've been talking a lot about how could you create a podcast like this and then turn it into video clips and blogs and LinkedIn posts. And the other day I was on with Captivate Collective taking notes on the side because it's like, man, there's so much that you could create from that. And so I think really the more conversations you have, the more inspiration that you have and then just go share that, Hey, in the Slack community we're talking about this. Or the other day I was talking to so-and-so, or I was on the CMA weekly call and this topic came up. And just share and just get in the habit of posting about what you're talking about, what you're thinking about, what you're learning. That goes a long way. I think LinkedIn is quickly becoming a way to learn, and then also just knowing other people are talking about the same types of things. They're having the same problems, they're running into the same conversations.
Jeff Reekers (22:37):
Yeah, amazing. And one thing I saw that you shared very recently was the creation of the ELG, the education-led growth maturity model. You've got a webinar on it and you can unpack it and take two hours or more on this topic as a whole, but would be kind of curious on the building blocks or sort of the framework overall. Tell me about what does that mean exactly? Is the education-led framework and maturity model, what was the process behind it and what are some key elements that we can share on this podcast and folks can maybe take a look at it afterwards and dive in deeper.
Shannon Howard (23:09):
Sure. The first thing that we released around education-led growth is the framework seven pillars of a successful education program. And so it starts with business outcomes. What is the whole purpose of education? What are you trying to drive the audience or audiences? Who are you trying to educate? Is it customers, partners, employees, prospects? Is it some subset of those segments? And then what kind of initiatives, right? So we're talking about onboarding skills and enablement certification, things like that. And then we kind of move into more content and resources, delivery, marketing and engagement measurement, and then this idea of continuous improvement feedback loops, and then going back and improving all of those things. What did we learn about the best ways to market or the best ways to position and so on. So we released the framework earlier this year, which is really kind of codifying what makes up a successful education program, the objective in creating that.
Shannon Howard (24:07):
I think a lot of education folks were like, yes, yes, this is exactly what you should do, but what we were trying to do was be able to communicate, give people language to communicate to the business what education is and does and why it's important. And so it was how can we take customer education, which is a concept, I believe this about customers. No new customer comes in that didn't touch an existing customer. Customer education is critical to any go-to-market strategy that you have. You can have a product-led strategy, but if people don't know how to use your product, good luck keeping them. Good luck getting referrals, good luck expanding them into other product modules. If they don't know how to be successful, why would they stay and why would they advocate? I think it makes sense to a lot of people, especially people in the industry, but how do you communicate that to your board and how do you communicate that to your executive team?
Shannon Howard (24:56):
So that was a framework. The maturity model was really developed because we saw in our space, one, there's not a lot of maturity models for customer education, and two, they lump everything together. And so it's like your whole program, your whole portfolio of programs, is it ad hoc? Is it foundational, strategic or transformational? I think insufficient is you might have incredible education content and people are showing up to your workshops, they're in your academy consuming content and it's helping them and it's moving the needle. But if you're unable to tie it to business outcomes or if you're unable to get it into the hands of more people, then you're going to struggle to really show that impact and tell the story of the business. So it was really to help people assess what are your strengths and then where is there opportunity to grow? And then how can you pull that into your education strategy and say, Hey, here's where we're at on this maturity model. Here's what the next stage looks like, and then use that as part of your business case to get whether it's more resources or support from marketing or support from bi data analysts, whoever it is. So that's kind of why we developed both. What are the things that people are struggling with and how do we be helpful? That was why we created the framework and the maturity model.
Jeff Reekers (26:11):
One quote that I've repeated back in my mind like eight times since you said it was no new customer comes in without touching an existing customer. And that is so true, and that is something that is so overlooked and that is such an incredible statement. I started thinking through my mind. I said, ever not been true? Actually, I can't believe it wouldn't be. There's something that always a customer consumes or absorbs or a new customer as part of that validation process. Switching gears here, what's a trend in customer marketing that you think is maybe getting more hype than it deserves right now or something that maybe a lot of customer marketers hold to be true, which you disagree with today?
Shannon Howard (26:51):
I don't know that there's anything that's overrated or overhyped. I just think there's so much room for this industry to really kind of rise and elevate and be given more of a platform and an opportunity. My one hot take is just around case studies and customer stories where I know people want really creative formats and something beyond problem solution results or challenge solution results. I think a lot about what do people expect? And so when someone gets a case study, they're used to the challenge solutions, results format, and it's skimmable and it makes sense. And when you think about where are people using those, I think let's not reinvent the wheel there. There's a way to do challenge solution results that really honors your customer and makes them look like a hero. And High Five to Audrey and my team because done an exceptional job of that, of keeping in that traditional format, but customers really feeling valued, seen, recognized, appreciated in that. But let's use that creative bandwidth and maybe the budget too. If we're having someone create these really wildly beautiful stories, maybe that budget and that time is more useful somewhere else.
Jeff Reekers (28:00):
Kind of wrapping up with the last couple of questions here, and you mentioned the collaboration and openness among customer marketers as a whole of sharing and sort of the togetherness and community around that. Who's the person in customer marketing that you've really admired or customer education that you've admired doing that sort of incredible work? And who would you recommend maybe be on this podcast in a future episode? Who would you love to learn from more deeply in a podcast like this?
Shannon Howard (28:26):
Okay, I had two come to mind. So one is Kevin Lau working with him and his mentorship program. I just think he has done so many exceptional things and has that heart to give back and share what he's done. I feel like every time I look at his LinkedIn profile, I'm like, yes, I want to do that too. And then Ciana at Sneak has also been opening up her playbook and she's just done so many. When you think about a well-rounded holistic customer marketer, I think she's had just such a diverse background and then is saying like, Hey, steal my template, steal my play. Here's what I did, what I learned. And I think she just really gets it. So I think she'd be awesome to have as well.
Jeff Reekers (29:04):
Amazing. And finally, if you could go back in time, whisper one piece of advice to yourself at the start of your career, what would that piece of advice be?
Shannon Howard (29:13):
The piece of advice I've gotten, and this might be unique to my personality, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it's a customer marketing trait, is I care a lot. I want to do right by my customers. I want to do right by the business, my team. And not that that's a bad thing, but care but not put all your eggs in that basket, right? There are going to be things that you don't agree with or that you don't like or they're not going to be perfect, right? Or it's not going to be the best customer experience. And just to let things be what they are and how they are and do the best that you can to influence and make an impact. But we don't control it all. I don't control it all. That's feedback that I've gotten a lot in my career. I think it's a lesson I will probably take a lifetime to really fully absorb, but just to do the best you can to let go of the rest and it's okay. It's all going to be fine.
Jeff Reekers (30:04):
Yeah, amazing. I think that's a great way to cap it off here as well. Shannon, I just want to mention it's really an honor to have you on the podcast and on this episode prior to Starting Champion, just thinking of an idea and kind of vetting that among the community. You're one of the first folks to take a call and to just jam out and chat about problems and challenges and share your insights and wisdom. And so the concept of championing others and being there for others and collaborating, I just personally can't thank you enough for that. And that really comes through not only in your career, but in everything you do in life. And that sort of authenticity is something that really impacted us and champion as well in starting a new venture. So I just want to say it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast here and thanks so much. Thanks everybody for tuning in here.
Shannon Howard (30:49):
Yeah, thank you so much, Jeff.
Jeff Reekers (30:53):
If you're ready to turn customer advocacy into your biggest growth engine, make sure to subscribe to Customer Champions wherever you listen to podcasts. And for even more insights, go to championhq.com, because the best way to grow isn't just by winning customers, it's by championing them.