The executive sponsor

Building positive word of mouth advocacy is a strategic imperative, not a "nice to have" marketing tactic. Therefore, your advocate marketing program needs an executive sponsor.

While ownership of the customer experience can vary from organization to organization based on a number of factors, the advocate program is in the CMO's domain. And unlike other community efforts which have audience building (social communities) or cost reduction and adoption (user communities) as their goal, advocate marketing is aimed squarely at top-line revenue growth through demand generation and pipeline acceleration efforts.

The executive sponsor of the advocate marketing program needs to be an executive who can articulate the "voice of the advocate." The sponsor needs to collaborate with other executives from the sales, support and professional services organizations to ensure your entire company becomes advocate-centric.

The Advocate Marketing Manager

The Advocate Marketing Manager should be part of the marketing organization and have experience managing campaigns. They will own the entire program from initial design and build-out to on-going management.

Key responsibilities include:

• Program design - Manage the program design and planning process, setting the first goals and strategy to guide the program moving forward.
• Identification and onboarding - Create and manage the programs to on-board advocates.
• Advocate engagement - Develop, execute and measure advocate campaigns on an ongoing basis.

• Metrics and optimization - Measure the effectiveness of the program by tracking and reporting on operational and strategic metrics.
• Recognition and reward programs - Create and fulfill the advocate rewards system.

While knowing and being passionate about customers is critical to this role, the Advocate Marketing Manager should be well-connected internally, too, in order to meet the various advocate marketing program objectives related to other departments, such as sales, product management and customer success.