Internal buy in advocamp workshop

Welcome to

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

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My Success.Your Success.Their Success.

With Deena Zenyk@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

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Why internal buy-in matters

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Five Ways to Internally Elevate your Advocate

Marketing ProgramAnd Your Career

1. More is more

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Your Internal Advocacy Landscape

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An Ecosystem of Engagement

Joe the Area Sales

Manager

Christine the Content Marketing Manager

Annie the Professional Developme

nt Lead

Roger the

Developer

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Alice the Advocate has a compelling customer

success story to share,

wants to guest blog, and is

ready to refer her network.

Andy the Advocate loves to talk tech and offer input

Celeste the C-Level Advocate

wants to build her brand and share her success with

others.

2. Educate. Repeat. Do it Again.

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(Em)Powering your Community

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….

3. Make it easy

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Process is not a dirty wordKey Considerations:

1. Meet your colleagues where they are2. Design a process that is easy to access3. Be highly accountable to your message and your process:• Advocacy can be immediate• Advocacy can be agile• “Advocacy can help you reach your goals”

4. Share Your Success

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Telling the Advocacy Story

News-letters

Town halls

All-hands Off-sites

Intranets

Social

Team meetings

Career fairs

5. Grow Your Career

Exclusive

Workshop

The Internal Workshop in Three Parts

1.Introduction to Advocate Marketing2.Demonstration of your program3.Advocacy in Action: Get your

colleagues involved – on the spot.

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Let’s do this together!1. Get into groups of four2. 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

The Worksheet

Your Advocacy Workshop

“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

8 OUT OF

10IT 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 engagewith 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 creationDon’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 visibilityRecruit advocates for interviews & surveys in a matter of days

Create authentic social media buzzGrow 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 • Provide activity ideas! They can fall under any of these buckets:

• 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 • Provide activity ideas! They can fall under any of these

buckets:• 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

The Clock Starts… NOW!

0000 02Hours Minutes Seconds

09000 02 87654321591 04 98765432103 9876543210987654321021 987654321098765432100Hours Minutes Seconds

Group Share Back1. 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!

@DeenaZenykca.linkedin.com/in/deenazenyk

Questions?

Internal buy in advocamp workshop

Marketing

Transcript of Internal buy in advocamp workshop