Internal buy in advocamp workshop

Today’s Session: INTERNALLY ELEVATING YOUR
ADVOCATE MARKETING PROGRAM— AND YOUR CAREER

My Success.
Your Success.
Their Success.
With Deena Zenyk
2
@DeenaZenyk
ca.linkedin.com/in/deenazenyk

Backgrounder
• Principal Consultant, Influitive
• Prev. Ed Tech advocate marketer
• Based out of Squamish, BC
• Former journalist & graduate researcher of
social and subcultural capital
• Champion for the power of advocacy
• Really, really afraid of sharks, wasps,
heights
• Really, really excited about rollercoasters,
hiking, biking, camping, reading & writing

Five Ways to Internally
Elevate your Advocate
Marketing Program
And Your Career
5

Your Internal Advocacy Landscape
7

An Ecosystem of Engagement
8
Joe the
Area
Sales
Manager

9
Celeste the C-Level
Advocate wants to
build her brand and
share her success

2. Educate.
Repeat.
Do it Again.

(Em)Powering your Community
11
Workshops or simple one-offs should:
• Educate on function of advocacy in organization
• Demonstrate your program
• Connect advocacy to stakeholder performance goals
• Clearly define your program goals
• Highlight your input process
• Lead to new challenge ideas
• Be a starting point….

Process is not a dirty word
13
Key Considerations:
1. Meet your colleagues where they are
2. Design a process that is easy to access
3. Be highly accountable to your message and your process:
• Advocacy can be immediate
• Advocacy can be agile
• “Advocacy can help you reach your goals”

Telling the Advocacy Story
15
News-
letters
Town halls
All-hands Off-sites
Intranets
Social
Team
meetings
Career
fairs

The Internal Workshop in Three Parts
1.Introduction to Advocate Marketing
2.Demonstration of your program
3.Advocacy in Action: Get your colleagues
involved – on the spot.

Let’s do this together!
1. Get into groups of four
2. Assign one of the following personas to each group member:
• Sam or Sally the Sales Team Member
• Mark or Madelyn the Marketing Team Member
• Carl or Catherine the Customer Success Team Member
• Paul or Penelope the Product Team Member
20

“ B2B purchasing decisions
increasingly trace complex journeys,
challenging the long-standing practices
of many sales organizations.

92%
OF BUYERS TRUST
RECOMMENDATIONS
FROM FAMILY AND FRIENDS
MORE THAN ANY OTHER TYPES
OF MARKETING
(Nielsen Research)

B2B BUYING
HABITS HAVE
FOLLOWED THE
SAME TREND AS
CONSUMERS
84%
OF B2B
DECISION
MAKERS
START OF THE
BUYING PROCESS
WITH A REFERRAL
8OUT OF 10
IT DECISION
MAKERS
RELY ON W.O.M
WHEN MAKING
BUYING
DECISIONS
75%
OF B2B
BUYING PROCESS
IS COMPLETE
BEFORE BUYERS
COME IN
CONTACT WITH
SALES
59%
OF B2B BUYERS
ENGAGE WITH
PEERS WHO
SHARE THEIR
CHALLENGES

How can our advocates help?
Referrals Product reviews
Content
distribution
References
Social
promotion
Media
interviews Surveys
Analyst
briefings
LET’S PROACTIVELY DRIVE ADVOCATES TO CONTRIBUTE TO A VARIETY
OF STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES:
Case Studies

Who else is doing advocate
marketing?

About
[Your Advocacy Community]

• Describe the specific goals and purpose of your own advocacy
community, including:
• What’s in it for the advocates
• What company-wide, departmental and personal strategic objectives
does your program tie into – Demonstrating this will help you get buy-in
from your audience
• Program results
• If you have already been live for a while, share some initial wins from
the program (qualitative and quantitative)
[Insert name of your community]

• Describe the practical ways in which your co-workers can get
involved
• Is there a shared doc where they can record their challenge ideas?
• Explain the cadence of activity you are targeting to publish to
advocates (recommended 3 challenges/week) and give an overview
of any coming themes/contests you are working on
• Give examples of other use cases to inspire your audience, e.g.
Event advocacy, user groups, other initiatives going on in the
company..
How can our advocates help YOU?

How does our
Advocate Community
Work?
Introducing AdvocateHub

What is AdvocateHub?
An invitation-only online community where our
customers can engage
with us and each other, and get recognized for their
active support of our company.
Why?
To consolidate the tasks we are striving to get our
advocates to complete, onto a
single and engaging platform.

How does it work?
1 2 3
Advocates get to choose among
different activities
based on their interests…
.. They earn points,
badges, & move up the
Leaderboard as they
complete activities..
.. And can redeem their
points for great rewards,
like discounts, event passes,
gift cards – Whatever we
think will motivate
our advocates

What are advocate activities?
Advocate activities can be created around
any of our strategic objectives:
• Lead Gen
⟼ Drive referrals & online reviews
• Content Development
⟼ Case Studies, Testimonials
• Social Promotion
⟼ Sharing of content, discussions
• Pipeline
⟼ Reference activities
• Product Dev
⟼ Surveys

• Deeper engagement – Through the program, we’ll be directly
connected with our customers and have a pulse on their
happiness
• Consistency – Rather than reaching out when we need
something, we’ll have ongoing open communications with
advocates, making critical asks easier when they are timely
• Speed – With the help of advocates, we can source content,
identify references, get feedback , etc. in a matter of hours
• Goals – With the help of advocates, you can exceed your goals
Why should advocacy matter to you?

Faster, smoother sales cycles – Peer recommendations can speed
up sales cycles by 5x, and 60%+ of your prospects are influenced by
reading online reviews
Connect your prospect with a reference, FAST – Customers
who are members of an advocacy community can pick up reference call
requests in less than an hour
Differentiation - Having an exclusive community where customers can
network & learn sets us apart from our competition
How do you benefit as a sales pro?

• Help identify advocates – Nominate them in Salesforce!
• Promote the program in your talks with customers and prospects – they’ll be
more inclined to join when someone they know recommends it
• Provide activity ideas! They can fall under any of these buckets:
• Educational – Read a blog post/interesting industry article, download a
whitepaper.
• Ask – Submit a referral, write an online review, be a reference
• Fun – Share your favorite quote, check out a video, solve a riddle..
How can you help?

Accelerate & diversify content
creation
Don’t run after case study volunteers
to replace stale stories; proactively
identify star customers willing to share
their success. Give advocates early
bird access to your content and evolve
it based on what really speaks to
your audience
Boost your PR & Analyst visibility
Recruit advocates for interviews &
surveys in a matter of days
Create authentic social media
buzz
Grow your presence not with self-
promotion but with advocate-
initiated discussions
Drive Demand Gen
Boost the # of inquiries through
authentic customer stories, webinars,
blog posts, etc. advocate-generated
content
How do you benefit as a marketer?

• Provide interesting content to share with advocates –
Advocates will not only benefit in terms of learning, but can amplify our
message by sharing the content on social
• Share your marketing programs calendar – Being in the loop
with marketing themes will allow us to reflect them in the hub, making
participation more engaging & fun for advocates
• Educational – Read & share a case study, participate in an online discussion..
• Ask – Submit a testimonial, volunteer for a case study, guest blog, RSVP to an event..
• Fun – Participate in a points raffle, get perked with swag, do a fun survey/trivia
challenge..
How can you help?

A direct, engaging channel to communicate with your
customers Clients that know you better and get valuable content/tips
directly from you will stick around
Drive user adoption & retention
By gamifying the process, becoming a better customer is more engaging
and rewarding
Your customers’ success is your success
As we build the program further, your new/lower health customers can get
inspired by the best ones, creating an organic support network & lower touch
required from you
How do you benefit as a Customer
Success Pro?

• Give your customers a personal, fun way to engage with you –
Stay up to date on the advocacy your customers are doing, encourage them
to participate, and thank them for it
• Identify key customers to invite – Star customers can be engaged
and educated further, struggling ones can be nurtured
• Educational – Learn about a new exciting use case for your product, Share a tip..
• Ask – Get advocates to suggest training topics, get feedback on your webinars..
• Fun – 2 truths & a lie about yourself, ask about your customers’ vacation plans..
How can you help?

Get real, insightful feedback on the products you build,
fast
Advocates give great feedback on the product and have a wealth of ideas
for improvements, can can be surveyed on roadmap decisions, etc.
Source beta testers
Advocates are usually active users of the product, and therefore ideal
candidates for beta testing/driving adoption of new key features
How do you benefit as a member of the
Product Team?

• Help generate valuable content for advocates – Customers love
product tips & exclusive previews of new features
• Provide challenge ideas! They can fall under any of these buckets:
• Educational – Check out release notes, test advocates on their product knowledge..
• Ask – Complete a product feedback survey, provide insight on roadmap, vote on
features..
• Fun – Read a bio of an employee, share a photo of your work station..
How can you help?

Small Group Activity
Roleplaying!• In your groups, work together to complete your worksheets.
• What is your SMART goal (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic
and timely)?
• How can advocates help you achieve this goal? Write down every idea
that comes to mind.
• Find common themes in your group’s ideas. For example, do many of
the ideas include receiving feedback from advocates? If so, “feedback”
is one of your group themes.
• When you are done, your team should have four worksheets,
one for each persona.
• Work together together to develop ideas!

Lightening-Quick Case
Study
[Business name] is a world leader in [solution] that [solves
what?].
Our advocates are [role] mainly in [industry] who [what makes
them advocates?].
Complete this section as a team!

Sample Goals
• To increase productX sales in Michigan by 25% by Q3/FY17
• To increase blog traffic by 40% during December product
launch
• To decrease churn by 15% by end of FY17
• To decrease support tickets on topicX by 20% in Q2
• To increase field marketing activity attendance by 25% in Q3
• To grow referencable customer base by 30% by end of FY17

09000 02 87654321591 04 98765432103 9876543210987654321021 987654321098765432100Hours Minutes Seconds

Group Share Back
1. What is your team’s case study?
2. What creative ways did you find to connect your internal
stakeholder personas’ goals to advocacy?
3. What themes did you see in your group?
4. If you were running this workshop, what is one thing you
would do differently?

Thank You!
@DeenaZenyk
ca.linkedin.com/in/deenazenyk
Questions?

Internal buy in advocamp workshop

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