Leslie Barrett Leslie Barrett

When Should You Hire a Customer Marketer?

It all begins with an idea.

If your company has happy customers but struggles to turn those relationships into reviews, references, case studies, advocacy, community, expansion opportunities, or customer-led content, it may be time to hire a customer marketer.

And you may need one earlier than you think.

A lot of companies wait until they have hundreds—or even thousands—of customers before investing in customer marketing.

By then, Sales is chasing the same five customers for references. Product Marketing is scrambling for case studies. Customer Success is being asked to find speakers. Someone is manually begging for G2 reviews before the end of the quarter.

Everyone is doing a little bit of customer marketing.

Which usually means no one actually owns customer marketing.

I've spent more than a decade building customer marketing, advocacy, community, reference, review, and customer storytelling programs inside B2B companies.

One of the patterns I see over and over again is this:

Companies rarely wake up one morning and decide, "We need customer marketing."

Instead, they start experiencing a collection of problems that customer marketing is uniquely positioned to solve.

Here are the signs to look for.

What Does a Customer Marketer Actually Do?

Customer marketing focuses on creating value from the relationship between a company and its existing customers.

Depending on the business, customer marketing may own or influence:

  • Customer advocacy

  • Customer references

  • Case studies and customer stories

  • Customer reviews

  • Customer advisory boards

  • Executive customer programs

  • Customer communities

  • Customer awards

  • Event speakers

  • Peer-to-peer advocacy

  • Customer newsletters and communications

  • Customer education and engagement

  • NPS promoter activation

  • Cross-sell and upsell campaigns

  • Customer retention initiatives

  • Customer-generated content

  • Customer voice across marketing and sales

  • Customer insights that support product and go-to-market teams

The role is bigger than "finding customers willing to do case studies."

A strong customer marketing function builds a system for identifying your best customers, understanding what they're willing to do, activating them at the right moments, and putting their voices where they can influence other customers and prospective buyers.

And increasingly, that includes the places buyers are researching companies through AI.

9 Signs It's Time to Hire a Customer Marketer

1. Sales Keeps Asking for Customer References

This is one of the clearest signals.

Your Slack probably looks something like this:

"Does anyone have a fintech customer we can talk to?"

"I need an enterprise reference in manufacturing."

"Do we have anyone using Product X who would talk to this prospect?"

And inevitably, the same three enthusiastic customers get asked over and over again.

This isn't really a Sales problem.

It's an infrastructure problem.

A customer marketer can build a structured reference program that identifies available advocates by industry, company size, use case, product, geography and willingness to participate.

Instead of searching for a customer every time Sales asks, your company has a repeatable system.

2. You Have Happy Customers, But Nobody Is Activating Them

Your company may already have hundreds of potential advocates sitting inside your customer base.

Look at:

  • NPS promoters

  • Customers sending positive CSAT feedback

  • Customers praising their CSM

  • Customers participating in your community

  • Customers renewing early

  • Customers expanding usage

  • Customers posting positively about you online

  • Customers attending your events

  • Customers achieving measurable business results

These are signals.

But many companies collect those signals without doing anything with them.

A customer marketing program turns those signals into opportunities for activation.

A customer who gives you a 10 on an NPS survey might become a reviewer.

A reviewer might become a case study.

A case study participant might become an event speaker.

That speaker might become a member of your Customer Advisory Board.

Customer advocacy becomes much more powerful when it is designed as a journey instead of a series of random asks.

3. Your Case Study Pipeline Is Constantly Empty

If every case study requires a heroic effort from Product Marketing, Customer Success and Sales, something is broken.

Customer stories shouldn't begin with:

"Does anyone know a customer willing to do a case study?"

The best programs continuously identify potential stories.

Your customer marketer should know:

  • Which customers have measurable results

  • Which industries are underrepresented

  • Which products need more customer evidence

  • Which market segments lack relevant stories

  • Which competitive use cases need support

  • Which customers are approved for public participation

This changes customer storytelling from a reactive request into an ongoing content engine.

4. Your Competitors Have More Reviews Than You

Prospective buyers don't only listen to what your company says about itself.

They look for what customers say.

That happens across review sites, communities, social channels, Reddit, peer conversations and increasingly AI-assisted research.

If your company has 1,000 happy customers but only 40 recent reviews, you're leaving a huge amount of customer voice sitting unused.

Customer marketers can create systematic programs that identify the right customers and invite them to share their experiences at appropriate moments.

The goal isn't simply more reviews.

It's a consistent, representative stream of customer experiences across the places your buyers research.

5. You're Using the Same Customers for Everything

You know these customers.

They're in the case study.

Then they're on the webinar.

Then they're your Dreamforce speaker.

Then Sales needs them for three reference calls.

Then Marketing wants another quote.

Meanwhile everyone wonders why the customer stops answering emails.

Strong customer advocacy isn't about finding the customers who will say yes to everything.

It's about building a larger and healthier advocate base.

A customer marketer tracks engagement, preferences and participation so advocacy doesn't become customer exhaustion.

6. Your Customer Programs Live Across Five Different Teams

This is extremely common.

Customer Success owns the community.

Product Marketing owns case studies.

Corporate Marketing owns speakers.

Sales owns references.

Demand Gen occasionally asks for reviews.

Product runs its own advisory board.

Each initiative may work individually, but nobody is looking at the entire customer relationship.

That creates duplicate asks, missed opportunities and a fragmented customer experience.

Customer marketing can become the connective tissue between these teams.

It doesn't necessarily need to own every program.

But someone should see the whole ecosystem.

7. You're Struggling to Prove the Business Impact of Customer Marketing

Customer marketing has historically been measured by activity:

"We created 12 case studies."

"We recruited 20 advocates."

"We got 100 reviews."

Those numbers tell you what happened.

They don't necessarily tell executives why it mattered.

Modern customer marketing measurement should connect customer activity to business outcomes wherever possible.

That might include:

  • Pipeline influenced by customer stories

  • Opportunities supported by customer references

  • Revenue influenced by reviews

  • Expansion campaigns

  • Advocacy participation

  • Community engagement

  • Customer retention

  • Content usage

  • Sales enablement usage

  • Event participation

  • Customer activation rates

The question should gradually shift from:

"How much customer content did we create?"

to:

"How did customer voice influence the business?"

8. Buyers Are Researching You in Places Your Marketing Team Doesn't Control

This one has become much more important.

Buyers aren't just going to your website and downloading your ebook.

They're asking colleagues.

They're reading Reddit.

They're looking at review sites.

They're searching communities.

And now they're asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity and other AI tools questions about your company and your category.

That means customer voice isn't only a customer marketing asset anymore.

It's a discoverability asset.

When buyers—or AI systems helping buyers—research a company, credible customer experiences can help answer questions such as:

  • Who is this product best for?

  • What companies use it?

  • What results are customers getting?

  • What problems does it solve?

  • How does it compare with competitors?

  • What are its limitations?

  • Is the company trusted by businesses like mine?

This changes the strategic role of customer marketing.

Your customers aren't simply helping you create content.

They're helping buyers understand whether your company is credible.

9. Everyone Agrees Customer Marketing Is Important, But Nobody Has Time to Do It

This may be the biggest sign of all.

Customer Success wants advocacy.

Sales wants references.

Marketing wants stories.

Leadership wants reviews.

Events wants speakers.

Product wants customer feedback.

Everyone wants the outcome.

Nobody has the bandwidth to build the system.

That's when you have to decide:

Do we hire a full-time customer marketer—or bring in fractional customer marketing support?

Should You Hire a Full-Time or Fractional Customer Marketer?

You don't always need to start with a full-time hire.

A fractional customer marketing leader or consultant can make sense when your organization needs the strategy and infrastructure before it needs another permanent headcount.

Consider a full-time customer marketer when:

You have enough ongoing customer activity to support a dedicated role, multiple customer programs already exist, and you need someone internally managing those programs every day.

Consider fractional customer marketing when:

You know customer marketing is important but need someone to first build the strategy, processes, programs and measurement framework.

For example, a fractional engagement might establish:

  • Your customer advocacy strategy

  • Advocate identification and segmentation

  • NPS activation workflows

  • Customer review programs

  • Reference processes

  • Case study pipelines

  • Customer story frameworks

  • Customer Advisory Board structure

  • Customer community strategy

  • Advocacy measurement

  • Customer voice distribution

  • AI discovery strategy

  • Technology and operational requirements

Then your company can decide what resources are needed to operate and scale those programs long term.

When Is the Right Stage to Invest in Customer Marketing?

There isn't a magic ARR number or customer count.

I would look for a different signal:

Do you have enough successful customers that their experiences could materially help your next group of customers and prospects?

If the answer is yes, you have the raw material for customer marketing.

The question becomes whether you're using it.

A company with 100 highly engaged customers might need customer marketing more urgently than a company with 2,000 transactional customers.

Look at the behaviors happening across the organization.

If customer references, reviews, stories, speakers, advocacy and community are becoming regular needs, the business is already telling you that customer marketing exists.

You simply haven't operationalized it yet.

What Should Your First Customer Marketing Hire Focus On?

Don't hand your first customer marketer a list of 27 disconnected programs.

Start by identifying the biggest customer-voice bottleneck in the business.

I generally think about this in four stages:

Discover

Identify the customers, signals, stories and opportunities already hiding across your customer base.

Activate

Give customers relevant ways to participate based on their experiences, interests and relationship with your company.

Distribute

Put customer voice where it can actually influence customers and buyers—across your website, sales process, review platforms, communities, events and external channels.

Measure

Track whether those programs are influencing engagement, advocacy, pipeline, retention, expansion and buyer discovery.

The goal isn't to launch every possible customer program.

It's to build an engine that makes customer participation repeatable.

The Bigger Question: Are You Underusing Your Customer Base?

This is the question I wish more companies asked.

Most organizations spend enormous amounts of money acquiring customers.

Then, once those customers become successful, remarkably little infrastructure exists to capture what they learned, what results they achieved or what they're willing to share.

Your customers hold something your competitors cannot manufacture:

Their firsthand experience with your company.

That experience can influence future customers, prospective buyers, sales conversations, communities, search engines and AI-assisted research.

Customer marketing is the function responsible for turning that experience into something the rest of the business can use—without turning your customers into marketing inventory.

So if you're wondering whether it's time to hire a customer marketer, look around your organization.

If everyone is asking your customers for something but nobody owns the strategy behind those asks...

You're probably already doing customer marketing.

You just haven't built the function yet.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hiring a Customer Marketer

What is a customer marketer?

A customer marketer focuses on engaging, activating and amplifying existing customers. Their responsibilities may include customer advocacy, references, reviews, case studies, community, customer communications, advisory boards, events, retention initiatives and customer-led growth programs.

When should a startup hire a customer marketer?

A startup should consider customer marketing once it has a meaningful group of successful customers whose experiences can help support retention, expansion, advocacy or new customer acquisition. Customer success signals matter more than hitting one specific customer-count or revenue threshold.

What is the difference between customer marketing and product marketing?

Product marketing typically focuses on positioning, messaging, launches, market intelligence and enabling buyers and sellers around a product. Customer marketing focuses primarily on the relationship with existing customers and activating their experiences across advocacy, engagement, retention and growth. The two functions should work closely together.

What is the difference between customer marketing and customer success?

Customer Success primarily helps customers achieve value from the product and maintain a successful relationship with the company. Customer Marketing creates programs that engage customers at scale and gives customers opportunities to participate, connect, advocate and share their experiences.

What does a customer marketing consultant do?

A customer marketing consultant can help a company assess its existing customer programs, design a customer marketing strategy, build advocacy and reference programs, create processes for sourcing customer stories, improve review programs, develop measurement frameworks and build the infrastructure required to scale customer marketing.

Can you outsource customer marketing?

Parts of customer marketing—and sometimes the strategy and leadership of the function—can be supported by a fractional customer marketing consultant. Fractional support can be particularly useful when a company needs senior expertise to build programs and processes but isn't ready for a full-time customer marketing hire.

How do you know if your customer advocacy program is working?

Look beyond the number of advocates enrolled. Measure customer participation, advocate activation, reference fulfillment, review generation, customer-story usage, pipeline influence, expansion opportunities and the ways customer voice is being used throughout the buyer journey.

Need to Build Customer Marketing Before You're Ready to Hire?

That's exactly the kind of problem I built CMA Soulmate to solve.

I help B2B companies find the customer stories, advocates and untapped customer voice already sitting inside their customer base—and build the systems needed to activate them across marketing, sales and buyer discovery.

Because your most powerful marketing asset may already be sitting in your customer base.

Explore CMA Soulmate →

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Leslie Barrett Leslie Barrett

How Customer Marketing Can Influence AI Search and LLM Visibility

It all begins with an idea.

Your customers aren't just influencing other buyers anymore.

They're increasingly influencing the information AI systems have available when buyers ask questions about your company, your category, and your competitors.

That has major implications for Customer Marketing.

For years, customer marketers have focused on programs like customer stories, reviews, references, advocacy, communities, advisory boards, and customer-generated content.

Those programs still matter for all of the traditional reasons.

But they may now serve another purpose:

Helping your company become easier to discover, understand, validate, and recommend during AI-assisted buyer research.

This is where Customer Marketing and AI visibility start to overlap.

And it may dramatically increase the strategic importance of customer voice.

What Is AI Search Visibility?

AI search visibility refers to how your company, products, expertise, and customer experiences appear when someone uses AI-powered tools to research a topic or make a decision.

That can include tools and experiences such as:

  • ChatGPT

  • Google AI search experiences

  • Microsoft Copilot

  • Perplexity

  • Gemini

  • Claude

  • Other AI-powered research and discovery tools

Instead of typing:

“AP automation software”

into a traditional search engine and clicking through ten links, a buyer might now ask:

“What are the best AP automation platforms for a 500-person SaaS company?”

Then they might continue:

“Which of those is easiest to implement?”

“Which has strong customer support?”

“What complaints do customers have?”

“Which is best for a company using NetSuite?”

“What do actual customers say?”

The AI system may synthesize information from multiple sources and provide a direct answer.

That changes the discovery experience considerably.

Your company isn't simply competing for a search-engine ranking anymore.

You're competing to become part of the answer.

Why This Matters for B2B Companies

AI-assisted research is moving deeper into B2B purchasing.

G2's 2026 AI Search Insight Report found that 71% of surveyed software buyers said they rely on AI chatbots for software research, while 51% said they now begin software research with an AI chatbot more often than Google.

That doesn't mean traditional search has disappeared.

It means another research layer has emerged.

And when a buyer asks an AI system for recommendations, comparisons, strengths, weaknesses, customer experiences, or potential vendors, the system needs information from somewhere.

That is where Customer Marketing becomes particularly interesting.

Customer Marketing Creates the Evidence Behind the Brand

Marketing teams create positioning.

Product Marketing creates messaging.

Sales explains value.

But customers provide something fundamentally different:

firsthand experience.

They can say:

  • Why they bought

  • What problem they were trying to solve

  • What alternatives they considered

  • How implementation went

  • What results they achieved

  • What they like

  • What they don't like

  • Who they think the product is right for

  • How the company compares with alternatives

That information can appear across:

  • Customer stories

  • Case studies

  • Review platforms

  • Community discussions

  • Reddit

  • Podcasts

  • Webinars

  • Events

  • Partner websites

  • Customer websites

  • Media coverage

  • Social content

  • Your own website

Taken together, those signals help create a much richer picture of your company than your homepage ever could.

The Big Shift: From Customer Proof to Customer Intelligence

Historically, many companies have treated customer advocacy as a content-production machine.

Get a quote.

Get a logo.

Create a case study.

Secure a review.

Find a reference.

Then move on to the next request.

I think companies need a different mindset.

Your customers are a source of proprietary market intelligence.

They know what problem existed before your product.

They know what triggered the buying process.

They know what objections came up.

They know what alternatives were evaluated.

They know what ultimately created value.

That information isn't just useful for marketing collateral.

It can help answer the exact questions prospective buyers are asking AI systems.

How Customer Marketing Can Influence AI Visibility

Customer Marketing cannot control what an LLM says about a company.

No marketing team can.

But Customer Marketing can influence the information environment surrounding the brand.

There are several ways to do that.

1. Generate More Detailed Customer Reviews

Reviews are becoming particularly important in AI-assisted software research.

G2's 2026 research found that 45% of surveyed B2B software buyers said citations from review sites were the signal that most increased their confidence in an AI-generated answer.

That creates a potentially significant opportunity for Customer Marketing.

But simply collecting more five-star reviews isn't enough.

A review saying:

“Great product. Love it!”

doesn't tell a buyer—or an AI system—very much.

Compare that with a review explaining:

  • The person's role

  • Their industry

  • Company size

  • The problem they were solving

  • Why they selected the product

  • What they implemented

  • Results achieved

  • What they liked

  • Challenges encountered

That is far richer customer information.

The objective should be to help customers tell specific, useful stories rather than simply increasing a review count.

2. Build Customer Stories Around Buyer Questions

Most case studies follow the same format:

Challenge → Solution → Result

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

But AI-assisted buyers may be asking far more specific questions.

For example:

“Can this platform handle international subsidiaries?”

“Does this product work for enterprise healthcare?”

“How difficult is implementation?”

“Can this replace our existing workflow?”

“How long until companies see results?”

If your customer content never answers those questions, you're leaving important information gaps.

Customer marketers should start identifying the actual questions customers and prospects ask throughout the buying journey.

Then create customer stories that answer them directly.

3. Put Customer Voice Somewhere Other Than Your Website

One of the biggest customer marketing mistakes is capturing an amazing customer story and publishing it in exactly one place:

your own website.

Then everyone congratulates themselves and moves on.

Instead, think about customer voice as something that should be strategically distributed.

A single customer story might become:

  • A detailed case study

  • A review

  • A customer quote

  • A sales enablement story

  • A webinar

  • A conference talk

  • A podcast appearance

  • A community discussion

  • A partner article

  • A short-form Q&A

  • An executive quote

  • A customer-authored LinkedIn post

  • An industry-specific story

This creates multiple opportunities for customers to describe the company in their own language.

It also creates corroboration.

One company saying it delivers amazing results is marketing.

Multiple independent customers describing similar outcomes is something much more powerful.

4. Fill Customer Evidence Gaps

Here's where Customer Marketing becomes strategic.

Imagine you're a cybersecurity company with dozens of customer stories.

Sounds great.

But when you examine them closely, you discover:

  • 70% are enterprise customers

  • Almost none are mid-market

  • Most focus on one product

  • Very few discuss implementation

  • None address competitive migration

  • Your fastest-growing vertical has only one story

That's not merely a content problem.

It's an evidence gap.

If buyers repeatedly ask questions about mid-market implementation and there is very little public information supporting your position there, AI systems have less evidence available to work with.

Customer Marketing should increasingly map customer evidence against:

Industries × segments × products × use cases × buyer questions × customer outcomes

That gives you an entirely different way to prioritize advocacy.

Instead of asking:

“Who can we turn into our next case study?”

ask:

“What does the market need evidence of that we cannot currently prove?”

5. Make Customer Content Easier to Understand and Retrieve

AI visibility isn't only about how much content you have.

Your information also needs to be understandable.

Microsoft's current guidance for content appearing in AI-generated answers recommends things such as clear structure, descriptive headings, concise sections, tables, evidence, depth, and content aligned with user intent.

That means customer stories can become more useful when they contain clear, explicit information.

Instead of a headline like:

“How Acme Transformed Its Future”

consider:

“How Acme Reduced AP Processing Time by 40% Using XYZ”

Instead of burying results six paragraphs down, clearly state them.

Instead of vague marketing language, describe:

  • Industry

  • Company size

  • Problem

  • Use case

  • Product used

  • Implementation

  • Results

  • Customer perspective

Clarity helps humans.

It also makes the information easier for machines to interpret.

6. Create Firsthand Content That Competitors Can't Copy

Everyone can create another article called:

“10 Trends Changing Finance in 2026.”

AI can create that article too.

Your competitors can create essentially the same one tomorrow.

But they cannot recreate:

what your customers actually experienced using your product.

That's your advantage.

Customer interviews can uncover original information including:

  • Before-and-after metrics

  • Unexpected use cases

  • Implementation lessons

  • Internal objections

  • Purchase triggers

  • Organizational change

  • Time-to-value

  • Lessons learned

  • Advice for similar companies

This is information only your company and your customers have access to.

That makes customer voice increasingly valuable in a world where generic content is incredibly easy to create.

7. Keep Customer Evidence Fresh

A case study from six years ago may still be useful.

But companies change.
Products change.
Markets change.
Customer expectations change.

AI systems also continually retrieve newer information from the web.

Microsoft says freshness can affect whether pages are useful for AI-generated answers and recommends keeping content accurate and updated.

Customer marketers should consider maintaining a customer evidence refresh cycle.

For example:

Every six or twelve months, evaluate:

  • Which customer stories are outdated?

  • Which results can be updated?

  • Which industries need newer examples?

  • Which products have changed?

  • Which customers could provide follow-up outcomes?

  • Which reviews are recent?

  • Which buyer questions aren't currently supported by evidence?

Customer voice should be treated as a living information asset.

8. Make Sure AI Search Systems Can Access Your Content

There is also a technical layer.

For example, OpenAI uses OAI-SearchBot to surface websites in ChatGPT search results. OpenAI says websites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be included as sources in ChatGPT search answers, although they may still appear as navigational links.

That means companies should review whether their website actually allows AI search crawlers to access public content intended for discovery.

This is usually something Customer Marketing would coordinate with SEO, web, or technical teams rather than own outright.

But if you've created incredible customer evidence that AI search systems cannot access, that's worth knowing.

9. Monitor What AI Systems Actually Say About You

You can't improve what you never examine.

Companies should regularly test the types of questions prospective buyers might ask.

For example:

“What are the best customer marketing platforms for B2B SaaS?”

“What are the best alternatives to Company X?”

“Which platform is best for enterprise finance teams?”

“What do customers dislike about Company X?”

“Is Company X good for mid-market companies?”

Then evaluate:

  • Does your company appear?

  • How are you described?

  • Which competitors appear?

  • What sources are cited?

  • Which customer experiences are referenced?

  • Are important use cases missing?

  • Are outdated facts appearing?

  • Are competitors better represented in certain categories?

  • Which questions produce weak or inaccurate answers?

This isn't something you test once.

AI discovery should be monitored over time.

Microsoft's Bing Webmaster Tools now even reports which pages are being cited in AI-generated answers, along with the queries and topics associated with those citations.

This is an early indication of where AI visibility measurement is headed.

The Customer Marketing Opportunity

For years, Customer Marketing has fought to prove that it is more strategic than:

case studies + references + swag.

AI discovery gives the discipline an opportunity to demonstrate something much bigger.

Customer Marketing sits on one of the most valuable information assets a company possesses:

the real experiences of its customers.

Marketing can say what your company promises.

Product can explain what the product does.

Sales can explain why someone should buy.

But customers can explain what actually happened.

And that difference matters.

Customer Marketing Is Becoming a Discoverability Function

I believe this is where the profession is headed.

Customer Marketing won't replace SEO.

It won't replace Content Marketing.

It won't replace Product Marketing.

And it won't somehow “control the LLMs.”

Instead, Customer Marketing can become a critical contributor to buyer discoverability.

Its job becomes:

Find the customer knowledge the market needs.

Activate customers willing to share it.

Distribute that voice where buyers and AI systems can discover it.

Measure whether the company becomes easier to understand, trust, and consider.

I call this:

Discover → Activate → Distribute → Measure

Discover

Identify your strongest customers, stories, signals, outcomes, advocates, and information gaps.

Activate

Give customers relevant opportunities to share their experiences.

Distribute

Put those experiences where buyers actually research—not simply where Marketing finds it convenient to publish them.

Measure

Monitor how customer voice influences buyer discovery, sales conversations, reviews, pipeline, and AI visibility.

This is the shift from simply collecting customer proof to strategically deploying customer voice.

How Can You Start Improving AI Visibility Through Customer Marketing?

You don't need a massive AEO initiative to start.

Begin with five questions:

  1. What questions are prospective buyers asking about us?

  2. Which of those questions can our customers answer better than we can?

  3. Where does that customer evidence currently exist?

  4. Where are there obvious gaps?

  5. Is that evidence accessible wherever buyers are doing their research?

Then start building.

Your customer base may already contain everything you need.

The problem may simply be that the information has never been activated.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can customer marketing improve AI search visibility?

Customer marketing can contribute to AI search visibility by creating and distributing detailed customer stories, reviews, testimonials, discussions, and firsthand experiences that provide additional information about a company, product, use case, and customer outcome. Customer Marketing does not control what AI systems display, but it can influence the information available to those systems.

Do customer reviews affect AI visibility?

Customer reviews can be an important source of firsthand customer information during AI-assisted research. G2's 2026 research found that review-site citations were the most confidence-inspiring signal in AI answers among the B2B software buyers it surveyed.

What is LLM visibility?

LLM visibility describes whether and how a company, product, brand, or topic appears in responses generated by large language models and AI-powered research experiences. Visibility can include mentions, descriptions, recommendations, comparisons, citations, and links to supporting sources.

What is AEO?

Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, generally refers to making information easier for answer engines and AI-powered search experiences to retrieve, understand, and use when responding to users.

What is GEO?

Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, is commonly used to describe efforts to improve how brands and content appear in generative AI experiences. Microsoft has begun explicitly using the term GEO when discussing how web content contributes to AI answers, grounding, and citations.

What's the role of customer marketers in AEO?

Customer marketers are particularly well positioned to provide the firsthand experience layer of an AEO strategy. They can identify customer evidence, close gaps in customer stories, generate useful reviews, capture specific outcomes, distribute customer voice, and keep customer information current.

Your Most Powerful AI Asset May Already Be Sitting in Your Customer Base

Companies are racing to figure out AI visibility.

They're rewriting webpages.

They're testing prompts.

They're building comparison pages.

They're optimizing content.

All of that may matter.

But before creating another 100 pieces of content, I'd look somewhere else:

your customers.

They already know the answers to many of the questions your future buyers are asking.

The opportunity for Customer Marketing is to make sure those answers don't remain trapped inside Zoom calls, NPS surveys, Slack messages, and your Customer Success team's heads.

Find them. Activate them.

Put them where they can influence discovery.

That's the future of Customer Marketing.

And it's already starting.

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Leslie Barrett Leslie Barrett

Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

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Leslie Barrett Leslie Barrett

Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Read More