The only word missing from the title is “Can”—a small omission, but a crucial one. By now, customer advocacy program managers understand that to stay relevant with their executive team, they must tie their efforts to key corporate objectives. This benefits the company, of course, but don’t overlook the personal side. CMOs are looking to shine in their roles. Your program can help elevate their professional success while they, in turn, can boost the visibility and impact of your initiatives.
For some, that may be hard to do. In some companies, those top goals aren’t explicitly shared. If the program manager is new to the space, it may not be obvious how they contribute to leadership’s goals. Staying busy, that’s easy, especially given most programs run on a shoestring. Ensuring program efforts are clearly in support of company goals, and getting those results in front of executives, not so easy. Keeping your head above water is the primary objective.
That said, what happens when leadership knows that the CMA program is part of achieving their goals is the kind of support that results in more resources, not less. In effect, “The program was able to do X with what we have today. If we had [fill in the blank] we could have [2X, 3X, etc.] the impact.”
What are the key priorities by which CMOs are assessed? How can a customer advocacy program directly support those objectives? Let’s explore the top CMO priorities and how aligning your advocacy efforts can help meet both executive expectations and corporate goals.
Your company has a growth goal that is driven by multiple initiatives. They could be new industries for existing products, or new products for existing industries, or a new sales channel, or new geographies, or any number of activities where leadership sees opportunities.
The CMA leader’s mission is to make sure the advocates needed are in the database and ready to go. Not just the right accounts, but the right contacts in the accounts to match up with buyer personas (e.g., technical exec, business exec, technical architect, business line manager, etc.). And the contacts must be able to provide advocate support where needed (e.g., event speakers, reference calls, site visits, etc.).
Building an advocate database is no small effort. Don’t build one that is misaligned with the needs of the business in terms of growth goals. Maintaining an aligned database is equally important. Stay abreast of changes to those growth goals that may occur in the course of the year. You don’t want to be left in the dust and become irrelevant.
Not all happy customers are brand ambassadors. Be sure you know exactly what your brand should look like, as personified by your customer advocates. Usually those are your unicorns, using a broad swath of your solution, producing above average results, in the targeted growth segments, and able to articulate the value your solution has delivered to them.
Customer advocacy programs have the potential to have the best customer data in the company. Why? In a well-managed program this data is cleaner, more accurate and more current than any CRM data, in general. There are many parts of marketing where impact assessment (i.e., attribution) is difficult, if not impossible. Not so with customer advocacy, if you have the right technology. Just having reliable data for analysis sets your program apart from many, and CMOs prize data-based decision making.
Aligning your customer advocacy program with the CMO’s top priorities is essential for demonstrating value and securing executive support. By focusing on revenue growth and pipeline influence, you ensure that your efforts directly contribute to the company’s strategic goals. Building and maintaining a well-aligned advocate database allows you to leverage customers who not only embody your brand’s value proposition but also act as powerful brand ambassadors. Emphasizing customer-centric growth amplifies the voice of the customer, creating a feedback loop that enhances trust and customer experience. Remember, when leadership recognizes that your program is integral to achieving their objectives, it often leads to increased resources and a greater impact on the company’s success. Contact us today to see how ReferenceEdge can help you align your customer advocacy program with your CMO’s top priorities.
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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