Customer advocacy has undergone a significant transformation over the past decade, evolving from an informal, relationship-driven activity into a strategic business function that directly impacts growth, credibility, and customer trust. In this video, Carlos Gonzales, a respected voice in customer marketing and advocacy, shares his perspective on how advocacy has changed, why it matters more than ever, and what organizations must do to build modern, scalable advocacy programs.
Historically, customer advocacy was often limited to reactive reference requests or ad hoc case studies managed by sales or marketing teams. While these efforts provided value, they were rarely measurable, repeatable, or sustainable. As buying behaviors changed—especially in B2B environments—so did the role of customer advocacy. Today’s buyers rely heavily on peer validation, real customer stories, and authentic proof points throughout the entire buyer’s journey. As Carlos explains, advocacy has become a critical trust signal that influences purchasing decisions long before a prospect ever speaks to sales.
Carlos highlights how successful advocacy programs now sit at the intersection of customer success, marketing, and sales. Rather than treating advocates as transactional assets, leading organizations focus on building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with their customers. Advocacy is no longer about “asking for favors,” but about recognizing customer achievements, amplifying their voices, and creating opportunities for them to lead, share, and connect with their peers.
The video also explores the growing importance of the voice of the customer (VoC) in shaping advocacy strategies. Carlos emphasizes that modern advocacy programs must be rooted in genuine customer feedback, outcomes, and experiences. By aligning advocacy initiatives with real customer value and measurable outcomes, organizations can create content and engagement opportunities that resonate more deeply with prospects and internal teams alike.
Another key theme discussed is scalability. As advocacy programs mature, manual processes and spreadsheets quickly become limiting. Carlos touches on the need for structure, governance, and technology to support advocate recruitment, engagement, and measurement—while also preventing advocate burnout. Scalable advocacy enables organizations to deliver the right customer story at the right time, without overusing their most engaged customers.
Finally, Carlos looks ahead to the future of customer advocacy, where personalization, automation, and data-driven insights will play an even greater role. As customer expectations rise, advocacy programs must continue to evolve—becoming more strategic, more customer-centric, and more aligned with overall business objectives.
This video is a must-watch for:
Whether you’re building a new program or refining an existing one, this video offers practical insights to help you create a stronger, more impactful advocacy strategy.
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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