Business

What is the Customer Advisory Board (CAB)?

All Marketing Tips - March 27, 2024

Basically, A customer advisory board (CAB) is the group of critical customers that the company invites the meeting.

And it possibly additional periodic meetings to offer feedback on the and the company’s overall impressions.

And businesses are assembled customer advisory boards with several common objectives in mind, including:

It creates champions for their brand

To validates product ideas and guide the product roadmap

And to help shape their marketing messaging

Also, gather market intelligence

Since the customer advisory board should serve as a representative sample of the company’s broader market.

Its board includes a cross-section of customers representing as many different market segments as possible.

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What are the Benefits of Customer Advisory Board (CAB)?

Businesses that assemble customer advisory boards to find many benefits from the gatherings they host with the CAB members. And some of the most frequently cited benefits include:

Firstly, it creates an open forum where key customers speak candidly and at length about why they chose your company over the competition.
They like products and what they want to see next. It helps our team get a better sense of where to focus your strategic efforts and resources.

Secondly, a customer advisory board provides insights into how customers are using your products and what aspects of individuals’ products are most important or beneficial.
And what extra functionality or tools they believe complement or enhance your offering.

Lastly, one essential benefit of having a customer advisory board is that the advisory members will likely spend more with your company due to participating in your CAB.
And B2B businesses with customer advisory boards experience is average of 9% more in new business from CAB members than from the broader customer base.
Extra benefits of customer advisory board include:
And understanding the buying triggers of the company’s market
It is providing beta users for the company’s new products
And helping the company identify new markets

Assembling and running the customer advisory board requires strategic thought and . And here are the few best practices the product team can use to get started.

Firstly, customer advisory board consists of a carefully selected customer representative group gathered with your team to discuss specific topics.
With that in mind, it needs to both think through which customers you’ll want for these discussions. And also what your customer advisory board plan will be.
It through the strategic planning stage. It might discover you have several objectives for your CAB.
If so, it might be better off assembling several advisory groups and each representing a specific market segment (large customers, small customers).
And to discuss particular topics (product direction, company positioning, the competitive landscape, etc.)

Secondly, some customer company representatives will thrill and ask them to join your advisory board and eagerly do so.
But many committing to participate in a CAB is problematic because it requires time and effort.
We want to create a list of ideal candidates for your advisory board and probably a plan far more significant than the number of actual participants we will wish for your CAB.
Then it needs to contact individuals people with your invitation. And also CIO Magazine has written, there are several benefits to joining a customer advisory board.
It is a good idea it includes some of these in your invitation. So your potential CAB members know what’s in it for them. Some of the individuals benefits include:
It takes the chance to influence the vendor’s roadmap
The benefits of using a construction roadmap template are ideal for a wide range of tasks and management functions
During CAB meetings and learn best practices from your peers
And get an opportunity to beta-test new features and new products
And also, CAB meetings are a great opportunity to network and to increase your profile as a thought leader in your industry

Lastly, a customer advisory board forum is an excellent opportunity to let your advisory members speak freely about their product and your company’s experiences.
But that prepares not to mean you want the wholly unguided and directionless meeting.
Suppose you are going through the trouble of assembling a group of critical customers. It would help if you planned for that time to derive the most strategic value from it.
That means preparing a customer advisory board plan that will keep you on track.
It is introducing your team to your advisory board members
They ask advisory board members for an overview of the own companies‘ strategic goals and plans.
And discussing the challenges, your CAB members face in performing their work — challenges related to the solutions you offer.
And discussing how your advisory members view the competitive landscape for your offerings.
You share the product roadmap, backlog, or other team’s plan and development work elements.
And you are opening the discussion up to your advisory members’ thoughts about your products.
And what they’d like to see prioritized, any issues they have with your solutions, etc.