Episode 2: Building a strategic customer advocacy program from scratch

Host 0:02
Welcome to The Advocast, where we discuss all things customer advocacy. Discover the latest trends, best practices, and tangible advice as we talk to some of the brightest and sharpest professionals in the industry. Learn how to turn your customers into advocates to drive sales leads and make a positive impact on revenue.

Host 0:27
My first question, that our listeners wanted to know, is: how did you get started in customer advocacy?

Barbara Thomas 0:35
Oh wow, that goes back several years. Actually, in the year 2000 I went to a company called TruSecure — it's now owned by Verizon — and we created what was called a strategic reference customer at the time, kind of an influencer, but we had a special arrangement that we set up. Leon was his name, and Leon would do reference calls for us. He would do interviews, bylines, different articles, talk to the media for us, do webinars for us and more. So that was my very first introduction to having a customer advocate.

Host 1:33
Okay, can you repeat the year?

Barbara Thomas 1:36
2000.

Host 1:37
2000. Wow. So that's amazing. 2000 — it's been over 20 years, actually. So 22 years. Yeah, stop it. And of course, I don't mean anything by that, other than that you are one of the well-known people. Of course, you wrote a book. You're a well-known author of a book called Advocate Marketing. So, for our listeners, if you don't know that book, you can check it out on Amazon. And one of the things that I would like to know, BT, is what inspired you to write that book back then, when no one was talking about this topic.

Barbara Thomas 2:15
Well, first of all, thanks for the plug. I greatly appreciate it. Gosh, what I would say is it started back with one of my mentors. He was a CMO for me many years ago. We got together for lunch, and I was telling him about the different projects I worked on, how I was able to create a customer award program from scratch, and how successful it was, and just sharing that information with him.

Well, it was back in 2005. I was working for ESS — it's now acquired by IHS Markit. I created this successful award program to build our content at that company. My CMO said, "Hey, we need more press releases. How can we get customers to do more press releases with us?" And we needed more content, we needed more customer success stories. So I said, "What would make somebody want to share their story and do press releases with us?" And I turned it around: let's not make it about us, let's make it about them. Let's offer them an award for their company, for the individual, for the team working with us, and for how they're successful. And it worked.

That little award program created hundreds of customer success stories, thousands of quotes, all kinds of metrics of success. It got us in the door very closely with a couple of different analyst groups that were covering the space. My former CEO told me that in 2009, when they were setting the company up for acquisition, IHS Markit was looking at, well, what's the NPS score? What's the renewal rate? And do they have anything to really back up that their customers are engaged and the renewal rate is not something that they just quickly created? By looking at the award program and the content we were able to produce and the strategy behind it, that was one of the top three tipping points that got the company acquired. So I'm told, and I believe it.

When you have your customers engaged and actively doing advocacy activities for you, that gives an acquiring company a high level of confidence in what you're reporting in your data, so that they have assurance that it will be maintained moving forward, if you keep the same strategies moving forward.

Host 6:17
Of course. So what you just said is amazing. What I hear is that when you have the actual customers talking about how happy they are, you are cutting out the marketing promise and going directly to the real thing — the customers, and how they felt about your marketing promises, what was designed, let's say, at a small table. And the second thing that resonates is that it can be very strategic. It's not a side program, low value, as unfortunately we've seen. It can be very strategic, to the point that on the merger and acquisition side, it's influencing positively.

Barbara Thomas 7:04
Exactly, exactly. No one would even think about how customer advocacy plays a role in merger and acquisition teams, or in investor relations teams, or the behind-the-door teams, the back office teams. Actually, customer advocacy does play a very huge role. As a matter of fact, one of the more popular back-office teams that really loves customer advocacy is HR, because they're able to talk about how they have personal relationships with these organizations to attract really valuable employees. Competition is out there to get the best employees, and when you can drop names, and when you can show a relationship between them and others who they might know that they didn't know was part of the organization, it's important.

Host 8:23
It definitely is. So amazing. Always learning so much with you, BT. I think this whole market, the whole industry, has learned a lot with you in the past and keeps learning. That's so good. So that leads me to the next question, and I will get back to this HR and mergers and acquisitions and the departments that customer advocacy can touch — that's a very good question that I want to ask you in a few minutes.

But since, BT, you structured part of the knowledge on the planet for this area, this industry — that's so exciting. And last time we spoke, you said that you felt like some terminology, some concepts, are being used in the wrong way. We have so many areas that people are starting to call customer advocacy. Sometimes it's reference, but we see evidence programs that are producing stories, and they perceive themselves as a full, successful customer advocacy program. So with this question, I'd like to explore with you: what are those misconceptions, and how would you segment this big area of customer advocacy? You can even go higher if you want to give us an overview on how you see it.

Barbara Thomas 9:45
Well, thank you for all the accolades you are putting on me. I appreciate that. I know what you're talking about. It's one of my pet peeves when someone mentions a certain term, and in the industry it really has a very specific definition.

Let me just give you a couple of examples. Customer experience: everyone likes to talk about it, and there seem to be a few definitions floating around. But in my experience, in my book, customer experience is everything the customer experiences with your organization that drives how they feel. Customer experience is a feeling, and it's everybody within your organization. It's not just one department doing customer experience.

Customer marketing: any marketing activity directed at existing customers or at prospects, specifically driven to drive retention, customer loyalty, advocacy, growth, and community participation. Customer marketing can include both customers as well as prospects — your leads. So that is somewhat of a universal definition out there. You'll see it on the internet.

Customer success: this is a specific team's methods for ensuring certain customers — not all your customers, but certain strategic customers who have a customer success manager — reach their desired outcome, their goals, when using your organization's products or services. That's customer success.

Host 12:26
That's about realizing the value, right? They purchase a product or an implementation with a promise, and customer success makes sure

Barbara Thomas 12:35
you're delivering on the promise. Exactly.

Host 12:38
Okay.

Barbara Thomas 12:39
Customer advocacy: this is the positive actions a very satisfied customer is willing to do for you regarding the products and services of your organization. These are advocates who are providing third-party validation that you are delivering on your promise, as mentioned in your marketing about your products and your services. They're helping to build that trust.

Host 13:20
Okay.

Barbara Thomas 13:21
Advocate marketing. If you have customer marketing, where you're marketing to prospects, customers, your leads and everything — advocate marketing is marketing to your advocates. And who are your advocates? Those who have scored high, nines and tens, on NPS. Those who are highly engaged with you. This is a subset of your customer marketing folks.

So those are my definitions, and I get out there and have conversations with people, and I see it blurred all the time. Customer marketing and advocate marketing are used interchangeably. No — customer marketing is bigger. It is much, much bigger. Advocate marketing is a smaller group, and it's very specific activities. So anyway, I just wanted to put some clarity out there, or at least start the conversation for clarity, so that there is less confusion.

Host 14:45
That's good, that's good. I think we need that, and that will probably help the industry, again, to use the correct words. So, inside advocate marketing — that's the main thing that our listeners want to hear about. So I have that question that I said I was going to ask. I would like to hear from you: what are the departments and areas of an organization that a comprehensive customer advocacy program — to be called comprehensive — should touch on? Let's say in terms of outcomes, or being a stakeholder that gets some value out of it, but also being an active player of a program. What do you think about this?

Barbara Thomas 15:33
Well, the first one that comes to mind is always sales. And the second one that comes to mind is marketing. But you also have services that will be involved, and it all depends upon what you're talking about as far as functions of a customer advocacy program. Are these the people who are providing nominations? Are these the people who are leveraging the service because they need content, they need input for product development, functionality, roadmap — whatever their needs are?

So when you broaden the scope, you have services and training. Customer professional services might need a reference to talk about how they went through change management within their organization — just one example. Training: well, maybe you have an advocate out there who likes to educate others. They have that teacher mentality, and they want to help train. So you develop a training program for inside their organization, or you grow it even more, where you have these advocates who will be trainers at your event, your annual user event, who will do hands-on demos along with your tech support people.

Then you've got customer support. Immediately, when I think of customer support, I think of a community, and having an advocate who will help answer the newbies' questions on a community, and voluntarily share their expertise, to be that validator, to be that teacher, to help someone, to mentor them. I love that, and that's where my mind goes when I think of support.

Marketing, of course — I think of content, and advocates doing quotes, doing stories, doing references, doing all of that activity, being speakers at events. Product marketing: I think of alpha and beta testers. I think of CABs, customer advisory boards. I think of people who want to help influence the product roadmap and do analyst surveys, things of that sort.

Product management and engineering: here again, I think of someone who will share change management process plans that they had, product roadmap, someone who would share their integration experience so that engineers have a heads-up on what they need to look for.

HR, business ops, and finance: well, I gave a couple of examples already, with investor relations, with helping to attract better, higher-level employees. And also, with having all this content, all of this great press, it can bump up your financials. If you're a publicly traded company, it can actually be good press when you're winning awards and when you're getting out there speaking positively. That can actually help your stock scores and the dollars.

And then there are the executives. Executives, whenever they're speaking, they like to drop names, and you want to make sure that that client doesn't mind that their name is being dropped and that their success metrics are being discussed publicly. So you want to make sure you have those name-drop and logo-use consents, and that they're open and happy for you to share their experience and their success. As a CEO, you can use it on your quarterly call, or if you're doing a presentation.

Host 20:46
That's amazing. So what I hear is that it can touch almost all departments. I heard sales, marketing, HR, investor relations, engineering, services — really, it's an interdisciplinary kind of area. So what I hear is that from scratch, when you're talking about customer advocacy programs or practices, you need to think broadly, cross-department, throughout the organization. Have that in mind, have friends in all departments — I guess that's very important.

And I also heard you talking about CABs, about quotes, about speakers for events. You mentioned different kinds of advocates: the professional who's using the product, but also the executives. You mentioned being ready to have logos, so you can use them, because you'll need them — you'll need name drops publicly. So many components. I'd like to help the audience map all this a little bit. Do we need all of these to start a program, or how do you recommend that a program should start? Is there a small subset of all these that we could use? And also, what should they pursue in terms of goals with this, let's say, small program, at least to start, and then someday get to that comprehensive one?

Barbara Thomas 22:40
Yeah, there are certain steps that I go through in a certain order when creating a program. But first I wanted to comment on the departments and functions. One important department and function that I forgot to mention is the security, compliance, and legal team that you have internally. Because customer advocacy gets the consent document. Sales gets consent from a contract with your customer, but customer advocacy also gets consent from the customers. And every single time I've ever created a program, those consents are absolutely valued by the security, compliance, and risk managers of an organization. The legal team loves it, because that reduces the risk that a company has when you're sharing your customers' information out there.

All right, so let me get back to your question: what would be the infrastructure for creating a program from scratch? Well, the first thing I do is get executive sponsorship. If you don't have that — and don't just get one, don't just get your CMO. Get the CEO, get the customer success officer, get the sales chief revenue officer. Get as many C-level sponsorships as you can, so that they understand the value of all those different departments I just explained about. You want them on your side. So that's the first thing I do, and I ask them for engagement, I ask them for sponsorship, and I ask them to support two or three or four key things that need to be done. And one of them is always data cleanup support — that's always on my list.

After you have executive sponsorship — and I'm surprised that anyone would say no to you — the next thing is to get a governance council created. Because you don't want to set policies or processes or workflows without everyone's input and knowledge that you're doing this. This is a new program. You're going to be invading their turf. You're going to be affecting their current processes and workflows. Get input, get their buy-in, create that RACI, so that everyone is on board and supporting you.

Then I do something called a perceived value advocacy and branding exercise. It's like doing an annual budget. I identify all the activities I'm going to be doing in the program. I get a matrix created, where I get a high-dollar, highly recognized, highly valued organization, and a very small organization value for doing that activity. I know that sounds a little confusing. For example, if I'm lining up a speaker for an event or for a webinar — let's do a webinar. Lining up a speaker for a webinar, I would say I need someone in the banking industry, because we're going to talk about some financial issues. I line up a speaker from Bank of America, and it's a chief executive, maybe the CIO or the CISO.

Host 27:32
Okay.

Barbara Thomas 27:33
What is the value of a Bank of America CISO speaking on a webinar, and what is the value of the branch manager at the Sandy Springs, Virginia location?

Host 27:56
Okay.

Barbara Thomas 27:57
There are two different values. There are two different brand values. There are two different followings. There are two different types of influencers. So you come up with what you believe is the value brand — the perceived value model is something out there, you can Google it. You leverage that. You say, okay, what is the perceived value of this person doing a webinar, and what is the perceived value of this person? You have to cover your ROI, your expenses. You have to look at what their brand is, and you come up with that, and you ask several different people the same question. You ask from various departments and from various areas of the world, of the region. If you're developing something global, you have to get every possible perspective, and that's called the perceived value.

Now, a lot of people just do it. What this provides you with is the dollar amount of the engagement. Why is it important to have a dollar amount? Because when you start talking about the success of your program, and you're talking clicks, and you're talking open rates, the eyes of the chief sales officer or revenue officer kind of roll back in their head, and it's like, I don't know what that means in regards to the value. You have to translate it into their language, which is dollars. And so that's why I created the perceived value model for advocacy engagement.

A lot of people use points. You can judge that someone is engaged at this level by using these points.

Host 30:17
Yeah.

Barbara Thomas 30:18
That's fine. That's the engagement that they have. But what is the branding value of that company, of that customer, of the activity? All of that is created in that little exercise. Sorry, I went off on a tangent, didn't mean to.

Host 30:41
No, but that's very interesting.

Barbara Thomas 30:42
I have a blog out there that goes into detail. Actually, it's a three-part blog. Okay. After you do that exercise, then you need to review the technology out there. You have to go through the evaluation: what is it that you want to do? What are the capabilities you want to have? And you go through your selection process. Then you have to go through branding and developing material, and getting your messaging for the program all pulled together, and getting that budget approved. Then you have the implementation of the technology: what is the functionality? What is it integrating with? Do you have it with one tool, or with multiple tools? All of that is considered, and you're talking to your governance council about this as well.

And then you have to go through training everybody about the program. You have to start recruiting: who are going to be your advocates? How are you identifying who are advocates? And you've got to get that recruitment done so that you can start doing fulfillment, so that you can start doing reporting and doing trending. So it begins — once you start, it becomes a waterfall process, and I think these are the proper steps that you need to take in creating a program from scratch.

Host 32:29
That's amazing. So, about this perceived value — I think that's for a whole episode, so I don't want to get too deep into it, but I just want to make sure the audience is following what you're saying. If I'm following, what you're saying is that you have built a framework that we can work with, a kind of exercise, to translate a few things that are not directly revenue, like a pipeline that you touch, into something that the other executives can chew on, that they can touch, that they can hold — which is revenue, and also brand value. The kind of value that these activities with these special advocates you have will bring to the brand. And then translate that throughout the whole company, how it will touch even HR, as you said. That's an amazing concept, and I would love to see that, hopefully, in the future.

Barbara Thomas 33:32
Yeah, it all came about from a sales manager asking me, well, what's the total customer lifetime value of this customer? All right, well, let's go look at all the invoices that they paid. And I was like, well, wait a second, they've also supported us as a reference on all of these opportunities. Plus, they've been a speaker. Plus, they've been — it was one thing after the other. And so that's when we created that exercise and said, all right, they may have spent $22 million with us, but the perceived value of the branding and the engagement that they did for us, the influence dollars that they helped us close as wins — that was $9 million. So they're really worth $31 million to us as an overall customer.

Host 34:34
So far, right? We want them to keep producing.

Barbara Thomas 34:37
At this point in time. And it's always a point-in-time exercise.

Host 34:41
Yeah. And also, I guess it could be an endless game, because it's like a pyramid — that advocate probably recruited other advocates as well, who purchased your product thanks to their testimonial, and they will also become advocates. So there's a share of value from that new customer that belongs to this upper customer, the first customer advocate. So that can get difficult. But of course, our listeners and the professionals in this area, they need tools, and I'm so glad that you created a tool for that. Is that something already public, or not yet?

Barbara Thomas 35:22
Well, I did a blog out there on LinkedIn. It's a three-parter, explaining the methodology behind it and the process of doing it. So they can check the different blogs I do.

Another thing we discovered in doing that exercise is that the accounts where you have depth and breadth of advocates are so much stronger. The renewal rate — you're almost guaranteed. Because if you have one advocate in an account, and that advocate goes... you know, churn has been crazy over the past two years. If they go to another company, you just lost that account. You don't have another advocate in that account. So it's so important to have three to five advocates in one account, and then you have depth and breadth and the security of having that account as an advocate moving forward.

Now, an account is not an advocate, but the use of their brand, the use of that logo, having them as speakers, having the people within that organization engaged with you — that strengthens the likelihood of renewal each and every time. So the more advocates you have in an account, the more confidence you have in that renewal, and you can get more referrals from more advocates within that account. Anyway — no, that's going down many, many paths here.

Host 37:29
I think today's episode is all about this. You have two main topics, and we are still on those two main topics: talking about how comprehensive customer advocacy is and all the departments the program could touch, and the kind of outcome that we can expect. And you are expanding this horizon for us so much — I'm very thankful for that.

And what I'm thinking, what you just said that resonates with me as well, is that every time you have a renewal or a new deal, you have a buying group. You have buying roles, all with different roles: let's say you have someone who will influence, someone who will test, someone who will have the budget. And try to imagine if you have 50% of that table as your advocates. I think that's one of the reasons you want that depth and breadth in each account, in the companies you are covering. That way, it's almost guaranteed.

That's another topic, also maybe for future episodes, but it's a concept that I personally call a quasi-advocate: identifying when that great advocate who was working at one company just moves to another one, which is now in your territory. That company hasn't purchased yet, but you have an advocate there. Identifying that and bringing that person to the table, so they can play one of these buying roles, will also increase your chances. And I think that's one of the things a customer advocacy program should give — this intelligence — and also make your quasi-advocate turn into an advocate again at this new company. But again, I think this is a topic for other episodes as well.

So, what you just said, BT — I just want to make sure I captured a few of the areas you mentioned. For our audience that wants to start a program, or maybe they've started already, or they just joined a company that has a program and they have no idea what to do with it — and we hear this story, it's something that happens every day. You talked about budgeting, so that's one of the main things you'd be doing from the beginning. You need to understand what the budget is. You talked about making new friends, making sure that you have not one sponsor but enough — at least enough to accomplish the goals that you have for this program — and also building, with those new friends, a council. The moment you have that, you can maybe even expand those goals, because you're touching other departments, and it's nice if they also have expectations, and you can integrate that into your program. At the same time, you get them to work for you, towards the success of the program.

You also mentioned training. That's a very important piece. Of course, building the processes: how are we going to approach? Is it allowed to talk directly with advocates or not? Is it going to be through the executive? Lots of decisions beforehand will lead to a battery of trainings — how we will recruit and how we use that voice of the customer, that advocate. So that's the training part.

You also mentioned, of course, the perceived value, and lots of things related to ROI — how to measure ROI. You should always have that in mind, right in front of you, and clear, and be creative with it. Don't think only about pipeline; look beyond that. Let's say you're supporting analyst relations — maybe that day or that week that a report was published, you get a social share, and everyone's talking about your company because you're well positioned. You can be creative and use that kind of index.

Host 41:36
That has a lot of value for the company, for the brand. And think not only of value in dollar amount, but also value for the brand, and try to translate that into dollars if possible. And you mentioned reporting — all of this will lead to reporting, because a program without reporting, I'm not sure you can even call it a program. And everything that you built around ROI, you cannot even see it if you don't have good reporting that's also following the growth of your program. Did I miss something important, or is that more or less it?

Barbara Thomas 42:14
I think the technology evaluation. You're doing that with a couple of key members, and then you have your selection, and you have your implementation, and how it's implemented — that becomes a project as well.

Host 42:37
Excellent. So I think we are coming to the end of this episode, and it's been amazing to have you here, Barbara. I can call you BT, right? That's not a problem?

Barbara Thomas 42:49
Everyone calls me — yeah, in this industry I go by BT, my initials.

Host 42:55
BT, yeah. So I have one last question, a fun question that we ask our guests. Actually, you are the first guest that we have on this show, and that's one of the reasons this episode is so special for us.

Barbara Thomas 43:13
Such an honor. Thank you.

Host 43:15
No, the honor is ours. And the question is: if you were to make a T-shirt with an advocate marketing message on it, what would it be?

Barbara Thomas 43:29
Oh my God, let me think here. "Real customer advocates do it with strangers." Or, "Real customer advocates do it for free." Something like that.

Host 43:52
Okay, okay. No explanation, unless you want to, of course. Let's invite the listeners to think about this and what you just said.

Barbara Thomas 44:05
Or, teacher-style, something that would say: "If it involves fake smiling, it's not really customer advocacy."

Host 44:21
Love it, I completely agree. So it has to be authentic, right?

Barbara Thomas 44:26
Exactly.

Host 44:28
Otherwise, it's going to be — how do you put it in your book? There are, of course, other areas of advocacy that are not necessarily customer advocacy. It's going to be anything else other than customer advocacy, right, if it's not authentic, if it's not voluntary. A testimonial that's not authentic is not customer advocacy.

Barbara Thomas 44:26
Exactly.

Host 44:28
All right, Barbara Thomas. Thank you very much for being with us today. We will make sure that your blog URLs are shown here for everyone, from the beginning, and here again at the end, along with your contact. So if people want to contact you, they should go to

Barbara Thomas 45:06
LinkedIn. I am there. Follow me, connect with me. I think I accept just about every single connection I get. That's the best way to reach me.

Host 45:22
Excellent. Okay, BT, thank you very much again. See you next episode.

Barbara Thomas 45:26
Thank you, Pablo. Take care.

Host 45:28
Bye bye. Thank you.

Host 45:31
This episode was brought to you by Wings4U, helping global B2B tech brands unleash the power of their customers' voice. Wings4U customer stories and advocacy programs help you deepen customer relationships, increase retention, and close more deals faster.