Cristina Melluzzi discusses Cisco's customer advocacy program called The Gateway. The Gateway is an online community that allows customers to share stories, demonstrate thought leadership, and earn rewards. Over 1,200 advocates are active in The Gateway and have generated over $400k in pipeline revenue. Melluzzi provides 7 lessons for scaling a customer advocacy program, including being brave, bold, and taking risks to get customers' attention. She also stresses the importance of executive sponsorship, continuous learning, and starting small. The future goals are to expand The Gateway globally and leverage advocates to extend Cisco's marketing and sales reach.

1. Cristina Melluzzi
Head of Customer Advocacy EMEAR, Cisco
Twitter: @cmelluzzi
7 LESSONS IN SCALING A CUSTOMER
ADVOCACY PROGRAM

2. Connecting Your Values to What You Do

3. Imagine if 1 year from now, your
customer advocates generated
more revenue for your business
than the sales organization?

7. Cisco’s Vision of Customer Advocacy
What is it?
• Our customers are our single most
influential asset. When customers talk to
one another about your product and how
much they love it, their advocacy goes a
longer way than any white paper, blog
post, or social media program.
• We need to nurture and engage our
advocates so that we can turn them into
vocal evangelists of our products and
services.
What’s the Cisco Vision?
• Become an advocate-led award-winning
marketing organization
• Build authentic ongoing trusted relationships
with Cisco customers and their peers through
advocate led story-telling.
• Amplify our customer’s company and
individual success resulting in an advocate
first revolution
Did you know that word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchasing
decisions?
- McKinsey

8. What is The Gateway?
• Cisco’s new EMEAR Advocacy Program for Cisco
customers.
• An informal online community where ANY customer
can:
ü Share their stories/experiences with Cisco
ü Demonstrate their thought leadership
ü Learn and network with peers
ü Build their professional network
• Advocates can earn rewards through a series of
fun, educational challenges such as front row
seats at Cisco Live or the opportunity to be a
speaker at our events

10. What are our advocates saying?
“It's a fun way to discover and
promote Cisco services and
products. Also it's nice to see more
and more Cisco customers on here
from all over Europe.”
“A great environment to
communicate with Cisco
users all around the
world!”
“It is not only fun but also a
way to keep you informed
about new Cisco products.”
“A fresh approach to
collaborate, play and
learn.”
“For me it’s a very interesting and new
way to interact with a company and its
products.”
“It gives me a good feeling being part of
The Gateway”

11. How We’re Transforming Customer
Advocacy

12. Del Brenta Video

13. Social Media Content

14. Results
• >14,300 challenges completed
• >1,200 active advocates
• >100 referrals
• 392 testimonials
• 119 net new online reviews
• >$400k in pipeline last QTR
• Average acts of Advocacy: 11.1
• NPS score 72
• User generated stories 75% cheaper
• ’Case studies’ now take on avg. 10 days
• 50% read new ‘Upshot’ content vs. 5% standard case study

15. It’s Been a Tough Year…but

16. Our Top Advocates

17. Lesson 1: Be Brave
• How many times have you had an amazing
idea and wondered how you would get people
on board, to make change happen?
• When you see something needs to change,
don’t wait for someone else to make the
move. Be brave, take risks and get
comfortable with uncomfortable.
• Remember: bravery is not lack of fear, it’s the
ability to move forward in spite of fear.

18. Lesson 2: Be Bold
•How do you get
people on board
with your idea?
•Shock people with
the facts.

19. Lesson 3: Take Risks
•Do something different
to get customers to pay
attention

20. Lesson 4: Get Exec Sponsorship
• Help your execs & internal stakeholders
understand the power of advocacy
• Spend time understanding the different
goals of marketing, sales & engineering
leadership
• Demonstrate how customer advocacy
can help with goals
• Find opportunities to get in front of
senior leadership

21. Lesson 5: Learn Every Day
•Dedicate time to learning
from everyone around you
•Spend time networking
with your peers
•Continue to research and
develop new concepts

22. Lesson 6: Don’t Try and Boil The Ocean
•Start small and scale when
the time is right
•Focus on creating a better
experience for customers

23. Lesson 7: Find Your Own Army of Advocates
• Share your vision at every
opportunity and don’t assume
people ‘get it’
• Partner with people that do ‘get
it’ and see the benefits
• Nurture those internal
‘advocates’ as an extension of
the team
• If you can prove the success, the
budget and resource will come

24. ‘Our Gateway to…campaign research’
Objectives
• Investigate the business pain points that SMBs currently have to
guide a campaign targeting Midsize businesses
How?
• Release ‘The Office 'themed campaign on The Gateway
• Encouraged advocates to share their thoughts with a series of fun
challenges
The outcome?
• Validated and illustrated midsize campaigns five key challenges for
midsize businesses
• Captured images and pen-portrait quotes from advocates
• Content for the midsize campaign will be optimized using the
results
• Great customer quotes that were used for social posts
“The Gateway has given us access to fully approved advocacy. It has
also given us validation of the challenges midsize business face. I
highly recommend using The Gateway to add depth and validity to
your own content projects.”
- Mike Buckley, SME Midsize, UK Marketing.

25. Future Goals
1. Scale program globally & curate
an integrated Cisco strategy
2. Extend event recruitment
strategy
3. Scale user generated content
program
4. Mobilize advocate community to
extend the reach of our
marketing and sales org

26. 3 Key TakeAways
1. Let go of: Control, fear,
conformity & status quo
2. Be prepared to make
mistakes & learn from
them
3. Find great partners and
keep them with you