How Coupa used Customer Marketing to Win Over Analysts and Gain Market Share

In 2017, when I led product marketing for the high-growth portfolio at Coupa Software, the company decided to embark on the launch of a new strategic product: an AI-driven product that would harness the power of Coupa’s community to help companies spend smarter. This was more than just a new feature or update; it was a significant strategic move that would redefine how the company positioned itself in the market.

The product was born out of a vision to create a differentiated community around Coupa’s Business Spend Management platform. We wanted to leverage AI to help Coupa’s customer base extract more value from the tremendous volume of spend data that flowed through Coupa’s platform. This was a sizable bet on a highly differentiated positioning in the market.

The product was designed to optimize spending and spark new ways to improve operational efficiency. By using cutting-edge AI, our goal was to help our customer base get more value from their effort. This highlighted both the benefits of Coupa’s sizable Business Spend Management community and their rapid technological innovation. 

Implementing the product required us to build out a unique capability around AI and leverage the data we had across our vast community of customers. This was not without its challenges. Handling vast amounts of data, ensuring its accuracy, and converting it into valuable insights was a monumental task. We had to keep an open dialogue with customers, understand their needs and behaviors, and shape the product to fit their specific requirements.

The Need for Customer Success Stories

When we took on this project, AI was not widely understood, and the use cases for AI seemed abstract and intangible to our customer base and the wider market. To help the market really understand the story, we produced a regular cadence of customer stories for earnings calls, analyst relations, and sales conversations. This would help make the value of our community and the product’s AI capabilities more real. It would also bolster Coupa’s leadership position in the market.

Over the course of a couple of years, 36 customer success stories were publicly approved. These stories served as powerful testimonials, demonstrating the real-world value of Coupa’s products.

But the benefits didn't stop there. Our customer success stories were picked up by analysts. These stories enabled us to stand out in a competitive landscape and win additional customers. Top analysts cited these stories as evidence of the company’s traction in the market, demonstratingCoupa’s innovation and customer success. Both analysts and the press picked up these stories as third-party validation of the product's value and the company's market leadership.

One major lesson learned from this experience is just how much power customer stories have in shaping market perception. Not only do these stories validate your product's value proposition, but they also provide a human angle that resonates with both customers and the analyst community.

To make all of this happen, we worked cross-functionally with many internal stakeholders, including:

• Head of Product and the product teams

• Chief Customer Officer and Customer Success Managers

• Other members of the marketing team and leadership

• CEO

Framework

Product marketing, at its core, is about communicating how a company or product empowers customers to succeed. Additionally, in a great organization, customer marketing is not just a marketing afterthought; it's an integral part of a company's operation. This is because the entire customer marketing process, from start to finish, revolves around the customer. It's not just about extracting a story at the end; it's about understanding the customer's journey, their experiences, their successes, and their challenges.

Not every customer is going to give you a perfect story. Some might even express dissatisfaction with your product. We had customers who, despite not being satisfied with the product, liked us as a company. This speaks volumes about the company's culture and values, and it's an essential aspect of a narrative and a collaborative approach to customers.

Great Companies Are Always Doing Customer Marketing

A truly customer-centric company is always doing customer marketing because everything revolves around the customer. It's about creating and nurturing relationships with customers, understanding their needs, using this understanding to improve products and services, and eventually telling this story.

As a product marketer, you should be eager to engage with your customers, listen to their stories, and relate these narratives to other customers in similar situations. This involves considering what will make a customer successful, capturing these perspectives, and sharing them with the internal team and the market.

By understanding where our customers are coming from, we can better serve them and help them achieve their goals. Then, we rinse and repeat — because customer marketing is an ongoing process. It's about constantly learning from customers, adjusting strategies based on their feedback, and striving to deliver the best possible product and customer experience.

In short, always make time to listen to your customers. Their stories are not just testimonials for your sales process — they're invaluable insights into how your product is being used and how it can be improved. So make customer communication a priority, and let their stories guide your product marketing strategy and execution.

6-Step Customer Marketing Program Building Process

Our customer marketing program-building process consisted of the following six key steps, and each one was crucial in shaping our success:

1. Define Success: We identified key and measurable outcomes from improved positioning with an investment in customer stories.

2. Identify Successful Customers: We identified which customers were successful and were in a position to not only advocate for us, but also help persuade the market.

3. Develop the Story: We aligned with Product from the beginning to understand what story we were going to tell and then we mapped it to customer value.

4. Tell the Story: We spent time crafting the narrative, not only illustrating the value of the product, but also ensuring it resonated deeply with the audience.

5. Create the Collateral: We translated our stories into different formats to meet business needs.

6. Continue to Foster the Relationship: We maintained strong relationships with our customers as their stories and success evolved, allowing us to retell their stories.

Diagram: 6 Step Customer Marketing Program Building Process