Key Steps to Plan and Evaluate an Advocacy Strategy

Advocacy is an emerging concept for many businesses and is just beginning to be integrated into broader marketing strategies. Before implementing your approach, it’s crucial to first develop a clear plan that includes transparency, measurable goals, and buy-in from key stakeholders to ensure success. Hi, I’m Kristin Blye, a customer marketing expert who has leveraged acts of advocacy to organically earn the G2 Leader badge and a Trustpilot Excellent score. Here are the key steps for planning a successful advocacy strategy.

1. Define Advocacy for Your Business

Start by clearly defining what "advocacy" means within the context of your organization, as well as what it doesn’t mean. Document this definition to ensure alignment across teams. Next, outline why advocacy benefits each stakeholder.

Example: At ACME Product, advocacy occurs when a customer voluntarily shares a positive story like a testimonial, third-party review, or case study, that we can use for marketing to drive awareness and growth and track within our CRM. Advocacy is important to Customer Success because it enhances the lifetime value of existing customers.

2. Identify Business Growth Goals

Understand how advocacy will contribute to your business objectives. Identify the specific growth targets you aim to influence like increasing customer retention, generating MQLs, or driving revenue growth. Marketing is both qualitative and quantitative, but to demonstrate your value, focus on measurable goals in your CRM to track marketing attribution.

Tip: Content marketing is powerful and can support business growth, but it can also be difficult to track. Advocate for an integrated DAM (Digital Asset Management) or CMS (Content Management System). Before assuming these tools are too expensive, conduct a cost analysis. They’re often worth the investment.

3. Narrow Your Focus

Advocacy takes many forms. Focus on the types of advocacy you can directly impact as a marketer, with the techstack available to you. Take into consideration your bandwidth, team size, advocacy platform limitations, integrations, and budget. Acts of advocacy should be measurable and directly support your business goals.

4. Justify Resources

Track key metrics to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) for your advocacy efforts. Develop KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure the impact and demonstrate the program’s value to stakeholders.

Tip: Align your KPIs with your stakeholders' goals to foster collaboration and accountability across teams. Create a dashboard and regularly share progress through a dedicated Slack channel or in team meetings.

Two Non-Negotiable Steps I Really Wish I Knew Before I Stood Up My First Advocacy Program

5. Get Executive Buy-In

Secure support from senior leadership by presenting a compelling business case that highlights how advocacy aligns with the company's objectives. Include compelling industry statistics (84% of buyers trust recommendations from their peers over all types of advertising), budgets (your initial cost), forecasts (your projected growth), and leverage your internal cross-team stakeholders who are equally excited about the prospect of advocacy. Executive backing is crucial for building momentum and securing resources. Quite honestly, this is going to be a lot more work without it.

6. Integrate Advocacy into Company Culture

While Customer Marketing usually owns advocacy, it shouldn’t be a siloed initiative. Embed it into your company’s culture so employees, customers, and partners feel motivated to participate. Key elements include visibility into your program’s progress, collaborative KPIs, and enthusiasm from the C-suite. Create a compelling narrative about why customer advocacy needs to be part of your business plan. Incentivize your teams to actively source acts of advocacy by establishing a recognition program. Spotlight outstanding examples of advocacy in a CEO newsletter or during a town hall. Highlight your customer advocates on social media to encourage a customer-centric organization. There's no 'I' in 'advocacy'.

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Let’s Work Together! Kristin Blye is a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a mom of two little girls, and a Customer Marketing Leader, responsible for launching global advocacy communities, leveraging the voice of the customer to position companies as thought leaders within their industries, and developing customer-centric content, campaigns, and events that empower trust and drive engagement.