Every company that decides to take customer marketing more seriously, thereby harnessing its full potential, will have the reference shadow market to contend with as part of the change management process. Allowing this to continue will absolutely zap your customer reference program of its necessary momentum. It seems counterintuitive that people wouldn’t be happy to give up a process that’s never been great, producing uneven results at best. And yet, sadly, it’s all too common. Let’s dive into the particulars.
Even if you’ve built a stellar customer reference program and implemented awesome reference management software, shadow marketers are going to keep shadow marketing. It’s that simple, and here’s why.
This is an 80/20 proposition. Eighty percent of the effort must be top down. The executives heading stakeholder departments, including sales, marketing, and revenue operations in particular, must communicate a) why the change is necessary for the organization, b) the upside to getting onboard, and c) the downside of non-compliance.
Why
– Prevent advocate fatigue, avoid embarrassment (simultaneous requests to the same advocate from PR, sales, events, etc.)
Upside
Salespeople respond to cash, competition, and recognition. If your program doesn’t have at least one of these factors as incentives for salespeople, then you’re pushing a rock uphill. Accumulating user reward points for “playing” is one approach (i.e., ReferenceEdge User Rewards), but so are leader boards and shout-outs at sales or all-hands meetings. Don’t assume you know what will motivate your salespeople, ask. It’s one of the many benefits of having a program advisory board. An alternative is to survey your stakeholders. Bottomline, don’t waste first impressions of the program; dial in your rewards approach as early as possible. It’s never too late, but it will take more effort if you’re further into the program’s life.
Downside
There are consequences for not hitting a sales quota. This is not a new concept. The reference program should be no different, but the quotas themselves will be: X quality nominations per month/quarter, X% of deals leveraging customer advocates, response rate related to program maintenance requests (e.g., updating reference account information when requested), etc. If these quotas aren’t met, perhaps certain incentives are held back, or performance ratings take a hit. At the very least, they appear at the bottom of the leaderboard and get zero recognition from management. Be creative, don’t underestimate social pressure.
What’s the 20%? That’s you promoting the program by sharing best practices, program success stories, keeping leaderboard standings and incentives front and center, offering reference training, leading sessions at onboarding, attending team meetings, and otherwise staying on stakeholders’ radars, thus personifying partnership.
Trust comes from setting expectations and living up to those expectations. Realizing that the thing you’re being entrusted with translates to a person’s livelihood and job security, it’s not to be taken lightly. Any salesperson will be skeptical of a new program proposing to do such magic. Solid communications are essential. Again, rely on your program advisory board to validate your messaging, clear up any ambiguities, and hit the key points. Establish your processes, then live up to the promise—consistently. It doesn’t matter if you travel as part of your role. It doesn’t matter if you take vacations. Salespeople don’t care. The service promised, the processes, must go on. Plan for it. It is very difficult to regain trust once a seller has been burned.
We’ve written a lot about these aspects of a program. At the end of all of your efforts, if a stakeholder can’t find what they need your program is of no use to them. Back to Slack or Teams. This problem may be one of two things: 1) you don’t have the right references in the database, and/or 2) users can’t search/filter the way they need to. You need both of these “pistons” to be firing. Imagine a shopping experience. The store, digital or analog, might look terrific and have a lot of merchandise, but if the merchandise is of no interest or the store is so badly laid out that you can’t find anything that may be of interest, you leave.
If any or all of these recommendations seem impossible, know that they are fully attainable. Many companies have dynamic programs with engaged stakeholders and phenomenal results to show for it. There are many factors such as culture, relationships with leadership and stakeholders, supportive training and sales operations teams, and competent execution capabilities overall. If that last sentence doesn’t make the point clear enough: customer reference management is a team sport. A customer marketer cannot do this alone, and shouldn’t try or set expectations that they can. Just the opposite. Follow our prescription and watch your program thr.
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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