Customer Advocacy as a Brand Differentiator
As someone passionate about customer advocacy, I am convinced that a customer advocacy program is one of the most effective ways to start building meaningful relationships with your customers and empower authentic word of mouth. Amplifying your Happy Customer’s voice through a mix of media
How Customer Advocacy Aligns Sales and Marketing
The Sales Department needs a reference to speak with a prospect. Demand Generation needs a customer success story for a specific campaign. Product Marketing needs a customer to speak with an analyst for a product review. These are just a few examples of the
The Customer Experience Triumvirate
What do customer success, customer advocacy, and account-based marketing have in common? The answer is the Customer. And together they form the foundation of the Customer Experience. Research from SiriusDecisions shows that 80% of buying decisions are based on customer experience. To better cater
Peer-to-Peer Selling: Everyone is Social, Including Your Customers
Any experience a customer has with a brand can be shared online with a potential audience of millions, most of whom are looking for feedback from their peers. The value in social media isn’t just marketing’s ability to publish content and share it with
Measuring Your Customer Advocacy Program
The moment of truth has arrived. You are ready to evaluate the ROI of your customer advocacy program. What metrics have you identified as your barometer for success? If you use any one of the many reference management software tools available, you may benefit
Technology for Your Customer Advocacy Program and Why You Need It
Your customer advocacy program can benefit from technology to provide you a single view of communication with a customer and equally important, provide you a single view of communication between your sales and marketing teams internally. Many of today’s reference management software solutions can
How to Move from Tactical to Strategic: 5 Essentials Every Successful Customer Advocacy Program Needs
Most customer advocacy programs have grown out of a need to supply a reference to a prospect for a sales opportunity. If you wait until the prospect asks for a reference, then you are working in what’s called an ‘on-demand’ and reactive state of
How To Leverage Your Customer Advocacy Program Throughout the Sales Cycle
Your customer advocacy program is a powerful tool in strengthening your brand and shortening the sales cycle. Here is how your program can impact the various sales milestones: Pre-Qualification by B2B Buyer According to Forrester, “today’s business buyers are increasingly self-directed: 60% prefer not
Advocate Marketing Drives Brand Awareness
Advocate Marketing is a powerful strategy available to B2B marketers. It is a form of marketing that emphasizes engaging existing customers in your business and theirs. These customers talk about, tweet about, and may even blog about your company and its products and services.
The Customer Reference and the Customer Advocate
The customer reference and the customer advocate walk into a cafe. They begin speaking while ordering a coffee and find a commonality – they both use your product(s). They continue their conversation, talking about the benefits and perhaps drawbacks of the solution, but most
Branding and Customer Advocacy in Harmony
How often have you heard someone in your marketing or sales organization say, ‘the competition has lots of impressive logos on their company site, why don’t we?’ My answer to that question is you can! The most effective way to have more impressive logos
The Art of Organizing Happy Customers and Attracting More
In 2016, only 10% of B2B IT vendors had established customer advocacy programs, despite it being named one of the top 5 most essential competencies for marketing success, according to IDC. IDC’s 2017 Loyalty Marketing & Advocacy Marketing Barometer study found that 67% of