Customer Marketing & Advocacy (CMA) is a demanding profession. With a vast array of stakeholders with their own diverse needs, it often falls to a small team, sometimes just one person, to manage the program. Despite these challenges, many program managers achieve remarkable success measured by a variety of metrics unique to their organizations. So, how do these high performers manage to excel? After years of careful observation, we’ve concluded that their success stems from a combination of professional skills and personal attributes.
These essential skills are not typically taught in college classrooms, but rather developed through mentoring, on-the-job training, and practical experience.
When we asked our customer success team to describe the most accomplished program leaders, these words emerged as the most frequent descriptors:
This is the number one required characteristic of high performers. Makes sense doesn’t it? If someone isn’t that “into it,” how can they do great things? It’s really important to believe in the power of customer advocacy because this is not an easy role. Conviction about and dedication to what you’re doing gets you through the ups and downs while never losing sight of that north star.
Fake it till you make it can have a negative connotation. But, there is something to be said for approaching naysayers and blockers with a healthy dose of confidence. High performers recognize, intuitively or learned, the importance of self-assurance and belief while maintaining integrity and authenticity. On the flip side, if a program manager avoids asserting themself when it comes to making asks of leadership, Sales management or IT, the program will suffer from a different and missing type of advocacy—self-advocacy.
With so many balls to juggle, it’s understandable that sometimes the best laid plans don’t come to fruition. High performers are not only organized but also skilled negotiators and communicators. They remain aligned with top company objectives and find ways to complete the tasks that drive the most significant results, understanding that the details can make all the difference.
Effective program managers are collaborative by nature, working across nearly every function in the organization. They understand the importance of being consultative with stakeholders, listening to their needs, and maintaining strong relationships. By involving key departments like IT, Sales Enablement, and Customer Success early on, they ensure that when support is needed, it’s already in place.
In the ever-evolving world of Customer Marketing & Advocacy, the standout program managers are those who artfully weave professional savvy with personal fervor. They don’t just manage change—they orchestrate it, harnessing technology as their secret weapon and keeping leadership in their corner. What truly propels them, though, is an unshakable commitment, a knack for persuasion, and a collaborative edge that turns every interaction into an opportunity. By honing these rare skills and embracing the intricacies of their role, they transform hurdles into stepping stones and ideas into influential realities. The journey is challenging, but the rewards? Absolutely transformative.
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.
.svg){kind=icon}
