When budgets tighten and growth slows, customer advocacy program managers—especially those who’ve focused mainly on pre-sales influence—may be entering their first bear market. If that’s you, it’s time to pivot. A recent Gartner Survey finds 73% of CSOs are prioritizing growth from existing customers for 2025 (i.e., retention & expansion vs. net new revenue).
Now is the time to get closer to Customer Success. Help CSMs use advocates to save potential non-renewals and expand existing accounts. Retention and cost savings are top-of-mind for execs, and your program needs to evolve with that reality—or risk being seen as overhead.
Luckily, the case for advocacy-led retention is plenty compelling.
According to Forrester, 95% of marketing decision-makers say formal advocacy programs are more critical now than ever before. These programs are recognized as growth enablers—not just because they drive awareness, but because they deepen engagement and loyalty across the customer lifecycle.
IDC backs this up with evidence that advocacy programs support both acquisition and retention. They help formalize and scale customer engagement, turning happy users into vocal supporters, and brand awareness into brand allegiance.
Nutshell puts it simply: customers who participate in advocacy programs are more likely to remain loyal. These customers already believe in your value, and their involvement in your program deepens that belief. It’s psychological consistency in action—people stick with what they’ve endorsed.
This matters now more than ever. With shorter renewals and lower switching friction in B2B tech, customers are constantly evaluating whether to stay or go. And in markets where net-new demand isn’t growing, the pressure shifts to expansion and retention—what Forrester calls “customer obsession.”
So how do you make your advocacy program indispensable?
And here’s the kicker: this is a pretty easy story to tell. Pull a report that compares renewal rates of advocates vs. non-advocates. Show your leadership that advocacy isn’t just a warm and fuzzy program—it’s a retention engine.
Customer advocates are objectively more loyal. That’s not a soft benefit—it’s your hedge against churn.
In a downturn, loyalty becomes your most undervalued asset. Time to make it your strategy. Contact us today to learn how!
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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