Welcome to the next episode of The CMA Newsletter where 625 marketers get better at building Customer Marketing programs and strengthening relationships with their customers in less than 5 minutes.
Oh wow this was longer than expected so I will break it out into 2 episodes.
I’ll start with my favorite advocacy program stat:
What this is saying is that within 3 months after joining my advocate program, my advocates on average have a 34% increase in platform spend COMPARED to the 3 months prior to joining the program!
Every manager loves 30-60-90 plans. So thats how I will lay this out. Assuming you have internal buy in, let’s start at Day 1.
30 Days
Goal Setting:
I like to use the SPACES model for when I am setting goals and metrics for advocacy, though I tweak it a bit.
S= Satisfaction - Increase satisfaction, NPS scores, decrease churn
P= Product - Improve Product with feedback and insights from top users ex. CAB
A=Acquisition - Influence deals, Reduce sales cycle time, accelerate deals
C= Contribution - Customer generated content, Peer-to-peer program
E= Engagement - The more engaged the more loyal= more acts of advocacy
S= Success - Drive product adoption, customer expansion, increase spend in platform
It’s important to just focus on one or 2 primary goals when you are first getting started. It’s VERY hard not to just dive in to ALL THE SPACES.
Each objective requires different metrics to determine success which live in many different tools and databases pulling in different teams. This will be a new muscle for data teams to flex as Advocacy strategy and metrics are new to them.
Also, each objective requires organizing different advocacy groups of members. Example- The advocate who is very happy and engaged may not be a good advocate for your CAB.
Take it slow…as slow as you can. 😀
The 22 CMA metrics I track, the spreadsheets, and my attribution model to calculate ROI are included in my course but I will share that I measure in 4 different areas:
- Program Output - This is the number of advocacy acts. Not that sexy but you’ll want to track the # of advocates, # of reviews, # of case studies so you can show YOY growth to get an additional headcount.
- Program Engagement - are the metrics associated with customers engaging in my CMA programs so things like active advocates and retention rate of advocates.
- Revenue Growth - shows the value of a program reflected in dollars. So things like Upsell Revenue from Campaigns or Events.
- Advocate vs Non advocate - is always a powerful metric as it shows that your program is aiding in a higher percentage of something vs other customers not in your program.
Internal Roadshow:
I also like to start with presentations to Customer Success, Product, Sales, and Marketing. Just make sure they are bought in as well and let them know how they can help.
While you are doing your roadshow, check to see who owns NPS. If you do not have a Net Promoter Score platform, you need one. There are cheap options out there.
NPS will do 4 things:
Surface the pulse on customers to the rest of the company
Serve as a pipeline of advocates
Provide guidance for product to make enhancements
Puts you on everyones radar.
All of a sudden you’re the person who is giving the entire company valuable insights on what your customers love and want more of.
*Disclaimer* - Do not get embarrassed if that is not all hugs and kisses, if your customer are pissed and you have a low NPS score, that says more about leadership and the platform than it says about your work.
Next you will ant to gather all the customers who have been doing acts of advocacy such as, past case studies, references, G2 reviewers, ask CSMs to nominate a few folks.
These folks are going to be your inaugural members. I like to start off with the CSM who has the best relationship introduce me to the customer. I will reply to the email by introducing my role and thanking them so much for their partnership over the months.
If you have budget, I’d recommend sending them a gift. At Engagio, I sent custom bobbleheads to those early advocates. Freaky good!
A simple gift will do the trick. Next, ask if you can grab 30 minutes of their time to understand if they would like to continue to be an advocate, how often, what kind of acts, the frequency, make sure you are rewarding them with the things they like.
Also in that conversation, ask them:
- How you can meet them where they are - email, slack, your platform community?
- Would they log in to a portal to execute advocacy acts?
- What challenges are they seeing?
- What motivates them to be an advocate?
Then you will start hearing themes and can build out your pillars of Advocacy. (Leadership loves frickin pillars too) Here are mine:
This is what keeps my busy marketers participating in my program. So long that I am giving them opportunities to promote their brand, connect them with one another, and reward them with the latest & greatest that Sendoso has to offer, they stay happy and willing to help!
Another important question to ask them is what is working well for them? Whatever they say offer to spotlight them in your newsletter. The gift and offering to do something for them is the beeeest way to start off the relationship.
Just as important is to ask them “What challenges are you facing with our platform?” From that question you’ll start to identify the obstacles that you can help your advocates overcome with better education and communication. You can then build that education into your onboarding experience as well as your advocate resource documents.
When you host your first user group you can squash those obstacles and provide even MORE VALUE. These interviews are insanely necessary. The quick and dirty way is to send out a survey and collect the info then send the an eGift. You will build zero relationships that way but could probably launch sooner.
Make sure you create benchmarks so you can see increase in usage from those pilot folks from being in your program.
See Part 2 here!
Love your CMA Soulmate,
Leslie
P.S.- Register for event on November 15th
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