When a customer makes a purchasing decision, recommendations from friends and business partners often outweigh any marketing effort. This is called ‘social proof.’
Companies have long recognized the power of customer reviews and referrals. Real voices championing your brand carry far more weight than ads, which is why so many businesses are investing in customer advocacy programs.
This article will explore customer advocacy, its benefits, and how to launch a successful program. A data-driven approach is crucial for developing effective customer advocates, and understanding the right metrics to focus on is an important first step. Setting clear customer advocacy key performance indicators (KPIs) ensures your program stays on track and helps secure leadership buy-in by demonstrating measurable success.
What is a customer advocacy program?
A customer advocacy program aims to turn satisfied customers into passionate champions of your brand. These advocates promote your business—most importantly through testimonials, referrals, and social proof.
Customer advocacy evolves through stages, from awareness to loyalty and then onto meaningful actions, like referrals. This is the customer lifecycle. By tracking their customer journeys, businesses can uncover the most impactful touchpoints and refine their advocacy strategies to turn customers into active promoters.
Look beyond surface-level data, such as the number of likes and shares, to understand the full impact of your customer advocacy program. Businesses must analyze more deeply to identify active advocates who genuinely influence others rather than just those with the largest audiences. Recognizing and nurturing these brand champions ensures they remain engaged and continue generating value for your company.
What is the advocacy stage of the customer lifecycle?
Moving customers onto the advocacy stage is no small feat. It takes attention and regular engagement to nurture these valuable relationships. Rewards and referral programs are often effective strategies for encouraging advocacy, but they sometimes may not lead to the most authentic and, therefore, valuable forms of advocacy.
Even more impactful is understanding what matters most to your advocates and then giving it to them so they move forward through their lifecycle organically. The best way to understand what matters most is with data.
Signs your organization is ready to build a customer advocacy program
A customer advocacy program works best if it builds on a strong foundation of already-satisfied customers and a ‘customer first’ business culture. If your organization has these solid foundations, it’s time to tap into the loyalty of your best customers and turn them into advocates.
Customer-centric team culture
A thriving customer advocacy program starts with a workforce that prioritizes customer needs at every level. If your company culture encourages collaboration, listens to feedback, and actively works to improve the customer experience, you have the right environment to support advocacy.
A strong onboarding program
Time to value is a critical factor in developing meaningful customer relationships. Suppose your onboarding program has reduced the time it takes for customers to see the value of your product. In that case, you’ve likely built the trust and satisfaction necessary to start fostering advocates.
An established and satisfied customer base
Satisfied customers are the backbone of any advocacy program. If you’re hitting key support metrics, like low ticket resolution times and high satisfaction scores, your customers may be ready to become advocates.
Must-know metrics to launch a customer advocacy program
You are on the right track if you have the right business culture and a satisfied customer base. But launching a successful customer advocacy program requires more than just enthusiasm—it requires data. By focusing on key advocacy metrics, you can identify your most loyal customers, measure the impact of your program, and refine your development strategy.
Here are the most important metrics you should track to guide your program’s launch:
1. Frequency and quality of social media engagement
Social media is a powerful tool for identifying potential customer advocates and nurturing existing ones. Tracking your customers’ interactions on these platforms can provide valuable insights into their engagement and brand promotion.
Social media allows customers to share their experiences with your brand worldwide through posts, mentions, and reviews. Encouraging customers to share their stories through user-generated content campaigns or interactive posts helps amplify your brand’s reach. High-quality mentions carry weight and can significantly influence potential customers.
How to leverage your marketing team
Social listening tools allow your marketing team to monitor conversations about your brand as they occur. They can uncover feedback from new customers you may not know of otherwise. That feedback in turn can help you identify potential advocates.
Your marketing team’s social engagement has several other benefits:
- Gather insights: Your marketing team can analyze social media trends to inform your advocacy strategy and align it with customer needs and preferences.
- Identify opportunities: They can recognize customers who are already promoting your brand or sharing positive experiences.
- Engage and amplify: Your team can respond to mentions, thank customers for their advocacy, and share user-generated content to build stronger relationships.
2. Client referral rate
The client referral rate (CRR) metric shows how often your existing customers recommend your product or service to others, helping to expand your client base organically. It tracks the percentage of new customers who existing clients refer. You can calculate it using this formula:
Client Referral Rate = (New Clients via Referrals / Total New Clients) x 100
For example, if 50 out of 200 new clients were referred, your referral rate would be 25%.
How CS teams can use the client referral rate metric
CRR is an important metric to identify and nurture advocates for several reasons:
- Spot hidden trends: Analyze which types of customers or demographics are most likely to refer to others. This can help you tailor your advocacy efforts to similar audiences.
- Proactively engage advocates: CS teams can contact active referrers, thank them for their loyalty, and gather feedback to understand what drives their recommendations.
- Boost your advocacy opportunities: Highlight referral opportunities during onboarding or post-purchase interactions. Let customers are know the benefits of sharing their experiences.
- Reward top referrers: Use referral programs to incentivize and recognize customers who frequently refer others. Offer discounts, exclusive access, or loyalty rewards to encourage continued advocacy.
3. Time-to-advocacy
Time to advocacy measures how quickly customers move from initial onboarding to advocating for your brand. For example, if a customer completes onboarding in 30 days and makes their first referral in 90 days, their time to advocacy would be 60 days. A shorter time to advocacy indicates a smoother customer journey and quicker value realization.
How can tracking time-to-advocacy improve your customer advocacy program?
By definition, reducing time-to-advocacy accelerates how soon you develop advocates. Here’s how your CS team can reduce it:
- Identify key drivers: Analyze the touchpoints that lead to faster and higher-quality advocacy. Do your best advocates like your onboarding process? Is your support top-notch? What about your training programs? You can then reinforce your key strengths across the customer journey.
- Optimize onboarding: Streamline onboarding processes to help customers quickly understand and gain value from your product. Providing tailored training and proactive support can shorten the time it takes for customers to feel confident and engaged.
- Track engagement milestones: Monitor when customers complete key actions, like completing a training program or providing feedback. Use these moments to encourage advocacy by prompting a review or inviting them to join a referral program.
- Nurture relationships early: Build trust from day one by maintaining open communication, recognizing your new customers’ achievements, and promptly addressing any issues they encounter.
4. Define your own metrics
The metrics mentioned above are the most important ones you can use to measure your progress in developing customer advocates. But they’re not the only ones available to you. Many other customer engagement KPIs can shed light on your advocacy program. Others you choose to use will depend on the nature of your business, your customer base, and the product or service you sell.
These can include:
- Net promoter score (NPS): High NPS respondents (9 or 10 on a scale of 10) are likely to actively recommend your brand. Reach out to your high-NPS customers with personalized messages or exclusive offers to participate in advocacy programs.
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): The most satisfied customers are the ones you’re quickly able to turn into advocates. Build forums and social campaigns that encourage active participation from your advocates.
- Referral activity: Customers who frequently recommend others through referral programs are often your strongest advocates. Consider offering rewards for these referrals.
- Repeat purchases or renewals: Loyal customers continually purchase your products or services. Use insights from your most engaged customers to refine your products and services, showing that their input matters.
Ready to foster success and enhance customer training with your LMS?
Data is the most effective guide for a successful customer advocacy program
Building a successful customer advocacy program starts with understanding the key metrics that will help you define success. These insights guide your program's development and ensure that your efforts align with your strategic business goals.
An effective learning and customer success system like Absorb LMS empowers organizations to create engaging, personalized customer education experiences that inspire advocacy. By providing a rich learning environment, you can equip customers with the knowledge and tools they need to excel in their industry and champion your brand.
