Welcome to the Deeto Hub
A resource and community space for modern marketers, sellers, and builders using customer voice to grow — together.
A resource and community space for modern marketers, sellers, and builders using customer voice to grow — together.
This hub is built for anyone who wants to do more with the voices of their customers. Whether you're scaling advocacy, building trust with proof, or rethinking how to go to market — you're in the right place.
How-to guides and playbooks for building with customer voice
Campaign-ready templates and swipe files
Benchmark reports and reference best practices
Event recordings, expert sessions, and community spotlights
Ask questions. Share ideas. Trade wins. This is your space.
You don’t have to figure this out alone. The Deeto community connects you with other leaders using customer voice to build better GTM motions, faster-growing brands, and smarter strategies. If you are interested in joining when it launches, sign up below.
Automate advocacy management workflows
Dynamically generate customer stories and social proof
Eliminate manual reference management
Track and report advocacy impact on revenue
Discover practical guides, templates, and tools to help your team close more deals, faster.
B2B sales are naturally more drawn-out than their B2C counterparts. There are more stakeholders, higher price tags, and more risk involved. That’s just part of the game.
But there’s a difference between “long” and too long.
Buyers don’t just dislike friction, they actively avoid it. And nothing kills momentum faster than a drawn-out sales process full of follow-ups, delays, and unclear next steps.
In today's article, I'll walk you through 10 strategies you can use to get deals across the finish line faster.
The faster you can educate your buyer, align with their needs, and get to a decision, the more likely you are to win the deal. According to Ebsta's 2023 B2B Sales Benchmark Report, deals that close within 31–60 days have significantly higher win rates. And when a deal remains open beyond twice the average sales cycle length, the chance of closing drops to just 3%.
A shorter sales cycle has ripple effects across your entire business. It leads to:
You can fit more deals into the pipeline at once, with better margins and more predictable cash flow, while making it more seamless for buyers to actually give you their money.
The problem is that sales cycles are getting more complicated. Capchase's 2023 report indicates that B2B SaaS sales cycles have lengthened by an average of 3.8 weeks across companies, which leads to increased customer acquisition costs and reduced revenue per unit.
Before you can speed up your sales cycle, you need to understand where it actually begins, how it progresses, and where it tends to stall.
In B2B sales, you have multiple conversion points.
Each of those transitions is a handoff, and each handoff is a potential slowdown.
Start by documenting the full journey from first touch to closed deal. Break it into clear stages—lead capture, qualification, demo, proposal, negotiation, close—and identify the key actions or signals that move a prospect forward.
Once you’ve outlined each stage of your sales cycle, dig into the data and measure how long leads typically spend in each one. You’re looking for averages, outliers, and patterns.
With answers to these questions, you can zoom in on the slowest stages and fix what’s broken — e.g., a content gap, poor qualification, or an unclear next step.
Now, you have a benchmark. So you can ask yourself why certain stages take longer than they should. This is where the real optimization work begins.
Look at:
Talk to your sales team. Listen to recorded calls. Review proposal feedback.
Once you've figured out exactly where in the sales cycle you're taking too much time, you can start applying targeted fixes that actually move the needle. Below are 10 strategies you can use to do so.
If you're facing problems further down the funnel with leads who were never going to close, eliminating them at the source (the top of the funnel) will save you time and give you resources back in every stage thereafter. That's why bringing the right leads in is one of the most impactful improvements you can make: it gives back wasted time to every subsequent stage.
Your ideal customer profile (ICP) should define the company size, industry, pain points, and buying triggers that make someone a strong fit for your solution. If a lead doesn’t check enough of those boxes, they’re not worth the time investment.
Don’t leave qualification to gut instinct. Your sales playbook should use proven frameworks like:
The right methodology depends on how complicated your buying process is, and how many people are involved in the average buying group. Enterprise deals do better with a more involved framework like MEDDIC, for example.
A weak discovery call leads to vague proposals, unclear value, and deals that stall. If you want to shorten your sales cycle, you need to nail discovery because that’s where momentum begins.
Don’t stop at surface-level pain points. Go deeper.
Instead of asking“What’s your biggest challenge?” ask:
Your sales reps' goal isn’t just to collect information. It’s to create urgency, build trust, and show the buyer you understand their world better than your competitors do (your chosen methodology will guide this).
Buyers don't care about fancy features. They care about what those features can do for their businesses. Maybe they want to reduce churn by 15%, enter a new market, or eliminate some of their manual workloads. When you connect your solution directly to those business-level goals, you make a more compelling case for your product, which drives faster decision-making.
77% of B2B buyers are more likely to engage with sellers who show they understand their needs through personalization. And personalization is shockingly uncommon. Check your email inbox, look at all the pitches you get, and you'll see what I mean.
The best way to differentiate is through solution selling. The problems your reps uncovered in the qualification stage? Those are the things all the future conversations, demos, and enablement content should be centered around.
Deeto helps you personalize even further, even easier. Our smart-matching algorithm automatically shows your reps relevant references, use cases, and social proof collateral with each prospect, based on identifiers like their industry and company size.
It also helps to spend 5–10 minutes researching the company and the contact before each interaction. Look at recent press, LinkedIn activity, tech stack, and hiring trends. Then use that intel to ask smarter questions and position your solution more strategically. At the very least, it'll show them you've done your homework.
AI and automation tools can actually make you MORE authentic — that is, if you use them properly. A few critical ones:
Deeto plugs into your existing sales automation stack to amplify its time-saving benefits. By integrating with your CRM and sequencing tools, it streamlines social proof and reference sharing by automatically surfacing real customer stories that match your prospect’s profile.
There are plenty of ways to drive conversions using social proof (it influences 90% of buyers comparing products). The key is to use the right types of social proof. If your marketing attracts the wrong leads, you'll waste too much time qualifying people who were never going to buy.
That means featuring:
If a SaaS CFO lands on your site and sees a testimonial from another SaaS CFO explaining how they eliminated 90% of their financial reporting inaccuracies, you’ve got instant relevance.
Deeto's AI-powered widget makes it easy to distribute social proof across your website, and there are plenty of other places to incorporate this content into your sales cycle:
When buyers hesitate, it usually isn’t because they actually need more time. It’s because something feels unclear, risky, or misaligned.
You already know what objections come up most often:
Bring these up before your buyer does. Frame them in the context of other customers who felt the same way, and explain how they moved forward anyway.
To make this the standard across your sales org, create a centralized objection-handling library your reps can pull from. And make it a part of your ongoing training to practice handling these objections in mock sales calls.
Influ2 data shows that more than half (53%) of teams have issues with hand-off misalignment between sales and marketing. But you also have approvals from legal and finance (and, for enterprise deals, possibly your product team) to worry about.
There are a few steps you can take to eliminate those issues:
If your proposals are confusing, overly technical, or missing key details, you’ll create hesitation, even if everything you've done up to this point has been executed perfectly.
Your proposal should feel like a no-brainer to the buyer.
That means:
Use templates, but tailor them. And deliver them fast, ideally within 24 hours.
Bonus tip: Include a short video walkthrough of the proposal to give context and increase engagement.
This is a huge drag point, especially in enterprise sales. But you can speed it up by using standard contracts that legal has already pre-approved and building optionality into pricing and terms to reduce back-and-forth.
You can also offer redline templates to guide negotiations through your contracting and e-signature tool, which further reduces the overall friction here.
Dig into your CRM and analytics platforms to uncover:
Deeto surfaces valuable insights into engagement with reference content, buyer-to-buyer storytelling, and customer quotes, which tell you which proof points drive the most velocity and which customer stories resonate with which segments. That gives you a data-backed understanding of how trust accelerates deals.
Nothing brings buyers to a "Yes" faster than hearing from someone who’s already been in their shoes and came out the other side with results. That’s the power of advocacy. It’s word-of-mouth marketing that’s both free and incredibly persuasive.
When you're building your customer advocacy program, don't leave out any of the following steps:
Deeto pulls all of your advocacy efforts into one place and simplifies them, so you’re not looking through thousands of content pieces, scrambling for references, or spending months to create one case study.
Request a demo to see how it works.
Discover 10 proven strategies to shorten your sales cycle, close deals faster, and boost revenue. Learn how Deeto helps!
Your customers are always talking. They’re constantly leaving reviews, replying to surveys, and commenting on social media.
But plenty of companies stop after collecting this information. And in doing so, they miss a major opportunity.
Your customer feedback isn’t just social proof. It’s content.
You can repurpose it into emails, ads, landing pages, videos, social media posts — any point in the purchase funnel where you need to build trust and drive decision-making.
In today's guide, you'll learn the what, why, and how of repurposing customer feedback into high-impact marketing content that works across every channel.
When potential customers see someone else solve the exact problem they’re facing, they lean in. It gives them confidence. It reduces friction. It answers the question: “Will this work for me?”
That’s what moves people from "maybe" to "I'm in."
You don’t need to hire a copywriter to guess what your audience cares about, though. Your customers are already spelling it out for you. You just need to capture it and turn it into content.
This is exactly why customer feedback is the most powerful tool in your marketing toolbox. When you start treating it as raw marketing material instead of something that's just "good to know," you create a consistent stream of trust-building, conversion-boosting content — content you can use to drive web conversions.
Repurposing your customer feedback is important because it turns real customer experiences into powerful, trust-building marketing content. It gives you credible, conversion-driving language straight from your audience, helps highlight what actually matters to your buyers, and keeps your messaging fresh without the guesswork.
In Neilsen's recent study of 40,000+ buyers across 56 countries, 88% said they trust customer feedback and recommendations over any other form of marketing messaging. After seeing a trustworthy review, 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy that product.
The reason is simple: When you use real quotes, language, and outcomes, you're not just telling people your product works, you’re showing them that it already has.
Your best customers say things in ways you never would’ve thought of. They describe pain points, benefits, and breakthroughs in the exact words your next buyer is probably already thinking. When you echo that language across your site, ads, and emails, it feels more personal.
You don’t need to start from scratch. Customer feedback is already flowing into your business through reviews, emails, support tickets, social posts, surveys, and calls. This makes it one of the lowest-effort ways to improve your content.
You might think people buy your product for Feature A. But what if your top customers all rave about Feature C?
Repurposing feedback forces you to zoom in on what your audience cares about, not what you think is important. That insight sharpens your messaging, your positioning, and your future product decisions.
Sales, support, and marketing teams all talk to customers differently. But when everyone pulls language and messaging from the same source (your customers), you create brand alignment. That means smoother pitches, stronger emails, and less “reinventing the wheel” across departments.
Stuck on what to post next on social? Need a new angle for your next ad campaign?
Customer feedback gives you an endless stream of ideas, quotes, and stories that are relevant, sharp, and close to the voice of your market. It’s like a living, breathing swipe file that updates itself.
To actually reap those benefits, your first step is knowing where to look. Here are five high-impact sources of customer feedback, and how you can turn each into marketing gold:
Sites like G2, Trustpilot, and Google Reviews are the easiest sources of social proof to pull from, and they're some of the most powerful. They’re publicly available, and often written in your customer’s raw, unfiltered voice.
If you're using Deeto, our new Imported Contributions feature lets you push reviews across personal microsites (another Deeto feature for your sales team), G2 (via integrating the two platforms), and on-site widgets in seconds, without manual copy-paste.
Testimonials and case studies are deeper, more structured stories. They're perfect for turning one win into dozens of content pieces.
From a single testimonial or case study, you can extract:
Deeto’s AI-powered extraction feature makes the process easy. Upload a case study, and it automatically pulls out key moments, quotes, and summaries you can reuse instantly across channels.
This is how you scale social proof without creating from scratch every time.
When people tag you in a win, drop a comment about your product, or post a screenshot of their results, you’ve got powerful, organic validation.
Repurpose these into:
Bonus tip: You might be able to turn positive DMs into anonymous quotes if you can’t get public approval.
When someone messages support to say, “I finally figured this out—it saved me 4 hours,” that’s a conversion-ready quote.
Use those moments to:
To get these kinds of insights, talk to your support and success teams.
NPS responses tell you why people love you (or don’t). Surveys reveal what’s working and what’s missing. For your marketing content, look for recurring phrases, surprising praise, and moments of delight.
Repurpose that into:
Customer feedback is incredibly versatile. One piece can be turned into multiple marketing materials, and you can even use it to address concerns or highlight benefits that are relevant to a specific segment of your target market.
Below, we'll explore four of the most effective ways to turn the feedback you've collected from the sources above into content that drives conversions.
Social is one of the easiest places to inject real customer voices.
Start simple:
Then, go beyond the usual:
This is lightweight, high-impact content that builds trust in your feed daily.
Social proof works best when it’s placed where decisions happen.
Use it strategically:
If you want to go further, use heatmaps and scroll data to place testimonials where people hesitate most. Then, A/B test quotes with different tones (e.g., emotional vs. ROI-driven) to see what converts the best.
For a more detailed look, check out my guide showing how three different companies use customer feedback to drive web conversions.
Since customers' success with your product is so closely intertwined with your USP, it only makes sense to let it drive parts of your content strategy. By incorporating real-life examples of how your product has helped customers, you differentiate your content from others, and you place your product as the solution to the problem you're solving with your content.
One idea is to use multiple feedback sources to write a trend piece: “5 Things Our Power Users All Have in Common.” To increase adoption, share that piece with all your new users (particularly those with low engagement rates) to show the value of your product.
AI makes it effortless to turn one piece of feedback into ten different assets.
With Deeto's centralized customer content repository, it's easy to organize, structure, access, and publish content across multiple marketing channels.
To know whether you're actually turning that customer feedback into sales revenue, there are six key metrics to pay attention to:
This is your most direct signal. Are pages or campaigns with testimonials, quotes, or customer stories converting better than those without?
Test it by A/B testing landing pages with and without social proof, measuring lead gen forms, CTAs, and demo requests after adding feedback-based content, and tracking product page conversions post-implementation.
Are people engaging with the content you’ve created from feedback?
Watch how repurposed reviews perform in:
Higher CTRs mean the message resonated.
Feedback-based content is supposed to feel more human and relatable. If it's succeeding in that department, it should also boost engagement.
Measure engagement with your content by looking at:
If your feedback-rich campaigns convert better, your CAC should decrease over time. Watch for changes in CAC across paid channels, email funnels, or website segments where social proof was added.
Lower CAC = higher efficiency.
Although it's " for marketing," customer feedback and other user-generated content are used throughout the sales cycle to build credibility, handle objections, and drive faster decision-making.
Deeto centralizes your content, so you can equip your SDRs and AEs with customer success stories, quote libraries, and case studies specific to each prospect's use case.
To understand how effective this is for your business, look at:
The average B2B sale requires more than 40 touchpoints. Use tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, or your CRM to track where repurposed content shows up in the buyer journey (Deeto can help with this, too).
Did a blog post featuring a customer story bring in qualified traffic? Did someone convert after clicking an ad using a testimonial? Are your most engaged prospects reading case studies?
Look at assisted conversions, not just last-click attribution.
Deeto's AI-powered platform simplifies the entire process of collecting customer feedback, organizing it, turning it into content, and distributing it across your entire company — Marketing, Sales, Product, and Success.
Request a demo to see how Deeto's platform helps companies fully leverage the power of their customers' voices.
Learn how to turn customer feedback into powerful marketing content. Discover strategies for repurposing reviews and UGC
Running a startup? Scaling a SaaS business? The tools you use to connect with your audience matter more than ever.
In fact, Salesforce's "State of the Connected Customer" report reveals that 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services.
Since engaging even a couple dozen customers with a fully manual process is impractical, you'll need to have a customer engagement platform in place.
This article breaks down the 7 best customer engagement platforms in 2025. I'll look at what each one does well, where it stands out, and which type of business it’s best for.
Customer engagement tools are apps tha help businesses build stronger relationships with their audience. They centralize communication across email, chat, social media, and SMS channels, so you can respond faster and stay consistent.
But they go beyond just messaging. Today's tools for customer engagement also have features for automation, personalization, analytics, and customer journey tracking.
Depending on the specific tool you use and which facet of customer engagement you're focused on, you can use these tools to:
The goal, no matter what? To keep your customers engaged, satisfied, and coming back.
To put it bluntly, manual customer engagement doesn’t scale.
As your business grows, so too does the volume of customer conversations, support requests, and follow-ups. Without the tools to manage this, it’s easy to miss messages, send inconsistent responses, or completely fail at personalizing your communication.
Customer engagement software solves this. It automates repetitive tasks, unifies communication channels, and gives you a 360° view of every customer. That means faster response times, better experiences, and more loyalty.
More importantly, it helps you:
In other words, it keeps your business human, even as you grow.
Maybe it goes without saying, but customer engagement platforms are not all built the same. The right tool does more than just send messages. It'll help you understand, engage, and retain your customers (at scale).
Here are the key features to look for:
More than 7 in 10 of today's customers expect experiences tailored to their needs. In the age of AI, this is easier than ever.
Great platforms use AI to analyze behavior, segment users, and deliver personalized messages automatically, based on what each customer actually cares about.
Think: Product recommendations, custom email flows, and smart upsells without lifting a finger. Or, for your sales team, a smart-matching algorithm that shows reps the best-fit customers for reference calls and testimonials.
Your customers don’t live in one inbox. That's why top tools let you engage across email, live chat, SMS, social media, and even WhatsApp, all from one dashboard.
This keeps conversations consistent, no matter where they start. It also means no missed messages and faster, more reliable support.
Engagement without data is no better than guessing. The best platforms give you real-time insights into customer behavior, campaign performance, and touchpoints across the journey. You’ll know who’s engaging, who’s falling off, and what’s working, so you can make smarter decisions, faster.
Look for tools that sync with CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce, as well as your sales, marketing, and support platforms. This eliminates data silos across your org and helps your team stay aligned with every customer interaction.
Manual follow-ups and reminders only work for small teams (and even then, they barely do).
Automation lets you scale. From onboarding flows to re-engagement campaigns, the best customer engagement tools help you set up workflows once, then engage customers around the clock.
In the end, that means fewer dropped leads, better retention, and more time for your team to focus on strategy.
Without further ado, here are seven of the most powerful customer engagement tools that you can use to streamline customer interactions and get more out of your most valuable source of insights.
Deeto helps B2B companies turn happy customers into powerful advocates. You can use it to engage prospects better, deepen existing customer relationships, automate feedback collection, and drive smarter customer success decisions.
Instead of chasing testimonials, manually connecting prospects with references, or guessing which features are most important to customers, Deeto facilitates everything through smart, automated processes.
It's the all-in-one platform for customer-led growth, aligning Sales, Marketing, Product, and CS around the customer.
HubSpot (which includes Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, and CMS Hub) is an all-in-one platform that facilitates the broad, standard functions of your customer engagement strategy, like email marketing and customer service ticketing.
In 2025, it’s more powerful than ever, thanks to AI-driven automation, real-time analytics, and seamless collaboration across sales, marketing, and support.
Intercom is an AI-first customer engagement platform that helps SaaS companies deliver fast, personalized support through real-time conversations. It’s a great pick if your goal is to scale customer service specifically, without sacrificing quality.
Gainsight helps B2B SaaS teams prevent churn before it happens. It gives you the tools to monitor customer health, automate retention playbooks, and stay ahead of risks. That way, customer success becomes proactive instead of reactive.
Zendesk is built for fast, efficient customer support at scale. It helps businesses stay on top of tickets, reduce response times, and give customers the answers they need through live agents or AI-powered self-service. It's best for support teams that need to manage high ticket volume with efficiency.
Braze is a customer engagement platform brands use to deliver personalized, real-time messaging across every digital touchpoint. It’s built for teams that want to engage users with timely push notifications, in-app messages, and cross-channel campaigns (without writing code or switching tools).
Sprout Social facilitates customer engagement across social media platforms and gives companies comprehensive insights into brand sentiment. It centralizes customer communication across all your social profiles (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, X). And it provides tools for audience targeting, publishing and scheduling social media content, analytics, and team collaboration.
Most of the tools we mentioned facilitate broader workflows, like customer engagement through social media or support channels. But they’re just parts of the broader customer engagement workflow. They leave a gap after the sale closes.
What happens then?
That’s where Deeto comes in. It helps you:
It helps you maximize customer engagement by filling the missing link in your engagement stack. It turns your customers into your greatest growth engine. And it gives you a serious competitive advantage.
Request a demo today to see how Deeto can transform your customer engagement strategy.
Best Customer Engagement Platforms 2025: Top tools for managing customer relationships and driving success.
Organic growth is a fantastic way to build your business. Growing a business organically means using customer-driven strategies instead of paid advertising. This prioritizes long-term sustainability, trust, and customer engagement to increase brand loyalty and reduce acquisition costs.
An organic growth strategy also allows you to scale efficiently by leveraging existing customers, word-of-mouth referrals, and quality-driven strategies rather than expensive marketing campaigns.
Unlike paid growth strategies—which often yield short-term gains—organic growth emphasizes long-term success through trust, credibility, and consistent value delivery.
Organic growth is business expansion achieved through customer retention, referrals, and word-of-mouth marketing rather than paid advertising. It focuses on sustainable growth, authentic relationships, and long-term customer value.
If your organization achieves organic growth, you’ll build customer satisfaction and brand advocacy. You’ll also create valuable experiences that often keep customers.
Customers prefer brands that offer genuine interactions rather than aggressive sales tactics. Transparency, ethical business practices, and value-driven messaging help establish trust, which makes customers more likely to stay loyal.
Businesses that focus on providing real solutions—rather than just pushing sales—build deeper connections with their audience. In addition, customers appreciate brands that prioritize their needs, leading to repeat purchases and long-term loyalty.
Strong, lasting customer relationships translate to higher brand advocacy and organic referrals. This reduces dependence on expensive customer acquisition methods, making growth more sustainable in the long run.
An organic growth strategy isn’t just important for businesses, but it’s also important for customers. Let’s look into some reasons why:
Loyal customers contribute more revenue over time through repeat purchases and referrals. Businesses that focus on customer retention see greater profitability without increasing acquisition costs.
An organic growth strategy leverages existing customers, reducing the need for expensive marketing campaigns. Instead of constantly spending on acquiring new customers, businesses can focus on nurturing and expanding their current customer base.
Strong customer relationships translate into positive reviews, higher credibility, and a brand image that attracts new customers organically. A well-respected brand naturally gains traction in the market.
Happy customers naturally promote your brand to their networks, fostering organic expansion. A strong referral network can significantly boost sales and customer trust.
It’s crucial to identify the touchpoints. Understanding where and how customers interact with your brand helps optimize the user experience.
You must also understand customer needs at each stage. Addressing pain points and providing solutions at each phase of the customer journey ensures higher satisfaction.
First, you must optimize for user experience (UX). This means ensuring easy navigation, responsive design, and clear messaging to improve customer satisfaction.
You must also provide exceptional customer service—including quick resolutions, attentive support, and proactive engagement to build trust.
Furthermore, it ensures personalization and customization. Tailoring experiences to individual preferences increases engagement and customer happiness.
Customer feedback provides insights to refine products, services, and overall experience. You should encourage reviews and act on customer input to demonstrate a commitment to continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.
Creating valuable and informative content is essential for positioning your brand as an industry leader.
If you offer blogs, whitepapers, webinars, and educational resources, your brand can share insights that resonate with your audience and showcase expertise. This approach not only helps establish authority but also attracts potential customers who need trusted guidance.
Thought leadership also plays a crucial role in building credibility. As you share your expertise, you position your brand as a reliable source of information. This trust can significantly impact customer acquisition and retention, as customers are more likely to choose a brand when they see an expert in its field.
Open and honest interactions are at the core of building lasting relationships with your customers.
Transparency builds trust and shows that your brand values clear communication and is committed to being upfront about its practices and policies. This openness encourages customers to feel more connected and confident in their choice to engage with your brand.
Additionally, addressing customer concerns promptly is essential in demonstrating your commitment to service. When you respond quickly to issues, it reflects your brand’s reliability and dedication to customer satisfaction.
Customer testimonials and reviews play a critical role in building trust. Real experiences from satisfied customers help reassure potential clients that your brand delivers on its promises.
Positive feedback acts as a form of social proof, validating your brand’s credibility and attracting new business.
Case studies and success stories further enhance your brand’s credibility by demonstrating proven results. When potential customers see that your brand has successfully solved challenges for others, it increases their confidence in your ability to meet their needs.
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You should recognize and reward loyalty. You can achieve this with exclusive perks for dedicated customers to encourage repeat business and referrals.
There are many excellent ways to engage your customers. Let’s look at some of the best ways:
Timely responses to reviews demonstrate attentiveness and build trust. You must address feedback—both positive and negative—to show customers that their opinions matter.
Social media groups and forums are critical for growing your community. To strengthen customer relationships, you should create spaces for meaningful discussions and peer-to-peer support.
You should also consider events and meetups. It strengthens customer connections through real-life interactions and builds deeper loyalty.
You should ask questions and initiate discussions. Engaging customers directly makes them feel valued and involved. It’s also critical to respond to comments and messages. That’s because active engagement strengthens relationships and brand trust.
You should build a positive and inclusive environment. A welcoming community enhances customer satisfaction and retention.
In addition, you should celebrate community achievements. You can achieve this by recognizing customer success stories to strengthen emotional connections with the brand.
Failing to actively listen to customers can lead to missed opportunities for improvement and decreased loyalty. Customer feedback - whether through reviews, surveys, or direct interactions—provides invaluable insights into what’s working and needs adjustment.
Brands that dismiss this feedback risk losing touch with their audience, which leads to lower retention rates and stagnant growth.
You should establish feedback loops, actively respond to concerns, and adapt strategies based on customer input.
Many businesses focus heavily on acquiring new customers while neglecting the ones they already have. However, retaining existing customers is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.
Companies should implement retention strategies such as personalized offers, loyalty programs, and proactive customer support.
Regular engagement, follow-ups, and appreciation gestures (such as exclusive content or early access to products) can turn first-time buyers into lifelong advocates.
Attracting new customers is essential, but engagement is what keeps them coming back. Without meaningful interactions, even the most successful acquisition campaigns will result in high churn rates.
You should prioritize relationship-building through personalized communication, community-building efforts, and consistent value delivery.
Whether through social media interactions, educational content, or responsive customer service, ongoing engagement ensures customers remain connected to the brand.
Many businesses rely too heavily on paid advertising while neglecting organic marketing efforts. A well-rounded strategy includes SEO, content marketing, social media engagement, and email marketing. These channels drive sustainable traffic and enhance brand credibility.
High-quality blog posts, informative videos, and interactive social content can attract potential customers and nurture existing ones.
Businesses that fail to invest in organic channels struggle to establish long-term visibility and authority in their industry.
Deeto streamlines the process of engaging your customer base and transforming their insights into valuable assets for your sales, marketing, customer service, and product teams.
With centralized data and AI-driven insights, it simplifies connecting with prospects at scale and ensures communication is authentic. Schedule a demo today to see it in action.
Discover how to grow a business organically using customer-driven strategies and word-of-mouth marketing
Customers aren't shy about voicing their preferences, frustrations, and ideas. Despite that feedback being one of the most valuable resources at their disposal, a surprising number of companies still overlook it (or fail to use it to its fullest potential).
According to research from TreasureData, 76% of business leaders say they're confident they have a complete understanding of their customers to deliver high-quality, personalized experiences. Only 25% of consumers agree.
But the customer experience is largely the deciding factor in your ability to retain customers and grow your business. More than half of all consumers say they'd switch to a competitor after just one bad one.
The best way to truly align your CX with customer expectations? Listen to the ones actually living it.
This is where a Voice of the Customer strategy comes into play.
The Voice of the Customer (VoC) encompasses everything your customers are saying about your business: what they love, what frustrates them, what they wish you’d change. It's the systematic process of gathering, analyzing, and acting on customer insights to improve their experience and, ultimately, your bottom line.
Think of it like this: If you were running a restaurant, VoC would be more than just reading Yelp reviews. You'd want to know what people are ordering the most, how long they're waiting for their food, what they're expecting, and if they'd recommend your place to others. Then, you'd use that information to improve your menu, service times, and overall dining experience.
While customer satisfaction is a critical component of Voice of the Customer, it goes far beyond that.
VoC is all about gathering deep, ongoing insights into what customers are thinking, feeling, and expecting from your business. It’s proactive and holistic. You're gathering insights on behavior, pain points, and expectations from multiple sources.
Customer satisfaction is more like a snapshot. It measures how happy customers are at a specific moment (usually after a purchase, interaction, or service experience). Think of metrics like CSAT or NPS (Net Promoter Score). These are reactive, and they’re more focused on evaluating specific touchpoints rather than uncovering broader insights.
While customer satisfaction is an important piece of the puzzle, it’s just that — a piece. VoC gives you the whole puzzle, showing you why customers feel the way they do and how you can create better experiences across the board.
Collecting VoC data to tick a box doesn't tell you much about the "why" behind it. Active listening means really tuning in to what your customers are saying (and how they’re saying it).
Instead of just looking at the numbers and scores for these things, paying attention to the sentiment and language customers use gives you more context as to the emotions, motivations, and unspoken needs behind their words.
The Voice of the Customer is a strategic lever that directly impacts growth and profitability by guiding you toward customer-centric decisions. It allows you to anticipate and address their needs, pain points, and preferences, which ultimately leads to higher satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.
Your customers are the ones who use your products every day. That means they’re the first to spot what works, what doesn’t, and what’s missing. They can point out gaps or suggest features you may not have considered internally.
When customers repeatedly ask for the same thing or struggle with a similar issue, that’s your cue to act. Feeding this insight back into your product roadmap ensures you’re building things people actually want, which eliminates wasted dev time and increases adoption.
Businesses can't rely solely on product differences to stand out. The real differentiator is the quality of the relationship someone shares with a brand.
This is why nearly three in every four told Salesforce they'd switch to another brand for no reason other than a "better deal," while 88% said good service makes them more likely to purchase again.
VoC helps you identify pain points in the customer journey before they become dealbreakers. Maybe onboarding feels clunky or support takes too long. Whatever it is, when you consistently gather and respond to feedback, you show customers you care.
In turn, you'll have better retention, more referrals, and relationships that are harder to break.
If you understand how your customers talk about your product and what truly matters to them, it's easy to mirror that in your messaging. That means clearer value props, better positioning, and more compelling campaigns.
Use VoC insights to refine your copy, identify high-converting language, and pinpoint the actual problems your product solves from the customer’s point of view. Sales teams can also use this intelligence to handle objections more confidently and tailor pitches more effectively.
With Deeto, the VoC data you collect can even be turned into social proof, which you can dynamically display on your website to increase web conversions.
Sometimes, your customers will reveal use cases or needs you didn’t realize your product could solve. These are golden opportunities — not just for new features, but possibly new offerings, markets, and competitive positioning.
In your VoC data, look for those outlier comments or recurring “It would be great if…” moments. Those point to areas where you can create add-ons, premium tiers, cross-sells, or spin-off solutions that align with your customers’ evolving needs.
By the time a customer cancels, it’s usually too late. But if you’re listening closely, the warning signs are there.
VoC helps you address those red flags early. Maybe it’s a check-in call, a targeted email, or a product tutorial. Whatever it is, proactive engagement helps them get value out of their relationship with your product.
To lay the groundwork for a successful strategy, there are four important steps you need to take when setting up your VoC program:
You need to know what you’re listening for. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a bunch of data and no clear direction. Goals give your VoC program purpose.
Start by asking: What are we trying to improve? Are you trying to reduce churn? Improve a product feature? Nail your brand messaging?
Once you have clarity, define measurable goals (like improving CSAT by 10% or increasing trial-to-paid conversion). These goals guide everything else, from what questions you ask to which channels you focus on.
Not all feedback carries the same weight, and different customers have different needs. To understand who you’re hearing from and make sure you’re acting on insights that actually matter to your business strategy, your second step is to segment your audience.
Build personas that reflect these groups and their goals. Then tailor your questions and analysis accordingly. That way, you avoid treating all feedback as one-size-fits-all and start making decisions that are laser-focused on specific customer groups.
You need both the right channels and the right timing to get meaningful, actionable feedback. If you’re only using surveys, you’re missing the bigger picture.
The best approach is to mix methods:
You’ll want a blend of quantitative data (scores, trends) and qualitative insights (comments, conversations). Together, they give you both the “what” and the “why.”
Data spread across tools and teams is noise. You need one source of truth that turns scattered input into clear insights.
Use a centralized platform for capturing customer knowledge and feedback (like Deeto), or a CRM-integrated solution that pulls in feedback from all your channels. Tag and categorize data, then analyze it on a regular basis to find trends, flag issues early, and continuously refine based on what customers are telling you.
Like I mentioned, tapping into the Voice of the Customer requires a healthy mix of quantitative and qualitative data from a variety of sources.
Broadly speaking, there are five categories of customer feedback to use:
These are your workhorses. They’re scalable, structured, and perfect for capturing specific feedback at key moments (like post-purchase or post-support interactions).
Ideally, keep them short and focused. Ask both quantitative questions (“On a scale of 1–10…”) and open-ended ones (“What could we have done better?”).
Tools like Typeform, Google Forms, or SurveyMonkey make it easy.
Pro tip: Personalize surveys based on customer segment or journey stage to keep things relevant.
This is where you go deeper.
Interviews let you explore emotions, behaviors, and underlying motivations you won’t uncover in a form. To avoid bias, start by choosing a diverse sample of customers and create a relaxed environment where they can be candid. Ask open-ended questions and actively listen.
Focus groups are great for getting multiple perspectives at once and watching how ideas bounce around. They're gold for product development, UX research, and branding insights.
Social platforms are an unfiltered feedback channel; people say what they really think about your brand and product, in real time.
Use tools like Brandwatch, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social to monitor brand mentions, hashtags, and sentiment. Pay attention to trends, complaints, praise, and what they're saying about competitors.
Reviews are unsolicited, brutally honest, and loaded with insights about what people value most. They also highlight emotional drivers that formal feedback might miss. Track your reviews on platforms like Google, G2, Yelp, or whichever platforms are relevant to your industry.
Look for patterns in language, tone, and specific features being mentioned. High ratings tell you what to double down on. Low ones? They’re a free roadmap for improvement.
People usually reach out when they’re stuck, confused, or frustrated. So, your support inbox shows you in real time where your points of friction are.
Analyze tickets, chat logs, call transcripts, and feedback forms. Tag and categorize issues by type, frequency, and sentiment. Better yet, loop your support team into the VoC process, since they’re on the front lines and know what’s bothering customers through first-hand experience.
Tracking the right KPIs helps you connect feedback to action and measure whether your efforts are actually making a tangible impact.
Here are seven key metrics you’ll want to keep an eye on:
Your VoC strategy is where the rubber meets the road. To create a structured, repeatable process that ties customer feedback directly to business outcomes, there are five key steps to follow:
Start by identifying your core strategic objectives. Are you trying to break into a new market? Reduce churn? Improve onboarding?
Once you’ve nailed those down, Deeto simplifies feedback collection by allowing your customers to share it directly. When you invite them to the platform, they instantly become part of your knowledge base.
Not all feedback carries equal weight. Feedback from a high-LTV or long-time customer might reveal deeper loyalty drivers or critical gaps, especially if they're aligned with your ICP. Segment insights so you’re not optimizing for edge cases or low-impact voices.
Also pay close attention to patterns. If 20% of your customers flag the same issue, that’s probably a high-impact opportunity.
Analyze the data to uncover trends, root causes, and opportunities. Group comments by themes (e.g. pricing, usability, support) and tie them back to your goals. Then create clear, specific recommendations your team can act on — for example, “redesign the signup flow to reduce confusion” instead of “people are getting stuck.”
Work with Product, Marketing, Support, and Ops teams to turn insights into roadmap items, experiments, or process improvements. Set timelines, assign ownership, and track progress for each.
Small changes (like updating onboarding emails) can be quick wins, while larger changes (like building a new feature) need more planning, but both matter.
In VoC, active listening also means you respond. You acknowledge the feedback, you act on it, then you let customers know you've implemented a solution. One way to do this is to send an email saying “You asked, we listened," highlighting what’s new and thanking them for their input.
With Deeto, knowing who is responsible for which feedback is easy because everything is tagged by name and segment. It also integrates with your CRM, so you can reach out directly to the customers who gave feedback without having to manually search for their contact information.
Timing, application, and analysis make the difference between “meh” insights and truly actionable ones. To implement the steps I've mentioned above, there are a few important best practices to keep in mind:
Even with those best practices, you'll probably run into four main issues when you're implementing and scaling your VoC program:
Let's take a closer look at some possible solutions to these issues:
One of the biggest challenges for VoC programs is getting enough responses to make the data statistically significant.
Increase your response rates:
A platform like Deeto makes things easier because customers leave their knowledge and insights directly within the app, and it's as easy as making an Instagram post.
Open-ended feedback, reviews, and support tickets pile up fast—and it’s hard to make sense of them manually.
The solution here is to use AI-powered text analytics or sentiment analysis tools, which can help you categorize, tag, and analyze the feedback at scale. Build a tagging system or feedback taxonomy to organize themes, then routinely extract the top 3–5 insights per channel to stay focused.
When internal processes move slow, the insights customers give you lose momentum.
To fix this, assign VoC "owners" in each department who can triage and route feedback for particular categories. For instance, at-risk customers can be routed to Customer Success while major bug reports can go to your Product team.
Maybe you collect great insights but struggle to apply them to personalized marketing, onboarding, or product experiences.
If you tie VoC data to your CRM or customer profiles, you can use the feedback to build smart segments (e.g., “frustrated new users,” “loyal customers who want X feature”). From there, customize content, offers, or product flows based on that segmentation.
You can use Deeto's AI-powered segmentation tools to curate and suggest the most valuable content for each specific use case or customer interaction.
It's more than just a platform you can use to collect, centralize, and track VoC insights. It's an end-to-end customer marketing platform, meaning you can take different kinds of feedback from different kinds of customers and apply them to different areas of your business.
Customers choose how they want to contribute, so there's no "right" or "wrong" way to provide feedback. This makes it easier for you to get more insights from a wider variety of customers.
And our AI-powered tools make it easy to segment and track different types of feedback, create usable content (e.g., case studies), and connect customers with prospects in your pipeline based on their knowledge and first-hand experiences.
Request a demo to see how it works.
Learn what Voice of the Customer (VoC), how it works, key methods, best practices, and strategies to improve growth.
If you're building out a sales team, you're either going to hire sales development representatives (SDRs) or business development representatives (BDRs).
Chances are, you've heard both terms thrown around quite a bit (at times, seemingly interchangeably). While they sound similar, their distinction is important when it comes to hiring decisions. Each position requires a unique set of behaviors, skills, and performance metrics.
Hiring the wrong type of sales rep causes confusion over responsibilities, inefficiencies in your sales pipeline, and underperformance if someone lacks the core strengths for the specific function.
In today's article, I'll walk you through the SDR's and BDR's roles within a company, their key differences, and how to know which one you need to hire for your sales org.
An SDR, or Sales Development Representative, is the person in your sales organization who identifies, qualifies, and engages potential customers before handing them off to an Account Executive or a more senior sales rep. Think of them as a “first point of contact” who breaks the ice with interested prospects.
Typically, they:
The SDR role engages and nurtures warm leads. They set the stage for more meaningful conversations down the line.
A BDR, or Business Development Representative, is your go-to person for finding untapped business opportunities and sparking conversations with companies that may not even know they need your solution yet. While an SDR deals with warm leads and inbound inquiries, a BDR is the hunter who goes out to create opportunities from scratch.
Some of their key responsibilities include:
BDRs expand your company's market reach by bringing new leads into your funnel. They get your product on the right people's radar, even before they start actively looking for a solution.
The main difference between an SDR and a BDR is that SDRs are focused on inbound leads, while BDRs are focused on outbound sales.
The number-one goal of sales development is to set qualified appointments with prospects who have a strong chance of converting into customers. Someone who meets this criteria is classified as a sales-qualified lead (SQL).
Business development, on the other hand, exists to create net-new revenue opportunities. The BDR's ultimate goal is to broaden the company’s horizons through fresh channels, business partnerships, and market segments.
Let's take a look at those differences more in-depth:
They’re looking for companies or markets you haven't fully tapped into yet (if at all). They start by identifying decision-makers and their roles/titles, then apply their knowledhe of industry trends, to figure out which companies stand to benefit the most from your offering. They base their outreach on simple identifiers like company size, location, and vertical.
Since the people they’re reaching out to haven’t necessarily raised their hands, BDRs start at a more basic level of qualification — that is, confirming whether there’s even a need for your product or service. By starting a conversation, they're essentially gauging (a) whether the prospect fits your ICP and (b) if the timing is right to move forward.
SDRs primarily focus on the people who’ve already shown interest in some way, like downloading a white paper, attending a webinar, or filling out a form. These leads are a step or two closer to buying, so SDRs don’t have to comb through entire industries. Instead, they talk with people who come in through existing marketing efforts (e.g., an ad or blog post).
Because of this, qualification is all about determining if that existing interest is a genuine fit. They can delve deeper into how the prospect’s challenges align with your solution and whether the lead meets your company’s “sales-ready” criteria. If the lead checks those boxes, the SDR sets up an appointment or demo with an Account Executive to keep the conversation rolling.
BDRs' prospects aren’t actively looking for a solution, so they spend time researching both the company and key stakeholders to create highly relevant messages that stand out. From there, they use cold outreach strategies to
Building relationships from scratch takes time — it takes an average of 8 touchpoints to land an intial meeting. So BDRs also develop a sales cadence (a planned sequence of outreach activities) that combines emails, calls, and social media outreach at strategic intervals.
Inbound leads are “warm,” so SDRs respond quickly (often within minutes or hours) to capitalize on that initial interest. Since these leads have already engaged (e.g., by requesting info), they focus on confirming fit and readiness rather than persuading someone to explore a solution from zero.
While the conversion cycle is shorter, SDRs still use a combination of phone calls, emails, and digital follow-ups to keep leads engaged and move them toward a productive conversation with an AE.
There are three main ways BDR managers measure and evaluate their teams:
As for sales development reps, activity metrics like call volume are also important. But, since they're dealing with warmer prospects, there are three other critical metrics to pay attention to:
A BDR's prospects might be aware your product exists, but they (usually) aren't actively looking for a solution. The BDR's job is to get them interested. They're there to get the prospect talking about their challenges and see if there's a way your product can help.
SDRs bridge the gap between marketing and sales. Their prospects have already looked at some of your marketing content and are somewhat familiar with your product. Some might even have requested a demo or trial. In this case, the BDR's job of filling the top of the funnel has already been taken care of by your marketing activities.
SDRs and BDRs are both part of an inside sales team. Both roles do the “pre-work” before the heavier sales discussions happen. And both hand off their leads to an AE, who picks up to do demos, negotiate deals, and close business.
Beyond this, there are plenty of opportunities for them to collaborate:
BDRs might come across a promising new segment during outbound efforts and can pass that insight to SDRs, who use it to tweak their follow-up and qualification methodology. SDRs, who hear firsthand what inbound leads are responding to, share tactics and hooks that resonate.
Sometimes a BDR uncovers a highly interested lead who’s actually an inbound lead that slipped through the cracks. And if a lead is initially cold for a BDR but later engages with a webinar or downloads a white paper, that might shift it into SDR territory.
SDR and BDR teams share the ultimate goal of growing and maintaining a solid pipeline. AEs share with both groups what happened post-handoff — was the opportunity a good fit, and if not, why?— so both can refine their targeting.
When you’re deciding whether to hire an SDR or a BDR first (or at all), it really comes down to what your current pipeline looks like, how established your brand is, and the nature of your sales process.
Broadly speaking, there are five factors that will influence your decision:
If you already have a lot of inbound leads thanks to marketing, brand recognition, or a customer advocacy program, an SDR is ideal. If you’re still making a name for yourself, a BDR will cold call and educate the market. They'll set up initial conversations that drive early adoption.
Complex deals require a higher degree of personalization and strategic outreach that's right within the wheelhouse of a BDR. If your solution is easier to understand and the sales cycle is shorter, an SDR should be enough to qualify inbound interest.
If you're already pulling tons of leads from different marketing channels, an SDR can slot in to convert them into qualified prospects. If your marketing function is lean, a BDR can generate fresh opportunities without relying on a heavy marketing funnel.
BDRs are more expensive in the sense that outbound prospecting campaigns take longer to yield results. There’s also a lot of time and effort in building target lists, crafting outreach sequences, and refining messaging. SDRs show quicker ROI because they capitalize on your existing inbound momentum.
If your goal this year is to break into a new industry vertical or geographic region, a BDR is the one who'll spearhead that effort. If your marketing is already effective at driving people to your site or product demos, an SDR will make sure no lead falls through the cracks.
Today's customers want convenience and personalization. Internally, software helps you streamline your processes, keep everything organized, and tailor each sales conversation to the individual you're working with.
CRM is the core system your sales force will be working in. It handles just about everything:
It also integrates bi-directionally with all your other tools. For instance, when a lead comes through your marketing automation platform, it auto-syncs that info with your CRM as a contact record to follow up on.
Sales automation tools eliminate manual work from different aspects of the BDR and SDR workflow.
These are just a few examples of different tools with automation features that enhance your SDRs' and/or BDRs' productivity.
For instance, you can use Deeto to build personal mircosites for different kinds of prospects and increase top-of-funnel intent. Instead of sending a regular old email, you can send them a persona-based web page with relevant USPs and user-generated content.
Your tools are constantly collecting data from selling activities, customer engagement, and transactions.
CRM tells you everything you need to know about your pipeline and SDR/BDR performance. That includes things like:
Sales automation tools provide similar reporting but with a more granular level of detail.
You also have platforms like Deeto, which monitors opportunities and evaluates advocates' and references' impact on lead generation, opportunity progress, and conversions, and shows you which customer segments or industries are most likely to become advocates for your product.
Today, a significant majority of sales teams have integrated AI into their operations. Salesforce's sixth State of Sales report found that 81% of sales orgs are either testing or already using AI tools. McKinsey's global State of AI survey supports this, showing 78% of organizations use AI, with marketing and sales among the most common areas of application.
It's worked its way into just about every facet of the selling process:
Deeto's AI even analyzes a lead's profile and gives sellers personalized UGC and social proof. That way, reps have an easier time qualifying leads, and they share relevant content that addresses buyer pain points right off the bat.
While the role of the sales rep (BDR or SDR) is a critical one, the fact of the matter is that fewer and fewer buyers are interested in interacting with them. According to research from Gartner, 75% say they prefer a rep-free experience altogether.
The reason is that they prefer to do their own research — 85% of buyers trust customers in their industry more than any other source of information, and they've completed 70% of the decision-making process by the time they engage someone from the company.
Deeto facilitates a more customer-led sales process. You can use it to gather customer feedback and social proof, distribute it across your sales and marketing channels, build a reference pool, and match relevant customer experiences to target accounts.
Request a demo to see how it works.
Explore SDR vs. BDR roles: learn their distinct tasks, goals, & when to use each. Master sales strategies!
Customer-led growth (CLG) is a strategy that focuses on customer experiences, feedback, and advocacy to drive success. Instead of relying on aggressive sales tactics, customer-led growth uses customer insights to improve product development, engagement, and retention.
Companies that use customer-led growth benefit from organic word-of-mouth marketing, deeper customer connections, and improved brand credibility—all key ingredients for success.
In this article, we will explore the benefits of customer-led growth, key strategies, and how AI-powered tools, such as Deeto.ai, can make you a customer-led business.
Customer-led growth is a strategic approach that leverages customer insights and feedback to drive business success. This methodology putsthe customer at the center of all decisions, from product development tocustomer acquisition and advocacy.
In contrast, product-led growth is driven by the product itself, often through experience with free trials or freemium models. There’s also sales-led growth, which is when revenue and customer acquisition is driven by a company's sales team through outreach and relationship building. While both product-led growth and sales-led growth can generate conversions and retention, they don’t contain the same trust element as customer-led growth. All in all, a customer growth strategy is an excellent way for your organization to grow.
According to studies from Nielsen and G2, more than 9 in 10 buyers trust peer recommendations or reviews over traditional brand messaging. It’s not surprising — digital noise is at an all-time high, and with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, how can consumers trust that what they’re reading is a trustworthy source rather than marketing copy fabricated by a large language model? This is why authenticity becomes the biggest differentiator between marketing messages. Customer-led growth delivers a combination of trust, efficiency, and community because users know that they’re getting information from real people with real-life experiences using the product. Companies using a customer-led growth platform like Deeto have seen large improvements in customer acquisition and retention. The proof is in the numbers — Deeto customers have seen 70% growth on user-driven content and an 85% improvement in prospect-reference engagement.
When you understand and meet customer needs, satisfaction naturally follows. Happy customers often remain loyal, which reduces churn and creates long-term relationships.
To grow customer loyalty, you should offer personalized experiences, timely support, and ongoing engagement.
Engaged and satisfied customers become powerful brand advocates. They willingly share their positive experiences with others and influence new prospects through word-of-mouth, online reviews, and social media.
In return, these customers can significantly impact your brand’s reputation and drive organic growth.
Customer-led growth thrives on continuous feedback loops. When refining or creating new products, listening to customer insights and understanding their pain points can provide invaluable knowledge.
As such, this customer-centric approach keeps you ahead of the curve, adapts to changing needs, and delivers innovative solutions for your target audience.
Growing customer loyalty and advocacy has a direct correlation with long-term profitability. That’s because loyal customers contribute to repeat sales and spend more over time.
In response, it creates a sustainable cycle where investment in customer relationships leads to a steady income.
In today's crowded markets, standing out is a challenge. However, you prioritize customer-led strategies to demonstrate your commitment to understanding and adapting to your customers’ needs.
This differentiates you from competitors focusing on traditional marketing tactics.
Customer-led growth reduces heavy spending on traditional marketing and paid acquisition strategies. When happy customers spread the word through referrals, testimonials, and organic social media engagement, they attract new prospects at a fraction of the cost of paid ads.
Moreover, customers trust recommendations from peers far more than they do branded advertising.
A company that consistently listens to and values customer feedback earns trust, which is a powerful asset in today’s competitive market.
When customers see that a brand is responsive to their needs—whether through personalized interactions, timely support, or meaningful product updates—they develop a sense of confidence in the brand’s reliability.
Sales-driven models have some significant downsides, including short-term focus and poor adaptability.
Let’s break these down:
At the heart of customer-led growth is a fundamental shift in how businesses perceive and interact with their customers. Rather than treating customers as mere transactions, CLG places them at the center of its business strategy.
You can use this feedback in product development, marketing, and customer experience strategies to create highly relevant offerings.
Encouraging customers to become brand advocates is a pillar of CLG. When satisfied customers share their experiences through testimonials, case studies, and referral programs, they build social proof for your brand.
In addition, advocacy programs encourage word-of-mouth marketing, which turns loyal customers into growth drivers. It achieves this by influencing potential buyers and expanding brand reach organically.
Creating a strong community around your brand develops deeper relationships and a sense of belonging. For instance, online forums, social media groups, or exclusive customer events provide a space for customers to connect, share experiences, and provide feedback.
Active engagement within these communities keeps you connected with customer needs and gains real-time insights into user preferences.
Modern customers expect personalized interactions that match their preferences, behaviors, and past interactions.
You can use AI-driven segmentation, behavioral tracking, and customized messaging to boost personalization. As a result, this creates meaningful connections, higher retention rates, and increased customer satisfaction.
Utilizing customer data is essential for making informed business decisions. Advanced analytics provide data on customer behavior, pain points, and trends, which allows you to optimize your strategies.
Establishing structured mechanisms for collecting and acting on customer feedback ensures that you meet customer expectations. You can use surveys, Net Promoter Score (NPS) tracking, product reviews, and in-app feedback channels to gain insights for continuous improvement.
Deeto.ai enhances every aspect of a CLG strategy with AI-powered tools, such as customer sentiment analysis, predictive analytics, and engagement automation.
With real-time insights into customer satisfaction, preferences, and behaviors, Deeto refines your advocacy programs, personalizes interactions, and builds stronger customer relationships, which drive sustainable growth.
AI-driven technology is revolutionizing businesses that implement customer-led growth strategies. You can deepen customer relationships, enhance engagement, and drive sustainable growth by leveraging AI-powered insights, automation, and predictive analytics.
Understanding customer emotions and perceptions is crucial for building strong relationships.
Deeto.ai uses AI to analyze customer feedback from multiple touchpoints, including surveys, social media interactions, and support tickets.
Anticipating customer needs is key to delivering personalized experiences and preventing churn.
Deeto.com's predictive analytics engine forecasts customer behavior. It helps you identify at-risk customers, recommend proactive solutions, and tailor engagement strategies.
One-size-fits-all marketing is no longer effective. AI-driven personalization can deliver highly relevant content, product recommendations, and promotional offers based on individual customer preferences and behaviors.
With Deeto.ai, you can create dynamic, customer-centric experiences that drive engagement, increase conversions, and grow long-term loyalty.
Fast and efficient customer support is a critical component of CLG.
Deeto.com's AI-powered chatbots and automation tools streamline support processes, reducing response times and improving the overall customer experience.
Brand advocacy is one of the most powerful drivers of organic growth. Thankfully, Deeto.ai identifies highly engaged customers likely to become advocates and regular customers.
Measuring the success of a customer-led growth strategy requires tracking key metrics that reflect customer engagement, satisfaction, and advocacy.
Here are some of the key metrics:
CLTV measures the total revenue you can expect from a single customer throughout their relationship with the brand. A high CLTV indicates strong customer retention, repeat purchases, and long-term profitability.
With improvements in customer satisfaction, personalized experiences, and building loyalty, you can increase CLTV and maximize the return on customer acquisition investments.
NPS assesses customer loyalty and their likelihood to recommend a product or service to others. It’s measured through a simple survey question, such as:
"How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?"
Respondents are classified as ‘Promoters, Passives, or Detractors’. A high NPS suggests strong customer advocacy, but a low score may indicate dissatisfaction or unmet expectations.
The churn rate tracks the percentage of customers who stop using a product or service. A rising churn rate signals potential issues with customer satisfaction, the onboarding process, or product value.
That said, if you analyze churn trends and implement proactive retention strategies—such as personalized outreach, loyalty programs, and enhanced customer support—you can reduce attrition and improve long-term retention.
The customer advocacy rate measures the percentage of customers actively referring and promoting the brand. This includes participation in referral programs, writing positive reviews, or sharing experiences on social media.
A high advocacy rate indicates strong brand loyalty and organic growth potential. You can enhance advocacy with strong relationships, rewarding referrals, and engaging with customers via community-building efforts.
CSAT quantifies customer happiness based on surveys and feedback mechanisms. Typically measured through post-interaction surveys, CSAT helps you gauge immediate customer reactions to products, services, or support experiences.
A consistently high CSAT score reflects a positive customer experience. In contrast, lower scores may highlight areas needing improvement.
The Customer Engagement Score (CES) measures how actively and frequently customers interact with your brand, product, or service. You can track engagement through various metrics, such as login frequency, feature usage, content consumption, or time spent on the platform.
A high CES indicates that customers find value in your offerings and are more likely to stay loyal, make repeat purchases, and advocate for your brand.
Conversely, a low CES may signal a disengaged user base, potentially leading to higher churn rates.
Implementing a customer-led approach for experience-led growth comes with many challenges. To successfully transition, you must address internal resistance, optimize data utilization, and scale advocacy efforts effectively.
Here are some tips:
Shifting to a CLG model demands a fundamental change in mindset across the organization.
Companies must grow a customer-centric culture by:
A data-driven approach is at the core of CLG, but many businesses struggle with collecting, organizing, and making sense of customer data. This results in them not becoming a customer-led business.
To overcome this, companies should:
As businesses grow, maintaining and expanding customer advocacy programs can become complex.
To ensure advocacy efforts scale effectively, you can:
Featuring the same advocate or case study for months at a time can make your message feel repetitive and lose its impact. To keep engagement strong, rotate your advocates and vary the stories you share so prospects continue to see fresh, relevant proof. Highlight different voices, industries, and outcomes to show the full range of your customer success and ensure your content doesn’t get stale.
Several platforms have successfully implemented customer-led growth (CLG) strategies. These have helped businesses harness customer advocacy, engagement, and data-driven insights to drive sustainable growth.
Here are some examples:
Deeto's all-in-one customer activation platform simplifies the process of collecting, organizing, and sharing valuable customer knowledge across your organization. From marketing materials and sales resources to experience data and product insights, everything's gathered and stored under one roof.
We also use our own software to support our own CLG initiatives by dynamically displaying social proof throughout our website, connecting prospects in our pipeline with relevant customer references, and bringing customers into the content creation and product development processes.
They specialize in customer advocacy and engagement, enabling businesses to build strong communities, incentivize referrals, and amplify word-of-mouth marketing.
Focuses on customer success management, providing businesses with tools to improve retention, reduce churn, and drive customer satisfaction through proactive engagement.
Customer-led growth is the future of sustainable business success. If you prioritize customer insights, engagement, and advocacy, you will build loyal communities, drive organic growth, and stay ahead of the competition.
Deeto.ai provides the AI-driven edge to implement and scale customer-led growth strategies effectively. Book a demo and see how it works.
Learn what Customer-Led Growth (CLG) is, its benefits, and how businesses thrive with a CLG strategy.
Reviews, testimonials, and case studies are your most valuable marketing assets. You can use them throughout the entire sales cycle. And feedback informs every product decision you make.
One of the unique aspects of Deeto's customer knowledge platform is it enables you to create microsites for each buyer persona. It can then personalize them with a prospect’s info and send them automatically based on criteria like their role or company size. This gives you the chance to differentiate your messaging, showcase relevant customer stories, and build trust with them.
In this blog post, we'll dive into four ways Deeto's personal microsites increase top-of-funnel intent for your business.
A personal microsite is a persona-based web page that allows you to display your most relevant social proof to prospects. When the prospect clicks on, they see content tailored specifically to their needs and preferences, without you having to lift a finger.
How it works for the SDR or AE:
You can also create triggers that will automatically send the microsite to prospects based on their behavior or actions. For example, if a prospect just responded to your first cold outreach, you can set it up to trigger a personalized microsite to nudge them towards taking the next step in the sales process.
From there, the customer can click on the link and see the relevant social proof for their needs, with your SDR or AE’s name and face attached to it.
And for groups of similar customers, you can templatize the process. Deeto lets you create different personal microsite pages for each of your ICPs. Once you've done this, your team all have a new, authentic touchpoint that requires zero effort on their end.
At the top of the funnel, it's all about building awareness and creating interest in your product. Your goal is to start the conversation and get a meeting on the calendar. To accomplish that, your outreach needs to be personalized, relevant, and trustworthy. Personal microsites are the best way to hit all three of these points.
The average business professional sees 121 new emails come into their inbox per day. A sizable chunk of them are cold emails from companies just like yours. And in B2B sales, less than a quarter of them will even be opened.
Personalization is your biggest differentiator when it comes to getting your prospect's attention. Deeto's microsites cut through the noise by immediately addressing a prospect's unique challenges and interests, rather than making generalized claims and promises.
Tailored content encourages deeper interaction. When prospects find information pertinent to their situation, they are more likely to engage with the content, explore further, and consider how your product or service can address their needs.
That's why personalized CTAs generate 42% more qualified leads. And it's why companies that personalize the B2B buying experience see an average of 1.4x revenue growth compared to those that don't.
At the top of the funnel, too many companies fall into the trap of sharing generalist content to “cast a wide net.” But 86% of buyers say word-of-mouth is the most influential factor in their purchase decisions. User-generated content (think: quotes, testimonials, user stories) is one of the best forms of this because it presents tangible evidence of your product's value.
Leading with testimonials, success stories, and real-world applications from satisfied users establishes trust and positions your brand as a reliable partner. Microsites give you the ability to achieve this level of personalization at scale.
At the top of the funnel, prospects are exploring solutions. They haven't yet formed specific brand preferences.
When the content you share is solely created by your business, it comes across as biased and promotional. With a microsite, you're speaking directly to your prospect's customer segment, role, or specific needs. And it's more impactful because you're demonstrating the value of your product or service through the words of someone else.
As you work with different decision-makers (e.g., a technical buyer vs. a C-level exec) throughout the sales process, you can get even more personalized. By creating microsites with different industries, roles, and use cases in mind, you can tailor the content to each member of the buying group's specific priorities.
A microsite is the perfect channel for personalized content delivery because it's more visually engaging and professional than a standard email or landing page. It features your rep's name, company logo, and brand assets for instant recognition. And because it's self-contained, there are no distractions or competing messages.
Together, these factors make your prospect more compelled to (a) click on it, (b) read through it, and (c) follow the CTA.
Deeto captures customer knowledge and transforms into actionable insights that drive growth across your organization. Request a demo to see how it works.
Discover 4 top of funnel marketing tactics using Deeto’s personal microsites to boost buyer intent early.
Thanks to generative AI, you can mass-produce virtually any type of content: blog posts, sales emails, even full-on case studies.
Now...solely relying on AI for customer engagement is a recipe for disaster. In 2023, 92% of companies said they use AI-driven personalization in marketing and sales, but the key word here is “driven.”
Those who use it successfully aren’t replacing their team with it — they’re using it to 10x their team’s productivity and deliver personalized experiences to more customers at once.
To successfully use AI in your sales, marketing, and customer success efforts, you have to know where you need that human touch, and how AI can supplement that.
According to McKinsey, nearly three-quarters of all customers expect companies to give personalized interactions. And for B2B buyers, 80% of them expect a B2C-like experience when it comes to personalized content and seamless interactions with your company.
Your team members are there to lay the groundwork:
It's on your sales team to build relationships with potential customers and convert them. And it's on your CS team to activate your cusotmer base and turn them into advocates. If you don't take the time to get to know your users, AI won't be able to bridge that gap.
B2B sales involve multiple decision-makers (all with different needs). They have long sales cycles that require a different approach at each stage, and negotiations are complicated.
Your sales team needs to know which content, customer references, and data points to use for each member of the buying group at each step of the process.
While AI can personalize content and suggestions based on data points, it can't replicate the human touch in one-on-one interactions. Your sales and CS teams have to be skilled at understanding the unique needs and preferences of each customer and tailor their interactions accordingly, and they need to be the final gatekeeper for any AI-generated content or recommendations.
AI isn't a replacement for marketers, sales reps, or CS managers. But, if you lay the foundation with quality data and a well-defined strategy, it’s the missing puzzle piece that'll help you understand your customers, simplify content creation and distribution, and scale your sales and marketing efforts.
You can use AI-powered software to collect information about your customers' firsthand experiences, preferences, and pain points with your product.
With Deeto, it's as easy as making an Instagram post. Just send them an invite to onboard themselves, and they'll set their contribution preferences.
By analyzing your customers’ contributions Deeto will provide an overview of their sentiments, in addition to consolidating all of their information in one place. From there, you can personalize your engagement strategy for at-risk customers, those with the highest engagement levels, and those who use a particular version of your product.
When it comes to integrating UGC into your sales process, the biggest challenge is going out and actually finding where that content is. If you use multiple platforms for things like product feedback and customer advocacy initiatives, nobody has the complete picture they need to authentically engage with customers.
With Deeto, your sales, marketing, CS, and product teams work from the same platform. It gives them a complete view of what customers are saying, what they’re doing, and how you can use that content and data to make more connections with people.
It also has strict guidelines for user ownership and content approvals, meaning your customers' data is safe and secure.
The other major challenge when it comes to distributing your marketing and sales collateral is the fact that every customer is different. They’ll have different use cases for your product.
Even within a buying group, two members will have different interests in the decision-making process. If you share the exact same social proof and UGC with everyone in your pipeline, you’ll quickly find it’s irrelevant to most.
AI, like Deeto’s, can assess a customer’s profile (company type, use case, etc.) and present sales reps with personalized UGC and social proof based on that assessment. Instead of sifting through a bunch of irrelevant content, they’ll be able to share content that speaks to their buyer’s use case and pain points, which drives deals forward significantly faster.
Your CRM has all your customers' purchase history, communication records, business or personal info, and more. Integrating it with your AI tools will help them create more accurate customer profiles, segment them, and run automation workflows that serve them the right content and offers.
When the two are connected, every activity in your customer knowledge system (e.g., a reference call) is instantly updated in your CRM, so everyone's on the same page.
Deeto handles the end-to-end process of activating your customer base and turning their insights into usable assets for your sales, marketing, CS, and product teams. Centralization and AI-powered insights make it easy to connect and communicate with prospects at scale in an authentic and data-driven way. Book a demo and see how it works.
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