Marketing plays a critical role in defining, communicating, and managing the customer experience<\/a>. In this post, I\u2019ll walk through how customer experience and marketing intersect, who owns customer experience, and the marketing best practices for supporting an organization’s CX.<\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Delivering experiences that delight customers takes a planned, proactive, and holistic strategy that spans the customer journey and lifecycle.<\/p>\n Rightpoint<\/a> pointed out that customer-centricity, deep customer understanding, journey mapping, cross-functional collaboration, feedback loop, and employee empowerment are the key elements of a winning CX strategy.<\/p>\n Customer experience does not stop after the sale \u2014 in fact, some of the most powerful opportunities to create loyalty are experiences with service and support after<\/em> the sale.<\/p>\n HubSpot’s Flywheel<\/a> model offers a modern view of how companies can evolve by putting customer experience at the center of the organization’s focus.<\/p>\n The \u201cdelight\u201d stage powers the \u201cattract\u201d stage of the inbound methodology because customers talk to others about their experiences, and word-of-mouth recommendations are one of the most powerful ways<\/a> to attract new customers. I know I personally will make a purchase if even one of my friends or family members recommends it to me.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n In HubSpot\u2019s 2024 State of Customer Service Report<\/a>, we discovered many essential insights about customer experience, some of which I\u2019ve detailed below:<\/p>\n Ultimately, what it means to provide an exceptional customer experience is continually evolving, and marketing will need to work with sales and services teams to ensure they\u2019re always keeping CX top-of-mind.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n You may be wondering, \u201cIs customer experience part of marketing?\u201d I get it \u2014 I felt that way, too.<\/p>\n Historically, customer experience has been strictly viewed as a priority for sales and service teams. But, there is a massive impact when marketing includes customer experience as a top goal.<\/p>\n Marketing builds a strategy that defines compelling brand messages<\/a> and promises, and customers who invest in the brand trust that the marketing is authentic.<\/p>\n Customer experience can actually follow through on these promises, encouraging brand transparency and improved customer loyalty.<\/p>\n The customer journey begins with marketing and continues through the customer experience. These are part of the same cycle and, thus, cannot exist without the other.<\/p>\n For instance, I work in title marketing for Paramount+ shows and movies. A large part of my job is ensuring we effectively promote the title across key touchpoints, from social to digital to out-of-home.<\/p>\n However, once we build awareness and gain acquisitions, retention is still hugely important, as we want the customers who signed up for Paramount+ to stick with us. This is where customer experience can play a huge role.<\/p>\n When CX becomes fundamental to marketing, the impact on revenue is massive. I found in my research that brands integrating these two elements see faster revenue growth (5.1x)<\/a> compared to competitors with poor customer interactions.<\/p>\n Along with revenue growth, companies that incorporate marketing and customer experience also see a huge increase in customer loyalty. 75% of customers<\/a> remain loyal to brands with excellent customer support.<\/p>\n In addition, 77% of customers are more inclined to recommend a brand to others following a positive customer experience. In my opinion, customer experience is <\/em>the new marketing \u2014 this symbiosis leads to enhanced customer retention and brand reputation.<\/p>\n In a crowded marketplace, I easily get tired of seeing the same marketing efforts repeated. Now, marketing can utilize AI<\/a> to predict customer behavior, desires, and needs more accurately, which leads to a better customer experience.<\/p>\n For instance, many streaming services track users\u2019 viewing patterns to recommend genres or titles. This combines targeted marketing with improved customer experience \u2014 I spend less time scrolling when great movies are suggested upfront \u2014 for a seamless, customer-forward brand.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Contrary to popular belief, customer experience is not owned by a single person or department. It should always be the shared responsibility of the entire company, although each team may support it in different ways.<\/p>\n For instance, some companies have a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) overseeing CX. However, this isn\u2019t as universal as it should be; thus, customer experience is often managed cross-functionally by teams like marketing, sales, and operations.<\/p>\n The advent of digital marketing gives marketers the tools to interact with buyers at the individual level \u2014 through channels and touchpoints at every stage of the lifecycle. In turn, customer experience becomes important for the success of digital marketing.<\/p>\n While the entire organization is responsible for experience delivery, marketing is often best positioned to listen to, analyze, and advocate for customer needs. By delivering reliable, fact-based insights about customer experience, marketing helps overcome the siloing of departments, which is a major detractor to a consistent CX approach.<\/p>\n Let\u2018s explore the current marketing best practices for supporting an organization\u2019s customer experience strategy.<\/p>\n Conversations data:<\/strong> Marketing that meaningfully impacts the audience requires understanding customer experience and marketing analytics and interpretation of conversational data. Data is not only used for targeting marketing campaigns but also for improving the customer experience.<\/p>\n Segmentation<\/strong>: Digital marketing automation platforms make it easy to track and act upon data. Data such as customer history, behaviors, and interests make it possible to develop segments to target customers better, and they also provide insights on how to deliver a more satisfactory experience.<\/p>\n KPIs: <\/strong>Key performance indicators such as conversion rate, churn, retention rate, and patient satisfaction scores should be identified, monitored, and tracked in a manner that is highly visible to all teams. These shared insights drive change and reinforce progress, identify areas for improvement, and support a culture in which everyone is responsible for delivering an exceptional experience.<\/p>\n Direct customer feedback is foundational for understanding and improving experiences. My team at Paramount continues to use traditional research methods, such as satisfaction surveys, focus groups, and interviews. These play a pivotal role in assessing satisfaction and capturing the voice of the customer.<\/p>\n However, digital technologies are providing new ways to supplement this information. Tools such as social listening, live chat, and website analytics provide opportunities to keep a pulse on customer feedback in real time.<\/p>\n Additionally, sales and service delivery teams can capture customer feedback through observation, field reports, and complaint logs. Regardless of method, following a journey or experience map can ensure effectively capturing feedback about the holistic experience rather than siloed stages.<\/p>\n HubSpot offers customer journey map templates<\/a>, which help organizations outline the customer journey across several phases, such as lead nurturing, customer churn, and future state. I love how interactive these templates are, providing thought-provoking questions to get marketers into customers\u2019 brains.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Ultimately, marketing’s role is to work across departments and stages of the lifecycle to consolidate feedback, identify themes, and use the voice of the customer to bring about change.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it’s common for marketing teams to take responsibility for attracting prospects and generating leads but then have little involvement after qualified leads are handed to sales, leading to a disjointed customer experience.<\/p>\n Instead, we can bring the results of listening at scale to collaborate on making business processes more customer-centered. When marketing develops insights about customers, this knowledge gives teams a common objective basis for working together on changes to improve the customer experience.<\/p>\n Simply put, we marketers can support the customer experience by creating meaningful, valuable content for the buyer journey and identifying buyer segments and personas to target.<\/p>\n Additionally, the insights from listening at scale can have a much broader impact when shared and used as a springboard to identify bottlenecks, solve problems, and redesign processes in customer-focused ways. I recommend that marketing teams create workshops or brainstorming sessions cross-departmentally to generate solutions and obtain buy-in for change.<\/p>\n Of course, it\u2019s difficult for marketing to bring about change without executive buy-in. One way they can engage and obtain support from executive teams is to calculate the ROI of improvements to the customer experience.<\/p>\n Satisfaction and Net Promoter Score<\/a> (likelihood to recommend) are two popular KPIs. Others include churn rate, resolution time, or conversion rates.<\/p>\n Consider both marketing and service automation software to create an ideal customer experience. Marketing automation facilitates an improved customer experience by providing clients with the right information at the right time.<\/p>\n For instance, automation drastically shortens follow-up time. This is critical because the average response time for customer service chat is 2 minutes, but customers expect replies within 45 seconds<\/a> to feel satisfied.<\/p>\n Marketing automation not only improves the overall customer experience but is also critical to lead generation. Therefore, organizations can benefit from investing in automation software like HubSpot\u2019s Marketing and Service Hubs.<\/p>\n Marketing Hub<\/a> helps businesses attract, engage, and convert leads through marketing tools, including email marketing, social media management, analytics & reporting, and lead management, all of which enable teams to manage marketing campaigns effectively.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Service Hub<\/a> focuses on improving customer support and retention through tools like a help desk and ticketing system, knowledge base, omnichannel support, and AI-powered assistance, all of which help manage customer conversations and improve satisfaction.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Together, they create a seamless customer journey from lead attraction to retention. Since both share a centralized HubSpot CRM, marketing and service teams can access the same customer data to inform next steps more easily.<\/p>\n These teams can also utilize shared insights to inform their separate goals. For example, marketers can use Service Hub insights, such as common customer pain points, to create more targeted marketing campaigns. On the other hand, service teams can use Marketing Hub data, such as buyer personas, to offer customized support.<\/p>\n There is no end to the insights teams can share when investing in both Marketing and Service Hubs. This symbiosis offers the perfect opportunity for marketing teams to prioritize the customer experience since the customer service information and data are readily available.<\/p>\n![\"Download](\"https:\/\/no-cache.hubspot.com\/cta\/default\/53\/12501f7c-8e26-4e3c-9642-7afbe078156a.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\n
The Significance of Customer Experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"hubspot](\"https:\/\/web-stil.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/customer-experience-and-marketing-2-20250417-5491601.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n\n
Why Customer Experience and Marketing Go Hand-in-Hand<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1. Brand Promise and Follow-Through<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. Customer Journey<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. Revenue Growth<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. Customer Loyalty<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. Hyper-Personalization<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Who owns customer experience?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1. Listen to customers at scale \u2014 and share their insights.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. Know the voice of the customer.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"hubspot](\"https:\/\/web-stil.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/customer-experience-and-marketing-3-20250417-5703215.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n3. Collaborate cross-functionally to foster change.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. Invest in automation.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"marketing](\"https:\/\/web-stil.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/customer-experience-and-marketing-4-20250417-4670085.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"service](\"https:\/\/web-stil.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/customer-experience-and-marketing-5-20250417-4534252.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/track.hubspot.com\/__ptq.gif?a=53&k=14&r=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.hubspot.com%2Fmarketing%2Fcustomer-experience-and-marketing&bu=https%253A%252F%252Fblog.hubspot.com%252Fmarketing&bvt=rss\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"