What is Customer Advocacy?

Every so often, whether talking to a colleague, a customer, a friend or someone else in an enterprise marketing role, I get asked the question — what exactly is “Customer Advocacy?” Is it “customer marketing?” “Customer experience?” “Customer success.”

Or, as the “Bob’s” would have asked, if I found myself sitting in front of them…

“What would you say, you do here?”

The truth is, it’s an incredibly fair question. And, I don’t think anyone involved in the discipline* has an easy answer.

*(not my favorite word, but it seemed to apply there).

But that’s the fun of it all.

Customer communities. User-generated content. Customer references. Customer success and experience (marketing). Customer enablement. All of these are words that could easily be used to quickly define the backbone of advocacy. But, let’s take a step back first.

Every few years, a movement or transition sweeps through enterprise marketing organizations, particularly B2B technology companies that offer cloud-based solutions on a subscription basis. In SaaS, sales, services and customer interactions happen quickly and dynamically, and marketing organizations are continually tasked with keeping pace to meet potential decision makers in new and exciting ways, with new and exciting offers.

Enter customer advocacy. No matter what you call it, whether it is termed “customer voice,” the term of choice by customer industry veteran Jeff Ernst, “advocate marketing,” as coined by the popular vendor in the community and reference space, Influitive, or simply “customer marketing,” which is currently being espoused by Hank Barnes and Forrester….the fact is that advocacy is a transitional movement that is beginning to make waves in sales and marketing organizations and environments.

Unlike these aforementioned means of B2B marketing, customer advocacy is built on a different kind of approach. The traditional vehicles — demand generation marketing, event marketing, product marketing, digital marketing, etc., are still critical building blocks to any marketing team’s infrastructure and toolkit. These “offer”-based approaches gear campaigns, content, announcements, events and thought leadership in a fashion that anticipates where customers, influencers, investors and other stakeholders may be, or might be interested in.

Customer advocacy is about meeting the folks directly where they are. They are, as it turns out, right in front of you.

To me, customer advocacy is about meeting your customers where they are and saying, “how can we help?”

“What else can our organization do to ensure you are successful?”

“How can we empower your program and the use of our technology to be truly great?”

“How can we help your own personal brand, and that of your teams?”

That’s the beauty of customer advocacy. It’s about creating a two-way dialogue that enables marketing professionals (and teams) to accelerate conversations, events and activities that help customers execute better — whether that is with your technology, or not. It is also about following customers on this journey to support their vision, appreciate their efforts and gain their loyalty.

And then, and only then, it’s about activating their advocacy for your brand, and beginning the “storytelling” component that results in the real fruits of the labor. Videos, creative Q&A’s, PR, and so much more. Advocate marketing. Reference building. Fun for all involved (including the customer).

But the truth is, this is just one man’s opinion. Engagement, appreciation and activation may seem like clear elements of customer advocacy to some, but not to others.

So, the purpose of this blog will be to explore those different opinions, approaches and styles. Let’s see what other elements customer marketing and advocacy professionals are implementing? What do your communities and user forums look like? How do you keep track of your engagements, references and advocacy efforts?

In my next post, I’ll highlight some of the activities that I have seen to be more successful, and then we’ll reach to other (more experienced) advocacy professionals to compare and contrast.