Customer experience is a brand job, not a handoff. Marketing already builds relationships and reputation, so put your marketers at the center of CX design and delivery.

What is customer experience leadership by marketing?

Customer experience leadership by marketing means your marketing team co-owns the end-to-end journey with sales, product, and service. Marketing applies research, messaging, and creative to shape interactions that build trust and reduce friction. The outcome is measurable impact on loyalty, revenue, and brand strength.

Every business knows customer experience is important. Some companies have whole departments devoted to it. But do they include marketing in the discussion. Not often enough, especially in B2B.

The Harvard Business Review says, “Developing positive customer experiences is all about building relationships, and your reputation.”

Building relationships and reputations is core to marketing. Social engagement and content strategy strengthen relationships. Reputation sits at the heart of every brand.

When it comes to creating a positive experience for your customers, here are three pragmatic ways your B2B marketing team can lead the way.

What is the bottom-line impact of positive customer experience?

Before we look at how marketing can help improve customer experience, it is worth taking a closer look at why it matters.

Positive experiences, and a reputation for delivering them, are tied to the bottom line:

• 80 percent of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.
• Service is the top factor affecting customer loyalty, cited by 74 percent of customers.

Those stats reflect B2C research, but many consumers are also business buyers, and all business buyers are human beings. People’s personal buying habits inform their business expectations and choices. Improving the B2B buying experience can generate strong results, and it starts with marketing.

1. Marketing drives the emotions that drive positive experience

Every buying decision is an emotional decision, even in B2B. That is why the most effective campaigns create and reinforce emotional connections with their audiences.

One small example is personalization. The more a buyer feels a message is tailored to them, the more positive the emotional response. Personalization can reduce acquisition costs, lift revenues, and increase marketing ROI.

Your marketing team has the tools for this. Customer research, message testing, and channel orchestration make personalization feel natural, not noisy. For deeper journey context, start here: Build B2B campaigns on true buyer journeys.

2. Marketing understands buyer journeys best

Too many B2B organizations do not understand their customers’ true buyer journeys, how needs evolve, how information is gathered, and what triggers a decision.

You cannot optimize the buying experience if you do not understand the journey. Your marketing team should lead journey research, recommend improvements, and facilitate cross-functional teams to design experiences that drive revenue and brand value. If journey misconceptions are slowing you down, read: Three reasons marketers get the B2B buyer’s journey wrong.

3. Marketing has the creative power to build peak moments

Buying committees may spend months evaluating a purchase, but there is usually a pivotal moment when evaluation tips toward a decision.

Standard top-, mid-, and bottom-funnel assets have informational value, but they do not always improve the experience or spark a peak moment. Marketing is built to create those inflection points, through story, visuals, and interactions that make people feel seen and confident. That could be a crisp explainer that unlocks a complex concept, a short video that reframes a problem, or a hands-on demo that removes doubt.

Superior buying experiences require peak moments, and peak moments require creative power. That is why your marketing team is your best lever for improving customer experience. If you need help operationalizing this, connect with Customer Engagement.

These are three ways marketing can lead the creation of superior experiences that build your bottom line.

StudioNorth helps enterprises such as Lenovo, CDW, and McKesson leverage strategic insight and creativity to improve buyer experiences. Curious how we can help you.

Key takeaway

Put marketing at the center of customer experience. Use buyer insights to fix friction, then design peak moments that move decisions forward.

FAQs

Where should we start if CX feels owned by another department?
Start with one journey that drives revenue. Invite owners from sales, service, and product. Have marketing facilitate a workshop to define friction points and opportunities, then pilot one improvement per stage.

How do we measure marketing’s CX impact?
Pair experience metrics, such as time-to-value and first-contact resolution, with revenue metrics, such as stage velocity and expansion. Track depth signals, not just volume.

Do we need personalization tech to see CX improvements?
No. Start with message clarity and sequence. Use light rules-based personalization by role or need. As you learn, add tools where they remove friction or unlock scale.

Published July 2024. Updated November 2025.