For decades, Customer Marketing & Advocacy (CMA) has been the unsung hero of B2B growth. It’s the engine behind those success stories that inspire prospects, the whispered endorsement that tips a deal in your favor, and the subtle force that makes your demand gen campaigns land with credibility.
Yet, for most organizations, CMA has been chronically underfunded, short-staffed, and—let’s be honest—often underappreciated. To too many executives, CMA looks like a cost center. Something “nice to have.” Something expendable when budgets get tight.
For those of us who have lived and breathed CMA, this is maddening. We’ve seen the magic: customers who speak at your events, advise buyers based on real-world experience, and turn your sales cycle into a trust-building exercise rather than a cold pitch. When an executive *gets it*, the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of those executives.
If CMA has struggled to get attention from the c-suite, the current AI frenzy may just change the game. Boards are pressuring leadership teams to turn AI into ROI—fast. Executives are leaning on managers to show tangible progress—if not results. Suddenly, there’s appetite for experimentation, and the once-overlooked CMA function has a shot at the spotlight.
This is our moment. But it comes with a twist.
Agentic AI—the emerging class of AI tools that can act autonomously, interact conversationally, and adapt to situations—is unlike the automation of the past. Automation was predictable, procedural, and safe. Agentic AI is…well, a little “schizophrenic.” It hallucinates. It can produce five different answers to the same question. In domains like CMA, where trust and relationships are currency, that’s not a small risk.
Still, in this rare season of executive curiosity (and tolerance for AI’s warts), CMA leaders can step into a new era—if they balance ambition with caution.
Let’s imagine how the role of a CMA program manager will evolve as agents become capable teammates rather than just tools. Take for example, the ongoing chore of discovering customers ripe for advocacy.
Recruiting advocates today is notoriously time-consuming. It depends on your relationships with sales reps, CSMs, product marketers, and executives—and that’s before the first outreach email goes out.
In a mature agent-driven environment, much of that manual work could be offloaded. Imagine an agent that:
It sounds magical—and in some ways, it will be. But designing this magic requires deep CMA expertise, in addition to competent interaction design. Without it, the agent might create social faux pas that damage relationships instead of nurturing them. AI providers acknowledge that humans are often better suited for dealing with customers in marketing, sales, and customer success. Human employees are essential for managing and resolving sensitive matters with customers, and what’s more sensitive than asking a customer to put her reputation on the line for your company?
As agents handle more operational tasks—candidate identification, outreach, data collection—the CMA program manager’s role shifts. Tomorrow’s CMA leader will:
Think of it as moving from an assembly-line role to a command-center role. Tools like Salesforce’s emerging Agentforce Command Center will make it easier to track performance and refine agents. Because agents need direction, it will be incumbent on program managers to invest more in strategic planning and program design than in the pre-AI world. The consequences of not doing so will be dramatic, visible and fast within an organization.
No matter how smart the agent, there will always be gaps in the data. For example:
These situational nuances require human judgment. A savvy program manager will design workflows where agents flag these scenarios for human intervention, preserving the buyer experience—and the deal.
For the first time, CMA program managers have a shot at scaling their programs without scaling their headcount. Agents can become true virtual team members, freeing program managers to do what they’ve always wanted to do:
But this will only work if we combine deep CMA expertise with smart agent design. Without that foundation, organizations risk over-rotating on AI, frustrating customers, and undermining trust—the very currency of advocacy.
At Point of Reference, we’ve poured over 20 years of CMA experience into our agent design principles. Technology may power the future, but empathy and context will be our north star.
The CMA program manager of the future won’t just manage relationships—they’ll manage the agents who manage the relationships, elevating both the human and digital sides of advocacy. And for those ready to embrace this shift, the sky’s finally the limit. For more on the role of AI in Customer Marketing, check out this podcast with Sunny Manivannan.
As this infographic illustrates, a mature advocacy program is responsible for continuously identifying advocates, maintaining accurate advocacy data, protecting customer relationships, and aligning with top company goals to accelerate growth.
The infographic contains six key components. Here's a description of each for you to translate into your own talking points.
Every advocate starts as a customer.
The journey begins when account teams, customer success managers, support teams, and services organizations create positive experiences that build trust and confidence.
As customers achieve success, some become enthusiastic supporters of the company, its products, and its people. These customers are identified as potential advocates and introduced to the advocacy team.
The advocacy team interviews these individuals, learns about their experiences, captures important details about their interests and expertise, and creates a searchable advocate profile.
The result is a discoverable advocate: someone who can be found, matched, and engaged when the business needs credible customer voices.
Without this process, valuable customer relationships remain hidden inside co-workers’ heads or team spreadsheets, unavailable to the broader organization.
Great advocates are rarely discovered by the advocacy team alone. It’s really just too much to ask of any one part of the organization. Every customer touchpoint plays a part in cultivating and retaining advocates.
Customer success managers see customer enthusiasm firsthand. Account teams hear success stories during business reviews. Support teams witness customer loyalty. Product teams interact with passionate users who influence future direction.
A successful advocacy program creates a systematic way for all customer-facing teams to identify and nominate potential advocates, as well as a means for customers to self-identify..
Think of it as building a talent pipeline.
The broader the participation across the organization, the stronger and more diverse the advocate community becomes.
This collective effort ensures the advocacy database reflects the full spectrum of customer success stories across industries, products, geographies, and use cases.
The advocacy team serves as the steward of the organization's advocacy data.
Their responsibilities fall into three primary areas.
First, they recruit continuously. Advocates change jobs, priorities shift, and customer enthusiasm naturally evolves over time. Maintaining a healthy advocacy community requires constant replenishment.
Second, they keep information current. Customer stories, product deployments, business outcomes, and willingness to participate all change. Outdated advocacy data quickly becomes unreliable.
Third, they measure and report value. Advocacy programs must demonstrate their contribution to business outcomes such as customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.
Beyond maintaining records, the advocacy team actively shapes the composition of the database to align with company growth objectives. This is essential if the program is to be seen by executives as a strategic lever vs. a low-level function an intern can run.
If the company’s strategic direction includes expanding into healthcare, launching a new product, selling through a new channel, entering Asia, or targeting a specific buyer persona, the advocacy team ensures the advocate population evolves accordingly.
In many ways, they function as portfolio managers for one of the company's most valuable assets: customer credibility.
Most organizations initially think of advocacy as a sales resource.
Sales certainly benefits from customer references, but advocacy creates value far beyond the sales organization.
The common thread is credibility.
Advocates provide something no marketing budget can purchase directly: authentic proof from real customers.
Most mature advocacy programs include additional components that extend value for both advocates and the business.
These activities are connected mechanisms that strengthen relationships, increase engagement, and create additional opportunities for customers to contribute.
Together, they help transform advocacy from a transactional activity into an ongoing customer experience.
The ultimate purpose of customer advocacy is not activity.
It is business impact.
In Summary
Advocates are valuable assets. The advocacy team's job is to make sure those assets are available when needed, protected from burnout, and aligned with the organization's most important priorities.
When done well, customer advocacy transforms customer success into measurable business value. It is an enterprise capability built on trusted relationships, reliable data, and authentic customer voices.
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