After you've articulated the goals of your Advocacy program, you're ready to start building (or refreshing) your program. These tips will help point you in the right direction for success. Let's go!

Select a Name for Your Program

This is the fun part! What is something that reflects your brand and makes your customers feel special? Ideally it needs to be something catchy that the advocates feel comfortable about self-applying.

Some common names I see regularly are Champions, MVPs, and Ambassadors. Those aren't bad (and in more corporate-y industries these may be ideal) but we encourage you to have fun with this and get creative! Need some ideas? Try asking Claude or use this tool.

Here are a few ones to spur you on that members of the vibrant CMA Weekly community shared:

• LeanData Legends
• Chili Champions (ChiliPiper)
• Talkdesk Titans
• Lab Partners (Labster)
• SplunkTrust
• Club Shine (NiCE)
• Nearpod PioNears
• AlphaSense Accelerate
• Bold Types (Forrester)
• 6sense Luminaries
• The Wing (TriNet)
• Cvent Celebrity

Another popular idea is to get your company involved in selecting the name. You can ask for name suggestions from the company at large, and/or let the company vote on your top 3 choices.

Be sure to ask 3-5 of your most engaged customers which name resonates the most with them and what they would feel most comfortable using.

Create an Intake Form

We are big believers in this part.

It helps formalize the relationship with your Advocates. They clearly understand that they're signing up for something and can make their own selections on how often they want to be involved and the methods in which they participate. It's like the virtual handshake at the start of a working relationship!

Pro Tip: If you are targeting Executives for an exclusive program, they most likely will not fill out a form. You can do a verbal intake with them and simply ask them the questions yourself during a natural conversation and then save that information into Champion or whatever tracking system you're using.

Find Advocates

You should be adding fresh new names to your Advocacy program every quarter. Run a quarterly analysis of who is currently in your program vs the types of asks and personas you need. Use this analysis to understand your gaps and who to actively recruit.

Here are some places to find candidates:

• ‍Product Usage Data: Look for power users who are actively engaged with your product.‍
• NPS: Proactively invite anyone who gave you a 9 or 10 on an NPS survey.‍
• Internal Nominations: Create a checkbox in your CRM on the contact record that any CSM or AM/AE can tick to nominate their customer to join the program. You can automate the invitation process through a tool like Champion or a marketing automation platform, or you can simply look at a report each week and manually invite the newest additions to the list if you just need a quick win.‍
• Run a Spiff: If needed to drive awareness with internal teams. This is especially helpful if you're looking for specific types of Advocates (regions, personas, etc) that may be harder to find.‍
• Social Listening: Ask the social team to be on the lookout for customers saying positive things about your brand.‍
• Third Party Review Sites: Many review sites include a checkbox for the reviewer to raise their hand to be a future reference.

In addition to those ongoing methods, you will want to get ahead of any upcoming changes in your business by proactively recruiting specific Advocates.

Aha Moment: This is how you truly connect your program to the impact of your company's revenue goals and become a superstar!

Geography

For example, if your company is expanding into Europe and you currently only have 3 advocates in the UK, you need to actively recruit more advocates across different countries. This is where product usage data can help you build a targeted list of power users, then you can show that list to the account managers for their final recommendations. Much better than just asking "Hey do you know any great customers in France?"

Industry

Similar concept: are you expanding into a new industry? Consider having senior level Product Marketing Managers start to build relationships with current users in that industry with you "riding along" to get to know them, and turn them into Advocates.

Socialize Internally

Now it's time to go on an internal roadshow and make sure all departments know about your program: its goals, its name, the customers you're targeting and how it aligns with their goals (What's In It For Me). Joining team meetings (the smaller the better) will help people more deeply connect with and remember your program.

This isn't a one-and-done exercise. Plan to meet with teams at least 2x a year to show the impact of the program ($$), update them on your progress, and remind them how they can nominate customers to participate. In the first year of a new program, you should meet with sales teams on a quarterly basis. Tailor your presentation for each group (ex: How many advocates are in their industry or segment? Can you call out any individuals on the team who have seen success with references or have an amazing Champion in their account?) to get the most impact.

Enablement

• ‍One-Pagers and Email Templates: Arm your customer-facing colleagues with one-pagers and email templates they can use to invite customers to your Advocacy program.‍
• A Dedicated Slack/Teams Channel: Set up a channel where people can ask questions about the program. Pin your one-pagers and email templates to the channel for quick access.‍
• CRM Reports and Dashboards: Build reports and dashboards in your CRM that are easily shared when people want to see how many customers are participating. Consider groupings or filters by product, persona, geography, and any other key pieces of data that are helpful to your internal team.

Celebrate, Report, Repeat

Whew! You did it! After all that effort, be sure you're circling back on your original goals that impact your company's bottom line and proactively reporting on your growth and success.

Tip: Keep a presentation up-to-date on a monthly basis so you can readily share the latest impact numbers proactively.

Continue your enablement efforts and your own internal "PR campaign" to keep your program top of mind across your organization by celebrating your wins.

And of course, now it's time to keep your Advocates engaged and active.

Next up: Part 3 — Setting Up Your Activation Form

Your program has a name, you've found your first Advocates, and internal teams are on board. Now it's time to set up the intake form that kicks off every new Advocate relationship — the virtual handshake that makes your program official. Part 3 walks you through everything you need to know to build a form that's efficient, engaging, and set up for long-term success. Read on here.

This post is part of The Customer Marketing Playbook, a four-part series on building a strategic, scalable Advocacy program from the ground up.

About This Series

This playbook series was created by Champion in collaboration with Heather Foeh Consulting. Heather brings 19 years of experience in customer-facing leadership roles across customer marketing, customer success, and community building at companies including Eloqua, Oracle, Workfront, Adobe, and 6sense.

Champion is an AI-powered customer advocacy platform that helps B2B companies identify, activate, and mobilize their most passionate customers. Our mission is to make trust the most powerful engine for business growth — using the voices and relationships of your happiest customers to make business more human.