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How to Turn
Customers Into
Advocates for Your
Business
August 11 2021
Contributor: Sierra Rogers

Launch your own advocacy program by engaging loyal Share this:

customers and using advocacy-infused content to
attract new business.

A successful customer advocacy program turns loyal customers into spokespeople for your
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brand. However despite these programs affordability and effectiveness they re often a missing
component of marketing strategies.
Digital Markets
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At their core customer advocacy programs are a marketing strategy. Advocacy programs
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encourage your most satis ied customers to proactively recommend your company and its
services to other potential customers. 
This strategy can be highly effective when you consider that more than 75% of B2B buyers
consult three or more sources of advocacy before they make a purchase decision (full
research available to Gartner clients only). Subscribe

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What is a customer advocacy program?

There are many different strategies you can use within your customer advocacy program to
harness the voice and experience of your customers but all of them include creating content
that appeals to potential buyers.

The graphic above lists seven common types of customer advocacy. We ll touch on each of
these strategies in greater detail below:

Social sharing. Customers act as advocates through sharing content from your
website or social media on their own platforms.
Customer quotes. Customers may share their experience with your product or service
through a reference statement or testimonial. This statement can be shared on social
media your website or pitch decks.
Customer references. Also called case studies references are similar to quotes in that
they share a customer success story but in more detail. A collection of case studies
can be used by your sales team to complement a pitch deck.
Reviews. Reviews are customer feedback on a speci ic product or service you offer.
They may include details about your business s customer service experience and can
be promoted online.
Referrals. A referral is when a customer advocate recommends your product or
service to a peer directly.
Speaking engagements. If your organization hosts events like conferences or
webinars inviting customers to speak can be a powerful form of advocacy. It s also an
opportunity for brand promotion for your customer.
Customer advisory boards. Customer advisory boards are made up of 10 to 15 senior
executives from customer organizations. Customer advisors provide valuable insight
that helps shape the future of your business s priorities and strategy.

These methods give your team several ways to power your marketing strategy with the voices of
your loyal customers.

Amplifying any of these activities at scale typically requires an advocacy marketing solution. And
while you don t need to deploy all of them you should aim to create a mix of advocacy-driven
content that reaches potential customers in both online and o line channels.

Recruit and incentivize customers to participate in your advocacy

efforts
Without willing participants there can be no customer advocacy program so recruiting
potential advocates should be a top priority for your marketing department.

One strategy for identifying possible participants is to create an ideal advocate pro ile that can
be used as a benchmark for future customer advocates. You can build this pro ile by evaluating
needs within your customer life cycle and analyzing customer details like demographics
transaction history and net promoter scores (NPS).

Once you understand the type of customers you want to recruit the next step is to invite them
to participate. Before you do that be prepared to articulate what s in it for them. This is where
incentives come in handy — in exchange for your customers time and effort you can offer them
perks such as preferential service levels for support issues opportunities to speak at event or
advanced access to (and in luence over) product development roadmaps.

You should also highlight the promotional value of becoming an advocate to your customers.
For instance when your customer s success story is shared on behalf of your product or service
they ll also bene it from the publicity and recognition of their own accomplishments within their
market category.

Next? Set goals and launch your customer advocacy campaign.

In order to measure the success of your customer advocacy efforts you ll need to set some
goals. Examples of goals for your program include recruiting a certain number of new advocates
or an advocate for each marketing campaign you want to deploy or to capture a certain number
of new customers directly from referrals.

Once you ve recruited advocates and set goals for your program you re ready to put your
customer advocacy program into motion. Assign a point person or group who can spearhead
customer advocacy efforts and focus on building and nurturing a balanced group of customer
advocates.

When your advocacy program has been live for six months or longer check in with its progress
toward the goals you set by analyzing outcome metrics such as revenue in luenced win rate
sales cycle compression NPS and customer advocates in luence rating. Customer advocacy
tools can help you prepare and interpret reports with these metrics as well as suggest areas to
focus on improving.

Curious to learn more about B2B marketing trends? Check out the Gartner Software
Industry Report for the latest trends with businesses and buyers.

Sierra Rogers

Sierra Rogers is a Senior Content Writer for Gartner where she researches and shares insights
for the human resources and eLearning industries. Sierra is a Texas native who earned her
bachelor s degree in management information systems from Baylor University. Connect with
Sierra on LinkedIn.

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