Why Launching The TOP100 Influencers & Strategists in CMA for the Second Time Means More Today Than Ever Before

We get asked a lot about the connection between Customer Marketing and Customer-Led Growth, and the answer is sweet and simple: it’s engagement. Achieving stronger, longer, and broader engagements with our customers and our peers is an evolutionary skill that the B2B industry is still developing. And, as we evolve from Customer Marketers into full-blown Customer-Led Growth practitioners and orgs, it’s time to take engagement to the next level. Getting better at engaging with our customers, our teams, our communities, our vendors, and our employees, is the key to unlocking the future of B2B.

If Customer-Led Growth is the destination, then engagement is the vehicle to get us there.

As we laid out our plans for this year’s TOP100 awards program, we put our team’s heads together to brainstorm about what makes a Customer Marketer succeed and grow continually. 

We looked at some of the leaders in our space and asked ourselves: 

What is it that these stand-out practitioners are focusing on and exceeding in, and how can we spotlight their achievements in a manner that will serve to benefit the global community?

We boiled it down to a few fundamentals that we believe are what make a customer marketer evermore successful:

• Good communication skills and personal brand building 
• Internal collaboration with multiple teams, executive alignment
• A program strategy that aligns with the company’s business goals
• Measurable KPIs and clear business impact 
• A customer champion: strong relationship-building, alignment and storytelling 

Our 2023 TOP100 in CMA is dedicated to our Super Engagers 

We’ve made a few adjustments to the program this year, namely the fact that we will be coming out of the program with a single list of achievers. We will be publishing one list of 100 Influencers & Strategists, and using the stories they share to help others learn. 

Engagement is the thread we weave into relationships, and it’s the fuel of what we do every day on a professional level, but personally too.

Although this is a people’s choice awards program, and we’re aiming to spotlight our community’s best and brightest, one of the things we love most about our space is the open knowledge-sharing. Over the past four years we’ve been blown away by the mutual support system that has emerged almost organically to help the practice of Customer Marketing take shape. It’s been an exciting and meaningful ride, to say the least and we want to keep the ball rolling! 

Practitioners have engaged with each other on an unprecedented level, and we want to celebrate this aspect of our work too. To ensure that everyone has a chance to learn from our nominees’ experiences, we’ve added a few short questions to the process, the answers to which we will share in our ongoing publications. We’re sure you’ll love the concept of these stories as much as we do.

The time to evolve is now and it takes a village (or an industry)

Lastly but never leastly, we can’t just go quietly without addressing this big financial elephant in the room, can we? We want to start by saying that we are deeply troubled by the mass layoffs in our industry and would like to offer our sincere support in any way we can. 

It’s our belief, and as fellow witnesses to the magic we think you’ll agree, that marketing teams shouldn’t be dismantling their forces; they should be evolving… into Customer-Led Growth organizations. Marketing teams are often the first to go because of their relatively larger budgets and “loose” connection to the core of the business, but Customer Marketers make that direct connection, and our impact on retention, revenue and lifetime value is compelling. Particularly during a down market.

Customer-Led Growth is the next level of our superpower – let’s unleash it together!

Of course, the way forward is paved with obstacles, but we have a superpower we’re ready to tell the world about, don’t we? 

TOP100 Influencers & Strategists in CMA is our way of coming together as a community to celebrate what we do and how we do it. Let’s nominate the people in our space that we know are good at what they do and those we want to learn from – and let’s continue to focus on what matters most – people engaging with people. 

To this end, this year we’re also making a special appeal to CMOs and marketing leaders to nominate their standout team members. This type of recognition is important now more than ever. 

So fellow relationship builders, if you’re managing someone you feel is an exemplary Customer Marketer, or working side-by-side with someone who really “gets it”, start nominating now, so we can get their story out and tell the world! 

Get the full list here.