Planning is a critical first step in building a successful advocate marketing program. It's important to develop a strategic plan that specifies what the program objectives, process, people and technology are.

Key elements of a good plan include:

The program objectives

The plan should include a mission statement as well as strategic, tactical and operational objectives:

Strategic advocate marketing objectives

• Increased revenue through customer referrals
• Improved customer engagement
• Shortened sales cycles
• Increased website traffic, SEO rank, etc.
• Improved buyer experience
• Higher win rates
• Better brand recognition and reputation
• Higher customer lifetime value
• Bigger deal sizes
• Lower lead generation and sales costs
• Simpler management and mobilization of customer references
• Higher customer satisfaction

Tactical advocate marketing goals:

• References
• Case studies
• Reviews
• Testimonials
• Recommendations
• Social shares

Operational advocate marketing objectives

• Total number of advocates
• Number of advocates active and engaged in campaigns
• Number of "asks" each advocate will complete in a given timeframe
• What percentage of advocates redeem their rewards

Advocate personas

Advocate personas help you understand who your advocates are, why they advocate for your organization and which campaigns will be most relevant to them.

You may already have a number of customer segments that you can apply to your pool of advocates, such as industry, company size, location, job function, seniority, products used, etc. However, it's important to keep in mind that you may be reaching non-customer advocates as well, including employees, partners, executives and investors.

The advocate marketing process

Defining a standard process is critical to running multiple advocate marketing campaigns each quarter. This playbook recommends one such process (plan - recruit - ask - reward - analyze), but the most important point is to define a standard process that you'll adhere to. This process will allow your advocate marketing program to become truly scalable.

Program owners

The CMO should own and sponsor the program, but the day-to-day execution of the program should be assigned to someone in a marketing manager-type role. You should also consider creating a company-wide advocate marketing committee with representatives from sales, customer service, product management and other departments.

Program campaigns

Your plan should include the specific types of advocacy campaigns you'll focus on at the outset. A campaign consists of a set of activities designed to achieve a particular objective. For example, a common campaign is to create a certain number of customer case studies. Another type of campaign is to generate a certain number of referrals. Create a quarterly calendar with planned campaigns that will be promoted to your advocates.