Featuring special guest:
Dave Hansen, Global Customer Advocacy Program Manager, Siemens
In this episode of The CustomerX Files, we tackle a challenge that’s becoming more common — yet remains surprisingly under-addressed — in customer marketing: the divide between customer advocacy and customer community. These two functions often operate in separate silos, but they’re more powerful together. When aligned, they can amplify engagement, deepen relationships, and prove measurable business value. In our no-fluff conversation, host Alison is joined by Dave Hansen, Global Customer Advocacy Program Manager at Siemens, to unpack how to end this turf war — and why doing so could dramatically accelerate your program’s influence.
Dave and Alison begin by exploring how organizations often treat advocacy and community as distinct, disconnected engines. On the one hand, advocacy programs are built to identify and activate your most enthusiastic customers — champions who can act as references, provide testimonials, or participate in case studies. On the other hand, community teams focus on online engagement, discussion forums, peer learning, and product feedback. While both are critical, they frequently lack communication, shared goals, or intentional overlap.
This separation creates friction and inefficiency. Programs miss out on advocates who can strengthen the community, just as communities lack structured paths to escalate their most engaged participants into advocacy roles. The result? Missed opportunities, wasted resources, and a fractured experience for your customer base.
Dave offers a clear, practical framework for bridging the gap — one rooted in collaboration, shared ownership, and intentional strategy. Here are some of the key tactics discussed:
Rather than forcing advocacy and community to “get along,” approach them as complementary parts of a unified customer engagement engine. Develop shared goals around customer influence, retention, and satisfaction.
Use community signals as a way to surface potential advocates. Look for highly engaged community members, subject-matter contributors, or peer helpers. These individuals already show up and contribute — which often makes them ideal advocate candidates.
Design workflows and measurement frameworks that span both functions. Use advocacy metrics (like reference usage or content contribution) alongside community KPIs (such as active users, posts, and peer interactions). Then tie both sets of data back to business outcomes — whether sales, renewal, or customer satisfaction.
Advocacy and community teams should not just talk — they should plan together. Create cross-functional working groups, joint roadmaps, and recurring alignment rituals. Building shared ownership helps ensure both sides are working toward mutual value, not competing priorities.
This episode doesn’t just cover theory — it’s a call to action. Dave and Alison emphasize that if your customer marketing strategy is in “maintenance mode,” you’re missing a chance to shift into momentum. By terminating the turf war, you can transform stagnant or siloed programs into coordinated, high-impact movements that generate ROI, deepen customer loyalty, and amplify your most powerful voices.
The payoff is real: smarter connections, a pipeline of advocates emerging from your most engaged community members, and a unified measurement model that proves the value of both functions.
Who Should Listen
This conversation is tailored for anyone working at the intersection of community and customer advocacy — especially:
If you believe your advocacy and community efforts could be more than parallel tracks — if you want them to drive shared impact — this is a must-listen episode.
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