Empathy is a term tossed around a lot in Marketing, largely in relationship to understanding the wants and needs of buyers and developing useful personas. Customer Marketers are in a unique role because they have both internal and external customers. There should be alignment when it comes to all things customer advocacy, but often there isn’t. This post is going to focus on internal stakeholders, the reason you exist.
At the center of any advocacy program are prequalified accounts and contacts. Knowing these advocates at a granular level is the only way to be sure a) you have the right ones in your database for your stakeholders, and b) those stakeholders can search for and find these advocates for their purposes (whether the need is for an event speaker, a video, a live sales reference, a beta site, press release, whatever).
There’s only one way to really understand your internal customers. Walk a mile in their shoes. Maybe literally, maybe not, it depends on what’s necessary to get the insight you require to do your job well. Here are a few essential questions that need to be answered:
What goals are they being measured on?
Regardless of the use case, it’s important to spend your limited time on identifying and recruiting the advocates that will make these colleagues successful.
Understanding Marketing’s needs
If you meet with your colleagues in Social Media or PR, review their initiatives and consider your current advocate database. Will you have what they need in 2-3 months? Are there projects they’ve mentioned that could really sizzle with the inclusion of an advocate’s success story in some form, one not initially part of the project plan? How impressive would it be to realize they were being listened to and have a team member to partner with on reaching the same end goals?
Understanding Sales’ needs
To achieve the same level of understanding when it comes to Sales, you must understand the Sales process through and through. What’s a typical sales cycle, and why? What are the buying signals? How far along in the sales cycle before references become important? What is the role and level of the typical buyer? If there’s a buying team, who’s on it? Where can the process get hung-up? What would ease the buyer’s mind and give them confidence in their decision? Answers to these questions translate to the profiles of the advocates in your database, but also the deliverables from customer marketing that are useful at different stages of the journey (videos, quotes, reviews, case studies). There’s so much to be gained from joining sales calls or sales trips (for the in-person selling that still occurs). These experiences will provide the guidance and confidence you need to get laser-focused on where you spend your time.
The magical thing about empathy is that it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Co-workers who may not have given the customer marketing program a thought before now understand what you do, and they also have a better understanding of why you need their help when you come asking. And they’ll get that you’re in it together.
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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