1) The wildly successful program
We’ve had the pleasure to support many of them, and the cascade of successes never gets old.
2) The modestly successful program
– Certainly better for the organization than having no program at all.
– But it’s like that person in your life with massive talent and potential who never quite realizes it.
3) The program that fails to launch
There are, as one might expect, many different reasons that explain each of these customer marketing program variants. From our experience, the wildly successful programs have most, if not all, of the following attributes:
The program leader checks these boxes
The executive champion checks these boxes
The important takeaway is that there are many examples of customer marketing programs that produce noteworthy and tangible results in customer acquisition and retention. They’re kicking butt and taking names! If that is the case—that it’s totally achievable—then why do other programs simply plod along, or worse, wither?
In our case, all customers use the same software, and receive the same level of customer success support. These are common denominators. An outside, impartial observer would have to conclude that neither the software, nor service, is the make-or-break factor.
What successful programs have that others don’t is change management competence. This competence isn’t usually a result of the executives or program manager having completed formal training. It’s that they possess substantial pieces of change management intelligence. How did they acquire that competence? Perhaps through past experience and learnings, or perhaps it comes naturally or intuitively. Either way, it alters the way change is managed, and therefore the trajectory of the program.
Whenever a company reorganizes, changes core processes, adds new positions, implements new technology or otherwise disrupts the status quo, there are a set of activities that have to happen: communications, education, promotion, goal setting, and so on. Why is all this necessary? Because people need help moving from current state to future state. Change is not natural, and often resisted either openly or passively. People are people, accept it.
Yet this simple fact is so frequently overlooked or minimized to the detriment of “the change,” whatever that is. Change is personal, and resistance to change must be addressed at an individual level.
We believe that a lack of emphasis on Change Management is at the heart of unsuccessful customer marketing programs. This is no small gap; it’s like a car without fuel! A small percentage of companies we’ve worked with have someone, or a team dedicated to change management. At some point someone in these companies realized that failed change initiatives nearly always trace back to a change management “blind spot.” They’ve decided it needs to become a core competency for organizational success. Change happens and sticks in these organizations.
So, what can a customer marketing manager do when it comes to change management? First, recognize that this skill will apply many times in your career, regardless of the direction it takes. It is absolutely worth your time to invest in developing change management competence. Any change you are a part of, or in charge of, will benefit from you knowing the principles of change management.
70% of change management initiatives fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support (MkKinsey)
42% of companies said lack of user buy-in contributed to change failure (Forbes)
There are many good change management resources. One of our favorites is Prosci. Their ADKAR model, short for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement, is a great place to start. From our experience, the most commonly overlooked parts are Desire and Reinforcement.
A customer marketing manager must address the Desire among sales, marketing and customer success early and often. Talk to those not adopting, or worse, sabotaging the program’s likelihood of success. Think about these ADKAR reasons to participate in change relative to your own program experience:
Reinforcement goes by another name in our company: everboarding. This term is a way to recognize that while projects have defined start and end dates, change management does not, though it may take different forms over time.
In addition to the myriad online change management resources, you may have one or more people in your organization tasked with change management. Sometimes these people are in sales enablement, HR or elsewhere. You should enlist them in your program’s success, learn from them. However you approach it, we encourage you to commit yourself to becoming proficient in the art and science of change management. The success it brings you will yield professional growth opportunities that will define your career, no matter what stage you’re in today.
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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