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“Alexie Glover: If you are just on your own in a corner, no one knows what you're doing, you are never going to be able to get that seat at the table. So, we're definitely thinking about ways to sort of arm our clients with information about how they're contributing to the business, how they're influencing revenue.”

[00:00:24] Sunny Manivannan: Welcome to the Peerbound podcast. I'm your host, Sunny Manivannan. Joining me today is Alexie Glover, who's the co-founder and marketing consultant at Frank Advocacy, and is just an all around customer marketing advocacy legend.

Alexie, it's such a pleasure to have you join me. Thanks so much.

[00:00:35] Alexie Glover: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited.

[00:00:38] Sunny Manivannan: I wanna start off by asking you about Frank Advocacy. What made you decide to start it? Just walk us through the thought process and what made you say, Hey, we think that this industry needs this to exist.

[00:00:50] Alexie Glover: Sure. So I have an unusual journey that brought me to customer marketing. My mom is actually who introduced me to this world. She's been working as a customer marketing consultant for a variety of different agencies since I think 2003. a few years ago she reached out and said she needed help.

She needed somebody with. Sort of my skillset. So I started working agency side with her and her team at Porter Consulting. While we were doing work together, I realized that there are a ton of companies out there that require, fractional support that is. bureaucratic in nature. So there's lots of huge companies thinking like HPE, Adobe, Google, all of these massive organizations that are kind of more buttoned up and they have to be because they are huge.

And so they have consultants that power a lot of the work that goes on there. But what I didn't see happening in the market was a space for smaller companies for leaders who were a little bit younger, who were looking to do sort of fresher, kind of scrappier, more creative marketing, when it came to their customer marketing and advocacy programs.

And so my sister and I decided to start Frank Advocacy as a space where we could be ourselves. Like we have never worked corporate. We don't wear suits, we don't wanna go into an office. We want to be able to send memes, when we're requesting reviews and that sort of stuff. And so thus, Frank Advocacy was born.

[00:02:16] Sunny Manivannan: Fabulous.

Tell me a little bit about, obviously you were influenced, by your mother and in understanding customer advocacy. How much household chatter was there growing up about advocacy and how much influence do you think that had on you in the career path that you chose?

[00:02:33] Alexie Glover: our story is kind of crazy because most people can't imagine working with their mothers and like sometimes I have to say it is a journey, but we're very lucky that we all get along really well. My mom, like I said, started I think around 2003 in this world and up until I started working with her, I actually still had no idea what she did.

I even accepted the job and was like, I'm not sure what I'll be doing, but I can't wait to find out. and I think that's the, that's a very relatable experience for the vast majority of customer marketers whose partners are not in tech at all. My partner is in bars and restaurants, and so like the easiest way that I've been able to describe what I do to him, who he also like, doesn't know what I do, is that like we do reviews, like his bar gets.

Google reviews or whatever, or they win awards. And I'm like, so in the tech world I do that. But, in terms of the influence and advocacy, I think, my parents also operated a small business for many years that my sister and I worked at together while we were in high school. So always thinking about like customer experience.

And, advocacy in that way, understanding that, when a customer has a good experience, they're likely to tell their friends. Their friends are likely to trust their recommendations. So I think it's a pretty conventional conversation that happens in a lot of households, regardless of industry.

But we took it to the next level by bringing in all of the family for the customer marketing and advocacy journey.

[00:03:55] Sunny Manivannan: Awesome.

Tell me about working with your family.

What are the challenges? What are the pros of doing this?

[00:04:00] Alexie Glover: When we first started, I made a big stipulation that like we couldn't always just be talking about work. That couldn't be the change in our relationship, which is that's the obvious thing to happen. Everyone goes out for drinks with their coworkers that you're friends with personally, and then at some point you like slide into talking about work.

So for the most part, we've all adhered to that. There's definitely the occasional,personal conversation that like suddenly is oh my God, you'll never believe what just happened. That's like work related. Otherwise I think it's phenomenal.

Like we. all are good at different things, and it's been great to have the opportunity to learn from my mom who's been doing this for so long, managing client relationships, pitching new business, the intricacies of like SOWs, POs. using Coupa, which I know is a piece of your background, so like those pieces are hard and lots of solopreneurs, entrepreneurs don't know anything about that.

And so I feel like I'm very lucky to have somebody in my corner who can help teach me as we go. but also on the flip side, when we stepped into the business, my sister and I, we realized that there were a lot of systems that didn't really work for my mom that she had just been using because.

That is what had been set up previously. So we built out our business in Airtable and updated our documents in Canva. So they're like easily editable versus using Word documents and bringing everything into Google, like we've all brought something new to the table.

The thing that's really amazing about working with my sister is that her background is in media communications and, She actually worked at Shopify for a really long time,in the customer success org and on their social team. And so she brings this totally different perspective of,a traditional,marketing background, but then also this like startup culture and working in a.

company that is at least in Canada, really renowned for being at the fore of bringing young people into tech. and so I feel like together we've brought this very interesting combination of skills. and for the most part we have a lot of fun. Like we laugh at all the stupid.

Stuff that we do. Like when you can't figure out how to download an image or fix this, document or get Adobe to let you sign something. there are just, these are the pieces of the business that you have to have a bestie to be able to laugh about because it's ridiculous.

[00:06:17] Sunny Manivannan: I love that. By the way, Shopify is renowned around the world and remains an inspiration to every entrepreneur. It's not just obviously the pride of Canada, but it's also the pride of the rest of the world. An incredible company and what a background, and frankly, what a combination of backgrounds, across the two of you, in building this firm.

[00:06:32] Alexie Glover: Yeah.

[00:06:32] Sunny Manivannan: Really cool.

Let me ask you a little bit about this idea of. What modern customer advocacy should look like. you're coming into this space with clearly a lot of family history in the space, but you're also bringing your own ideas in. What do you see, as a newer services firm in the space, what do you see your clients need and how is that changing even in the five years or six years now that you've been doing this?

[00:06:58] Alexie Glover: for reference, one of the first projects that I did when I started working in customer marketing and advocacy was helping a client transition from. RO Innovation onto Reference Edge. And at the time that felt like it was a really like cutting edge move. and now I don't think that's the case anymore.

Like this idea of how are we thinking about customer data? How are we managing programs and what does our customer data look like within those programs? And how are we and the rest of our organization accessing that data? I don't think that problem has changed. I think in general, businesses are still struggling with where does our customer marketing customer reference information live?

Like how do we share that data? Outside of just this one person or this very small insular team. but really broadly, I think we're looking more at fewer transactional relationships, so less emphasis on that reference relationship where you just provide quarterly sales references for me.

You get a discount on your contract for that, and then maybe you speak at our event or like maybe we do a case study together. Right now I'm seeing this transition towards broader appreciation of customers,versus that transactional relationship. I think customer marketers are really focused on showcasing that they actually really care about their customers, whether or not you're engaged in a reference relationship.

So I'm personally working on a lot of awards programs. a lot of surprise and delight, like GIFting, or showcasing of success campaigns to really just walk the talk, I guess, of, you know, loving your customers and being customer obsessed

So yeah, I think I'm really seeing a shift towards broader customer appreciation when it comes to tech stacks, which I think we're seeing lots of companies move away from the originators of the technology in this space, and look towards tools that are actually able to facilitate more than just one thing. So I think we're seeing folks look at where can I house my customer data that can also connect to my community that can also connect to like HighSpot or my sales enablement tool.

Like how can I make an ecosystem in which customer marketers are working within that has visibility to the rest of the organization. But that really gives power to the customer marketer to do all of these things that we're asked to do in one space.

[00:09:20] Sunny Manivannan: One of the things that you just talked about that really struck me is this shift away from a transactional relationship with the customer to more how do we do this at scale as the company grows and how do we do this across a customer base where we're also showing them.

Hey, we appreciate you and it's not just you do this for me, I do this for you, and then we just keep that going. I agree that has been a real tangible shift in just how, especially in the software industry, companies are doing business with their customers.

Why do you think, do you have any sense for why that's happening? I'm always curious to understand these changes.

[00:09:53] Alexie Glover: I mean, I think there's more choice than ever. I think customers are really empowered to switch it up for the most part. There's a small number of pieces of technology that our customers use to do their business that are really painful to switch out. If you're a Salesforce customer or HubSpot customer, the chances of you switching once you're doing business are pretty slim.

But for the vast majority of the remainder of the tech stack—thinking Gong versus Chorus versus other call recording technology—for the most part, it's a 1-to-1 swap. I think companies are being called to ensure that their customers value the relationship, not just the technology. 

And so there's more power being put into the consumer's hands in terms of dictating the kinds of businesses that they wanna do business with from a relationship standpoint as well as a technology standpoint. 

And I think just in general, like we're all very aware post-the tech boom of Covid, that retention is cheaper than acquisition. And in the long run, retention will pay more than trying to constantly acquire new customers. And so customer marketing is in this amazing opportunity to figure out how can we continue to push the envelope and ensure that our products become just as painful to leave as your CRM backbone. Because you're not just leaving our technology, you're leaving us and the relationship and we're building something that's more than just you using our products and us telling your story.

[00:11:32] Sunny Manivannan: I totally agree with you when you talked about how every customer has so many options now. And especially when choosing software, it has become so easy to copy a marketing website and claim that you can do all these things and it's actually very hard. I look at different categories of software.

It's nearly impossible to tell who can actually do the job for you and who can't do the job for you.

[00:11:54] Alexie Glover: Truly, and there's so many people out there that are masquerading and you get all the way through the sales cycle and you find out like, oh, I was actually looking at screenshots not a live demo or like whatever, right? Like, these things happen and power to those companies for their marketing engines that are powering these like false narratives. Like, amazing from a marketing perspective, but from a user perspective, rough.

[00:12:16] Sunny Manivannan: Yes, absolutely rough. And we're seeing that in our space too. I think, we don't need to name any names, but we've all seen the masquerading of Figma mockups as real product. And then you sign a deal with a company and all of a sudden they can't do half of the things that they told you they could do.

And they'll say, oh, this is coming next month, but then next month comes, and then next month comes, and then it's not really there. And it's a core part of the functionality, not just a next window addressing thing. And I think the one opportunity to your earlier point that customer marketers have is to cut through all this BS and to help every buyer say No, here's real customer proof that our stuff works and it works for the thing that we are telling you it works for, and not go challenge our competitor to go do the same thing.

And if they can't do it, then I think the story is already told. And I think that's the opportunity that I feel that CEOs and CMOs are asking this function to now step up and deliver on.

[00:13:06] Alexie Glover: Yeah, and it can be tricky because buyers are also sort of more nimble than ever, we both know that like a buyer doesn't book a demo knowing nothing. It's not like they're just going to your website, they've heard that you do this thing, so they book a demo that doesn't happen, right?

They're looking for what do your social channels look like? What does the customer story say there? What does your website look like? How hard is it to surface who your current customers are and are there faces associated with that? That's another trend that I'm seeing that I think is really cool, especially in this moment of AI everything.

This idea that when a testimonial is on a company's website, often now we're actually seeing that person's headshot that then you can figure out on LinkedIn. Like, okay, this is what that person actually looks like. Consumers are not uneducated and they're not coming to a demo uneducated. They're coming to a demo usually already having spoken to some of the people that have either evaluated your product or are using your product. Right. And so, that leads back to this whole idea of like, it's all about the relationship. It can't just be about the company saying all of our sales references are coming through approved channels because we know that's not true.

We know that there are advocates out there who use your tools, who don't want to formally agree to be a reference for you, who are out there telling their friends, Yes, buy this, or No, don't buy this, and here's why.

[00:14:22] Sunny Manivannan: I think that's such a fascinating point about the sort of soft power of your existing customers and they can really make or break your company. Especially in the earlier days where if your existing customers are super happy with what you're doing, the word will just spread and you know, I'll, I'll tell you.

So obviously I am the CEO at Peerbound, and one of my jobs is to track where our leads are coming from. And if somebody signs up for a demo on our website, we count that as inbound. But so many times I've talked to these folks and they say, Oh yeah, so and so your customer told us about this. Or we were in a group meeting and somebody talked about Peerbound and that's how we, you know, ended up on your website.

And so it's not really inbound, you know. Speaking of customer led growth, which I don't know how much I love that phrase, but I know we all use it. Speaking of customer led growth, that is a great example of this might not even show up in our metrics and you know, if you just looked at a high level, you'd say, oh yeah, they have a bunch of inbound leads.

But no, it's really just all from your customers that are influencing all these inbounds. I think that's a really underrated, under-measured facet of every company's growth.

[00:15:26] Alexie Glover: I mean, I can count myself as—let's talk about my story with Peerbound. I saw Jeanne Nitschke at Motive talking about how amazing this new tool was on the market. I think Jeanne is a genius when it comes to customer marketing and advocacy. I love everything that she does. So I was like, if Jeanne is saying this is great, I've gotta go check this out.

Here we are.

[00:15:47] Sunny Manivannan: That's incredible. I actually don't even think I knew that until now,

[00:15:50] Alexie Glover: Well, there you go. Yeah. She posted on her LinkedIn maybe like end of summer, beginning of fall 2024, having just started using this new tool, and I was like, okay, let's see.

[00:16:02] Sunny Manivannan: That's amazing. I'll have to send her a note. That's incredible.

I'll have to ask you about your marketing, which I think is quite excellent.

[00:16:08] Alexie Glover: Oh.

[00:16:09] Sunny Manivannan: And it is, in stark contrast to our marketing, which is virtually non-existent at this point. I'm not saying that out of pride, trust me, it bothers me every day.

But there's just so much other stuff that we have to do and just, you know, the product every day just we're making it better. And that's the number one thing. And then, you know, we're talking to our customers and making, you know that that whole cycle the most important thing at our stage of a company.

But how did you find your feet on marketing?

Tell us about your strategy. How do you use your tactics to really stand out in your space? There are alternatives obviously to Frank Advocacy, but what makes people wanna come to you? How do you sort of get your word of mouth out?

[00:16:48] Alexie Glover: I mean, that's a really interesting question, and as a marketer, you don't wanna be like, I struggled with this, because that doesn't necessarily instill confidence. But I do think that it's a very real situation that marketers are often faced with. Like, okay, how do I do this thing?

Like, I know what I'm supposed to do, I know what the results are supposed to look like, but how do I reverse engineer that? And so we did a lot of testing basically. And we didn't, say like, This is us testing. It was like, Okay, here's the post, and we put that out and then like nothing happened.

So it was like, Okay, so I guess that's not the thing.

[00:17:25] Sunny Manivannan: Right.

[00:17:26] Alexie Glover: But in the winter of 2023 when we had sort of like softly launched our business and we're trying to figure out like, How are we going to do this? We started with just like GIFs, GIF, I don't, how do we say it? As a millennial, I feel like, I don't know.

[00:17:44] Sunny Manivannan: I'm on Team GIF, but.

[00:17:45] Alexie Glover: Sure. I'll join you there for the sake of this interview.

[00:17:48] Sunny Manivannan: I am friends. with people who are on Team GIF and I, I allow them that.

[00:17:53] Alexie Glover: So we started there with just like some stupid, holiday stuff. And honestly it was my sister, Janelle and I, we were like on Slack together screen sharing, being like, This is stupid. Let's try it. Because no one else is doing that, right? Like the others in this space are very, corporate or like thought leadership, or individuals who are not really doing any marketing themselves. And I was like, we are not those people. We're not like, Here's our services. This is how we could help you. That's not who we are.

[00:18:19] Sunny Manivannan: Customer led growth!

[00:18:21] Alexie Glover: You will never hear me say customer led growth. If you do, you have permission to take me out because that is… Just send me on my way.

[00:18:30] Sunny Manivannan: I'll send you a meme in return.

[00:18:32] Alexie Glover: Perfect. So we started with GIFs and got a little bit of traction there and started to get some attention from notable fractional people in the space, fractional CMOs. And that was sort of interesting to me because I was like, That's unusual. I'm not personally connected with them.So the fact that they found the business was unexpected. 

While all of that is happening on our front facing LinkedIn and as we're building our websites, I have continued to cultivate connections in customer marketing Slack communities. I've always felt that rising tide raises all boats and there's an opportunity for us to share what we learn because as consultants, we learn so much, so fast.

You are constantly drinking from the fire hose. You're constantly seeing the same strategy implemented in different size companies, different organization structures, what works, what doesn't. So those two things were happening at the same time. I would say we really hit our stride, end of summer this past year.

So we had a few clients under our belt. We started pushing out some low key case study results that got pretty good traction. Spoiler alert, when you have dedicated people who are just in as consultants and are not distracted by the noise of your business, you get amazing results.

Like imagine a review campaign if you didn't have a thousand other things you had to do on your stew list. Like that's the magic of a consultant, coming to support your business. So that helped us. The end of the year, 2024, we started thinking about, okay, what are we going to do for CustomerXcon?

We were gonna be on the ground, not with a booth or anything, but there was an opportunity for me to be there as a person presenting to have a visible presence that was our first opportunity, as a small business. I decided that stickers are really fun. People have laptops, stickers, like that's a huge thing that people do.

But all of the stickers that you see for the most part at these conferences are like another company's logo. I was like, that's lame. It's boring.

[00:20:26] Sunny Manivannan: Super lame.

[00:20:27] Alexie Glover: I get it like, sure, maybe you're a super fan of whatever tech company, we'll say Salesforce. Like Sure. Okay. But I don't need to have a Salesforce sticker around my computer.

Like I am a person outside of the world of tech that has interests that are diverse.

We had been playing around with some silly marketing, and I love an alliteration situation, so Customer Marketing Cuties was born. We created stickers. Customer Marketing Cuties are obviously gender neutral.

We accept cuties of all shapes, forms, varieties. But some people might feel like they're looking for something that's a little bit more masculine presenting. So, Customer Marketing Cowboys was the next frontier. The best part is, my sister got married in 2023 and I did the Bachelorette and Cowboys was like her thing.

Like she's a country music girl. And so I leaned into the Shania Twain of it all, it felt like a really natural transition,from bachelorette planning to marketing my business.

[00:21:21] Sunny Manivannan: So you are just living this very integrated life.

[00:21:24] Alexie Glover: Yes. As I'm saying, I'm a person outside of my job. I'm like, I'm clearly not.so yeah, we ran with the Customer Marketing Cuties. The stickers were a huge hit. We took some branded stickers as well, and obviously no one wanted the branded stickers, but everyone wanted the Customer Marketing Cuties and the Customer Marketing Cowboys

We're now at this stage where my next frontier is I really wanna figure out how to do direct mailers with stickers, which is like super old school marketing, but really fun.

Most recently, I think our biggest stride has come from, posting job postings every week. That's so low lift. I highly encourage others to start doing it. I mean, it's a little bit of admin work. But it doesn't help me necessarily in any way. I'm just interested in other people getting jobs. I'm interested in elevating these companies that are posting. I'm interested in making it easier for people who are open to work, to look through curated lists versus constantly going back to the LinkedIn search bar or like, through Slack feeds, you know?

So hopefully that's helping and we seem to be getting pretty good traction. And obviously we post. GIFs there as well. So it's just like a new version of our original idea.

[00:22:32] Sunny Manivannan: I love it. It totally works for you and. What's the ultimate point of marketing, right? Is to get your name out there, in a positive way, and a way that is authentic to the company that you're representing. And everything that you've done feels so authentic to you, and that's the most important thing.

And you know, it's really creative. So well done.

[00:22:52] Alexie Glover: Thank

[00:22:52] Sunny Manivannan: And I cannot wait to get my hands on both a Cutie sticker and a Cowboy sticker. I'll take both.

[00:22:58] Alexie Glover: You'll have to give me your physical address

[00:23:00] Sunny Manivannan: that's right. I'll give you, physical address, mother's maiden name, social security number, the whole, just the identity theft basics.

And then, and then I'll get my stickers and a whole lot more, obviously.

[00:23:09] Alexie Glover: of course. Yeah. A relationship to last a lifetime.

[00:23:13] Sunny Manivannan: Exactly. So when a new season of the White Lotus comes on, is that like Christmas for you because you just know there's gonna be so many GIFs coming out of this thing.

[00:23:20] Alexie Glover: Do you know what is actually Christmas for me? And I hope is coming soon? Is Bridgerton. I think Bridgerton is the best. White Lotus is phenomenal, of course. I have no notes on the most recent season. I actually, in fact, delayed watching, so I could sort of binge it all the way through.

I just think the Christmas moment is like when something captures the imagination of the world in a way that White Lotus or some of these other like phenom shows does that, that like we can bring customer marketing into that conversation. And I think some people in this space are trying and often there's some really great content that others are putting out.

And so it's like I am getting inspiration from them. They are feeding inspiration to me and we're all just part of this larger conversation of this, I think it's Allison Bukowski who says people before professionals. This idea that we have, you know, hobbies and interests that are outside of customer relationships.

[00:24:15] Sunny Manivannan: Totally.

I wanna ask you about the customer marketing job function at large. You've obviously seen a whole bunch of changes in the last few years, as have all of us. Where do you think the function's going? What do you see as some of the opportunities and some of the threats, you know, to this function as it sits within a broader company?

[00:24:33] Alexie Glover: So interesting.

I'm gonna start with the threats side of that conversation. Having the experience of my mom to kind of like lean on as an advisor and a sounding board.

We've recently been talking about fear, I think, that is starting to bubble with the economic uncertainties of what's happening in the US and the way things are changing really rapidly.

Obviously, we know that when the stock market changes significantly, businesses adjust often, right, to sort of meet the changing situation. We've seen it before, so there's some fear, I think, that we'll see it again. That customer marketing is an easy function to cut. So we're definitely thinking about that and thinking about ways to sort of arm our teams and or clients with protective information. So information about how they're contributing to the business, how they're influencing revenue, all of those pieces. That's sort of like where our mind is right now in terms of where the function is today. 

And the opportunities, I mean, I think there's also so much reason to be hopeful. Obviously every week I post job postings. There seem to be around 20-ish new postings globally, which isn't like a huge number, but also customer marketing isn't a huge function. So 20 new postings every week feels pretty good. There were some weeks at the beginning of the year, January, where we were getting like almost 30, which is really exciting.

One unfortunate trend I think that I'm seeing is that lots of companies are taking a really long time to hire. So open to work customer marketers are spending, you know, four months in an interview cycle with one company, which is like, that's crazy. Like you gotta know at a certain point, you know, it's either like, this is the person for me or this isn't the person for me.

But in terms of like the function as a whole, I really think we're at a moment of extreme innovation, seeing pieces and products like Peerbound and the tech side of things, like looking at how customer marketers are using AI to really like scale their function and be able to sort of do more with less, which is what a lot of people are being asked to do.

That's all really exciting to me. I think some consultants would see that as scary. And obviously the in-house customer marketers are like, sweating, crying, throwing up as I'm saying this. But it's like that's a cool opportunity in some ways. Like it's a cool opportunity to say like, Yeah, I can take, you know, an additional piece of the pie and I can make it my own and I can prove my impact there. So I'm excited from, and like optimistic from that side of things. I think the challenging landscape creates opportunity for us to be extra creative, extra scrappy, and for us to push our vendors in the space to help us rise to that occasion. So I think we're seeing that. I'm just a little bit nervous about what the rest of the year might bring.

[00:27:17] Sunny Manivannan: You're so spot on in everything. I agree with everything you said and you charitably called it the economic uncertainty caused by the US. I think there's some other choice phrases that others would use in that situation, but I admire your restraint and thank you for it. There's a lot going on in the world that is just so way above our pay grades and unfortunately is affecting every single business activity across the face of the planet.

And that is a huge threat. Like you called out and we'll see where that, you know, all falls out. I think, you know, a little closer to home, one thing that I've seen over the last two years is a lot of sort of senior level positions get eliminated and replaced by more junior level positions for the same company, same function.

And so, okay, we're gonna say goodbye to the directors and senior directors and just hire a manager, or heck, even an associate at times. That to me is a deeper issue potentially of a CEO's lack of awareness and heck, even a CMO's lack of awareness of what a customer marketing function can really provide.

And you know, I think on one level it's easy enough to say, well, they need to do a better job of recognizing the value this function could provide. But I think it's really on the practitioners, all of us to say, you know what? We're literally empowering every single other function around us to do a better job, whether it's product marketing, demand gen, sales, customer success. 

Everybody's made better when you have relevant customer proof available to you. And that's what this function does, and that's what it brings to the table. And so, you know, there's a world in which I think this is probably very close to realities where every dollar of new revenue, like we talked about, with Peerbound, like I didn't even know that our existing customers were doing this.

And that's true at most companies. I think your existing customers are doing a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes, and the customer marketers are doing that heavy lifting with them. And in many ways, accelerating that lifting and not getting any credit for it. And so we need to do a better job of communicating that better to leadership and get the tide to rise again so all the boats, you know, ours included, can, can go along with it.

[00:29:16] Alexie Glover: Of course. Yeah.

I mean, Kevin Lau posted earlier this week. He's been doing amazing stuff on LinkedIn as well, so I've been, yeah, I've been absolutely thrilled to follow along. But he posted something this week about like making sure your work is visible and there is no better piece of advice that I can give to anybody.

It actually doesn't matter if you're on marketing or elsewhere, it's like: make your work visible. If you are just busy, on your own in a corner, no one knows what you're doing. They just know that you come in, clock into work every day and then clock out. You are never going to be able to get that seat at the table.

The change in the directors becoming associates or managers is so fascinating to me, only because if you go deep on some of those manager postings or the associate postings, they're still looking for like five to 10 years of experience, which is like, okay, so on the flip side, it's also becoming impossible for new people to break into customer marketing.

I actually have a consultant on my team right now who's incredibly talented, skilled, experienced communications and events marketer and all she wants is to get customer marketing experience because she wants to be in this world and has those skills but just doesn't have the background. And so we are bringing her up so that she can have that skillset so that she can turn around and be like a triple threat marketer with all those.

Experiences put together. But, it's impossible to become a customer marketer right now because no companies are hiring people who are fresh out of university, who are fresh, out of other business functions, and who don't have five years customer marketing experience.

[00:30:44] Sunny Manivannan: That's really interesting. I didn't know about that. But what you're saying makes perfect sense that new people are trying to break into this are hit with this wall of must have three to five years of experience. Experience doing what? Hiring managers don't even know!

[00:30:55] Alexie Glover: Yeah. And the conversation about CMOs not being aware, like, I don't expect a CEO to know what I'm doing, which is like a flaw of the function. For sure. They want logos. We give them logos. They want case studies. We give them case studies. Do they know who is doing that? Bigger companies usually not.

The issue that I have is when the CMO doesn't understand it. Because the CMO should be driving the ship that you're aboard, that you're, paddling furiously. And if the CMO keeps undercutting you and taking your budget out of the knees, asking you to also take on events, asking you to also do all of these other pieces, that's the real issue. 

You need to communicate with your CMO exactly what you're doing, exactly what value you bring to the business, and you need to be indispensable to the customer relationship to maintain that level of importance that keeps the CMO looking at you and eventually that level you up, I think, to getting the CEO's attention, or at least the EA of the CEO's attention.

[00:31:53] Sunny Manivannan: Totally. And by the way, I think the dream of the CEO, knowing every customer marketer's name at their company is not that far away. I think there's so much revenue contribution from this function, and you know, we're trying to make that connection and we're starting to do it, but it's not that long a path until the CEO says, okay, this is measurable.

Just like demand gen is measurable. And if I take a really critical look at why this function has slightly fallen out of favor over the last two years, I think there was so much focus on things that were measurable and efficiency. Every dollar must go the furthest that it can go. And what ends up happening in that case is, you know, brand is very hard to measure.

Any investment in brand is nearly impossible. And that goes out the window, you know, investments in customer marketing, well, how does it help my quarter, this quarter? That's really hard to measure. And so things that were hard to measure, but really important I think just sort of fell out of favor because it was easier to say, okay, if I put a dollar into getting new leads, I'm gonna get, these many new leads and so on, and that leads to something I can measure.

Numbers became comfort zones, and I think I really hope to see is leadership and executives trying to say, okay. We need to also not mortgage the future for the present. And these are real investments that make even the present better, but also, get us to a future where all these things get easier.

But, you know,we've got a long way to go.

[00:33:20] Alexie Glover: Yeah. I am hopeful that there are so many more ABM/customer marketing, customer lifecycle or customer experience/customer marketing postings because I think we are seeing companies understand that the moment a prospect touches your business, they're in a journey.

That journey needs to be nurtured. Starting, you know, step one all the way through, and that customer marketing being relationship marketers are invaluable to that nurture cycle.

[00:33:48] Sunny Manivannan: I wanna ask you about Frank Advocacy for a few minutes. I know we're near the end of our time.

What is a project that you're really proud of?

[00:33:56] Alexie Glover: Oh, that's a great question. I'm really proud of the work we did with Aircall last year. They had a fractional customer marketing director in place. They had just sort of like hired, internally somebody from one of their regional marketing teams over to support customer marketing.

They had no review presence. Like it had sort of dropped off, in the transition of this new team.We got so many results for them so quickly, and also helped teach this new like regional marketer, like, here's the language, here's the approach. Here are the guidelines for working with G2 and, some of these, other platforms.

We were able to like, you know, finish up our contract there, step away and then continue to watch them succeed with the groundwork that we had laid, which was amazing.

[00:34:43] Sunny Manivannan: And that truly is the best feeling as a consultant is when the success keeps happening and you say, that's great. That's what we want.

[00:34:50] Alexie Glover: Yeah. Because it's literally never about me. Like I don't, I don't need credit for any of these projects. I want to make sure that the client is the one who gets the credit for the results. We're just there to lift the motion. Sometimes we're setting the strategy, sometimes we're not, you know, like extra arms and legs are what people need right now.

And then the ability to maintain success. Whether we continue working together or not is all that I care about. And sometimes that success looks like that client going on to get another job elsewhere and that is amazing.

[00:35:21] Sunny Manivannan: Totally given that this is The Peerbound Podcast and we think we're all Peerbound to a certain extent, meaning we're influenced by our peers. Who are your peer influences? Who are some of your mentors or influences in the space?

[00:35:31] Alexie Glover: And will I have to say my mom.

[00:35:33] Sunny Manivannan: You're the first guest. You're the first guest to say that. No surprise.

[00:35:38] Alexie Glover: There are so many though. I think, obviously, like getting to meet you this year and building this relationship has been phenomenal. I love the work that you do and the perspective that you bring to the space. I love that you're facilitating these sort of deeper conversations with CMOs and practitioners.

I think that's so valuable. I am huge fans of Ciana at Snyk and Amanda at Zylo. I think they bring two totally different perspectives into my world. One is, running a huge team and Amanda is doing everything she can just to keep her head above water. And like, you know, they are both amazing customer marketers who are absolutely phenomenal what they do. 

I also really love the perspective of my friend Andrew from Orca. He brings a really valuable seller and vendor perspective into my world. From my side of things, I hear a lot of the strife from practitioners around, working with their vendors and from Andrew, it sort of balances that out around what makes it easy to work with a vendor? What makes it difficult to work with a team? All of these sources of information come together to help me inform the work I do for my clients or the recommendations I make in terms of vendor selection or hiring even. Like, we help people hire all the time, so it's like, how can we help get you what you need? And I just really am appreciative of the fact that this community exists. And actually I should give a shout out to Mary Green and CMA weekly for her cultivation of community spaces that are open, honest, transparent.

there's opportunities for a lot of really deep learning and sharing. And also commiserating, in those spaces. I think that's what makes this industry amazing.

[00:37:11] Sunny Manivannan: Totally. It is a great group of people and a very selfless group of people in many ways.

And I think, yeah, I look forward to doing our small part in elevating the function, and thank you so much for joining me. I think such a wonderful conversation and everything that you have done to build Frank Advocacy to where it is today has been phenomenal to watch.

It's been great getting to know you as part of this process, and I can't wait for more memes and GIFs and GIFs and, and a whole lot more. And watching you go from strength to strength. Thank you.

[00:37:40] Alexie Glover: Oh wow. Thank you. Stay tuned for whenever Bridgerton releases, I'll be there.

[00:37:45] Sunny Manivannan: I've never seen Bridgeton, but I'm sure I'll get the gist of it from your memes. So I look, I look forward to that. I look forward to that.

Well, thank you so much Alexie. And uh, yeah. Catch you soon.

[00:37:56] Alexie Glover: Thank you.

[00:37:57] Sunny Manivannan: Cheers.