How do you measure the impact of customer advocacy on your business goals?

We measure customer advocacy impact through: 1. Assessing customer loyalty through Net Promoter Score (NPS) 2. Tracking positive customer reviews & feedbacks 3. Analyzing repeat business & Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) 4. Monitoring referrals generated through referral programs 5. Evaluating interactions and brand mentions in Social media

The impact of customer advocacy extends beyond mere promotion; it plays a pivotal role in building trust, credibility, and awareness within your target audience. By tapping into the authentic voices of satisfied customers, you not only generate organic feedback but also establish a genuine connection that resonates with potential customers. In embracing customer advocacy, businesses can cultivate a community of loyal advocates, fostering sustainable growth through the positive influence of genuine recommendations and shared experiences.

Common types of advocacy: - Social Sharing: Advocates promote your content (blogs, articles) or brand on social media. - Testimonials: Customer quotes or case studies used in marketing or sales. - Reviews: Positive online reviews left by advocates on relevant platforms. - Referrals & References: New leads from referrals or reference calls during sales. - Speaking Engagements: Advocates represent your brand at conferences, webinars, or events. - Customer Advisory Boards: Strategic insights provided by advocates on the future of your strategy or offering.

Customer advocacy can have so many variations depending on the company and the maturity of the practice. But in essence it is identifying, nurturing and growing a base of customers who are in love with your product, service and vendor experience. Now, not all customers will be 100% fans all the time and knowing where their advocacy will make the most impact is a crucial role of a customer advocacy leader. After all, 75% of all B2B purchases, expansions and growth opps happen because of some form of social reference.

Customer advocacy is the act of customers promoting your business to others. It is a powerful tool that can help you to achieve your business goals, such as increasing sales, improving customer satisfaction, and building brand awareness. Is important for a number of reasons. First, it can help you to attract new customers. When current customers promote your business to others, it can create a positive perception of your brand. This can lead to new customers who are more likely to do business with you. Second, customer advocacy can help you to retain existing customers. When customers feel like they are part of a community, they are more likely to stay loyal to your business.

Customer advocacy is essential for your business. It helps you acquire new customers more cost-effectively through referrals and recommendations. Additionally, it boosts customer retention and upselling by fostering loyalty and satisfaction. Moreover, advocates provide valuable insights, contributing to product or service improvements. Beyond these immediate benefits, customer advocacy builds trust, authenticity, and a positive brand reputation, creating a community around your business for long-term success.

To add to this... Advocacy impacts both your brand and demand generation. Brand: When a leading brand is an advocate for you, its strong brand association help your brand visibility. For demand generation: - Client referrals are far more likely to convert than any other lead source. - All prospects expect/demand to see testimonials during the buyer journey. - Early adopter stories drive new adoption of new product features.

To encourage customer advocacy, start with getting to know what is important and what is not to your customers. Ask simple and relevant questions that will yield actionable results and get the feedback directly from them and at scale. Listen very carefully and ask open ended questions to gather deep and meaningful insights. Look for themes. The goal is to clearly understand your customers' needs and pain points and device solutions that make them successful and drive outcomes for them, not just your business. Bring the voice of the customer back into your organization and align with stakeholders to create and implement continuous improvement actions. Relentlessly drive them to closure as if your business depends on it, because it does.

To encourage customer advocacy, focus on providing excellent experiences, value, and personalized recognition. Make it easy for advocates to share their stories. Ask for feedback after key interactions and showcase positive reviews. Feature customer success stories on your website, blog, or webinars, and involve advocates in co-creating them. Create a customer community for interaction and support. Invite advocates to participate in product development and recognize their contributions. Keep communication open, offer surprises, and actively share positive experiences on social media for wider impact.

There are so many ways to encourage advocacy, but it's not always about extrinsic benefits like swag, a dinner or such. Knowing what your customers like about your product and why they are part of your program is key. One of the pivotal roles a customer advocacy leader plays is to know what motivates their customer and matching their goals with those of your program. Example, I look at the personal and career goals of each customer and see how I could benefit them by participating in my program. This makes my initial scale up time slow but once we've managed expectations, my advocates work with me for the success of my company.

Deeto is a great platform for this. You can connect Deeto to your CRM and calculate the ROI of reference calls, referrals and even content that is shared with prospects.

I think what is missing here from measurement is the measurement from the clients perspective. An advocacy program is jointly created success, and as such client outcomes should be focused on. 'What's in it for me to be an advocate?' - You may be able to identify how participating in advocacy has improved the advocates professional network or career (e.g. growth in LinkedIn connections, or advocacy content being used in a successful internal business case). - You may be able measure increased CSAT/adoption/retention from your advocates compared to the average client.

What is missing here is a mention of the importance of qualitative feedback and testimonials in addition to quantitative metrics. While metrics like CLV, CSAT, NPS, CAR, and Customer Advocacy Revenue provide quantitative insights, capturing and analyzing qualitative feedback from advocates adds depth to your understanding. This includes testimonials, success stories, and direct feedback on how advocacy efforts impact individual customers. Integrating both quantitative and qualitative data ensures a more comprehensive evaluation of the true impact of customer advocacy on your business goals.

To improve your advocacy program you need to set-up sustainable processes that can be improved on. Here are four steps to focus on: 1. How you identify and connect with advocates. (e.g. automate identification of new advocates from NPS surveys) 2. How you align advocates with opportunities. (e.g. how you align advocates with campaigns or events) 3. How you mobilize advocates. (e.g. make advocacy a frictionless process with clear benefits for the advocate who participates). 4. How you reward and measure advocacy. (e.g. what unique experiences and rewards you offer advocates meaningfully). (e.g. how you mature your measurement with business outcomes (theirs and yours).

Customer advocacy done right is an extremely powerful too when it transforms into a community which willingly exchange with each other on the company's products and services, thus obviously advocating for the company but also taking in charge part of the support role. I had a client who has completed this challenge extremely well through a knowledge base platform where its most loyal clients were answering questions from leads or new clients. They were rewarded to some extent but only as a thank you and not as an incentive.

Who is responsible for customer advocacy in your company? Is it a person, a team? Every company I've worked at, I spend the 1st 6 months working with the sales, marketing and customer success org to align on common goals and structure OKRs to follow through. Advocacy is a company's mission to success and making sure you are always nurturing your advocates is a team effort.