Customer Advocacy is one of the most powerful (and underutilized) assets a company can have. Whether you're building a program from scratch, refreshing one that's lost momentum, or looking to level up what you already have, this playbook will guide you through the foundation of what a Customer Advocacy Program truly is.

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So, What Is an Advocacy Program?

If you're reading this, you already have some idea of what an Advocacy program is. But in practice, Advocacy often gets reduced to something tactical or reactive. We've all been there with a last-minute reference request, tracking down a quote for the latest product launch, or scrambling to find a speaker for your company conference next month.

An Advocacy program is a high impact, deliberate, and repeatable way to turn customer trust into a measurable business advantage.

When done well, an Advocacy program supports the outcomes your executives and board already care about:

• ‍Revenue & Growth: Enabling sales with credible references, proof points, and customer stories that shorten sales cycles and increase win rates.‍
• Retention & Expansion: Deepening relationships with customers, reinforcing value throughout the lifecycle, and customer to customer references to increase retention rates and expansion numbers.‍
• Marketing & Brand: Leveraging authentic customer voices that build credibility and trust for more successful campaigns, product launches and events.‍
• Product Strategy: Creating feedback loops with engaged customers who want to help shape what comes next.

It's Not Just Good for Business — It's Good for Advocates Too

Additionally, an Advocacy program should create a positive, impactful and delightful experience for the participants as well.

• ‍Visibility & Recognition: Positioning Advocates as credible thought leaders by giving them speaking, writing or networking opportunities.‍
• Early Access & Influence: Being 'in-the-know' is often very motivating for many Advocates, and allows them additional credibility in their own companies.‍
• Community & Belonging: Not only do Advocates feel more affinity for your brand, but when done correctly, an Advocacy program also creates a network of interconnected peers who can rely on each other.

When building an Advocacy program you will want to bring structure to how Advocates are identified, engaged and supported. This also helps diversify your pool of participants so you aren't going back to the same few people over and over. Today, as customers see more automated messages and AI content than ever, real customer voices are what create confidence and credibility.

Once you're clear on what your Advocacy program is meant to do, the next step is defining how it ties to the goals your business already cares about and metrics teams are already measured against.

Articulate Your Goals

You'll set yourself and your program up for success if you align the goals of your Advocacy program to existing business goals at your organization. (This applies to every part of a Customer Marketing program as well, but we're focusing on Advocacy here.)

You probably have many things that you want to measure with your program, but you need at least 1-2 that can be articulated with a clear number that aligns to a goal that resonates with your executives. Common examples include:

• ‍Influenced Revenue: Through reference calls, third party reviews, speaking engagements at industry events that drive new leads, case studies used in the purchase process, etc.‍
• Revenue Generation: Through referrals and through testimonials about specific products to fuel cross-sell campaigns.‍
• Retention Rate: Measure retention rate changes for your Advocate accounts over time (before being an Advocate and after), as well as the retention rate comparison of Advocates versus non-Advocates.‍
• Improved Customer Experience: Especially important for your best customers who may have traditionally been overused; measure the NPS or CSAT score changes for your Advocates as well as the score comparison of Advocates versus non-Advocates.

Pro Tip: Use comparison of sales metrics with and without pipeline to show the value of using references in every deal.

Other Things Worth Measuring

Other things you may want to measure to help you measure the impact of your efforts, even if they aren't company-level goals:

• ‍Time Savings: Helping the sales team close deals faster, quicker ability to fulfill requests for case studies and speakers, democratizing access to Advocates so you're not a bottleneck (and can actually take a vacation!), etc.‍
• Efficiency: Similar to time savings above, but measuring the reduction of manual work and one-off requests, reducing the number of hours or effort per outcome.‍
• Advocate Growth: Quarter over quarter increase in number of opted-in members.‍
• Advocate Participation: Measure this as a raw number of acts of advocacy and also as a percentage (what percent of your total number of Advocates performed at least 1 act of advocacy in a quarter, a year, etc.)

It may be a challenge, but if you're able to create baselines for any of the above measurements, do it! That will help you articulate the impact of your Advocacy program even more clearly as you progress.

Once you've completed all of your goal planning, now it's time to actually launch your program.

Next up: Part 2 — Launching an Advocacy Program

You've got the foundation in place — now it's time to build. From picking the perfect program name to finding your first Advocates and getting internal buy-in, Part 2 gives you a step-by-step roadmap for launching with confidence. 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.