We’re true believers in the change management model from Prosci. Successful customer marketing and advocacy programs (CMA) all have effective change management at the center of their operations. Often it is the program manager’s innate understanding of what’s required rather than an organization having people formerly trained in the discipline. The Prosci model includes Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement (ADKAR) components, and each one must be addressed to help people move from current to future state smoothly and completely.
This post is all about the Reinforcement component, the actions taken to ensure that change sticks in the long term. Since organizations naturally change, a change manager must be thoughtful, persistent and vigilant to behaviors sliding back to the “old way.” Champions in leadership come and go. CMA stakeholders in sales, marketing, customer success and elsewhere turnover. Each time the personnel change there is the possibility for regression, which can spread through an organization like a virus.
To build up an immunity to regression, the best course is to embed your CMA program into the company’s DNA. That means it becomes a part of existing and new processes, events, and systems with the end goal of becoming entrenched in the collective headspace of the organization. To continue with the biology metaphor, if this new CMA “organism” isn’t recognized by the “body” it has a high likelihood of being rejected, as opposed to a symbiotic relationship that is viewed as mutually beneficial and important to sustain.
Lots of hypotheticals so far. Let’s talk specifics.
This is your opportunity to establish the desired behaviors and prevent regressions starting with day one of new employees. The onboarding agenda should include a session on your program, how advocates can and should be used in various roles (e.g. lead gen), why they should be used, what services your program provides, and any systems that support the CMA function. By exposing new hires early on, you address the Awareness, Desire, Knowledge and Ability components of change-management. One of the most squishy areas to pin down is Desire. A discussion regarding the common reasons people resist changes that come with a CMA program is totally appropriate at this point. Many new hires will have come from organizations not yet enlightened about CMA, so the change in their case is from past experience to your enlightened organization. How do you know if the information conveyed stuck? Test them!
As a CMA leader, you want maximum visibility among your stakeholder teams such as events, PR, social, digital, and content; as well as sales and customer success or account management. Repetition is key. You don’t want to just show up once in a while, or only when you think you have something important to share. You want to become a fixture in meetings and establish a cadence of information sharing and solicitation. Trust in you and your program removes resistance to reliance on you. Getting to know you, how you think, and hearing examples of how you’ve supported campaigns, opportunities and events; this lays the foundation for trust. Being part of team meetings makes you a part of those teams, which is not only the perception, but the reality you want to create. You’re there to help them meet their goals, and therefore the organization’s goals.
If you use technology like Seismic, then you are familiar with playbooks. Playbooks provide guidance to employees creating and managing campaigns, managing various phases of opportunities, planning events, you name it. They contain repeatable steps that have produced successful results. Your program should be represented in the relevant playbooks. That’s another way to stay top-of-mind at the right junctures in a whole variety of processes. Not being in these playbooks sends the message that CMA is not sanctioned (and supported) by the organization. It’s not important.
Just like meetings, company communications provide an avenue for you to be visible. And just like meetings, your visibility should be consistent—ever present. So whether it’s a weekly report, newsletter, Slack, video or any other method that’s used to keep the “troops” informed, be there. Share your advocate expertise, program successes, and added resources or services.
If dashboards are a common way to share information with stakeholder teams, or the entire organization, be sure CMA is represented. It could be the number of opportunities influenced by advocates this month or quarter. It could be a view of your advocate pool for specific, high-demand segments. Leaderboards for campaigns you’re running always encourage participation. Choose whatever is of most interest to your stakeholders, something they’ll pay attention to, and which helps tell your CMA program story.
We’ve written a lot about this topic in previous posts, because it’s so important. If your program is built to support your CxOs’ growth goals it will automatically demonstrate its integration into the organization’s DNA. Back to the biology metaphor, the CMA program becomes an integrated, necessary function in a complex business organism, which would be harmed should it cease to exist.
Establishing a Customer Marketing and Advocacy program in your organization goes way beyond launch. You must maintain a mindset of achieving program integration with the organization. From onboarding new talent to ensuring visibility through meetings and communications and exuding alignment with CxO goals, each fortifies the CMA’s role and ultimately modifies the organizations DNA. This is how the CMA program becomes a vital component in achieving long-term success and builds resilience against regression. Remember, the real victory in change management lies not just in initiating change, but in making it stick. For more resources on building a strong customer reference program, check out our ebook, 7 Priorities for Building a Customer Reference Program.
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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