Customer Advocacy Program Metrics: How to Adapt Reporting to Changing Business Priorities

Regardless of the maturity of your advocacy program, proper reporting of your team’s performance can make or break your program. We all likely have perceptions of how we feel our team is performing but the proof is in the “pudding” – a.k.a., your metrics.

When initially starting a program, there is some reporting that I am sure we all probably monitor as a standard. Metrics such as number of requests that are managed, revenue influenced by those requests, number of new advocates, as well as number of customers that have declined to be part of the program. These measurements will always be important.

But as a program matures, there often are many other goals and processes that your team needs to monitor and report on. While defining key metrics and consistently tracking them is important, as advocacy professionals, we need to always keep in mind that these key metrics can be fluid and evolve over time. Since business is always changing, some of our programmatic priorities will change too.

So, how do you know when it’s time to adapt your metrics strategy, and how do you figure out which new accomplishments to report on? Most company shifts, from new product launches to rebrands, present an opportunity to evaluate if your program metrics align with business priorities.

Some examples of significant organizational changes that may signal the need to adjust your reporting strategy include:

Undergoing an acquisition or merger:

If you have just been through an acquisition or merger, the upheaval can certainly cause some angst with your customers. In this scenario, your focus may be more on revalidating your current advocates, as opposed to recruiting new members to the advocacy program.

After the merger, it will be important for your management to understand which customers are happy and will continue to advocate for you and those that are dissatisfied. This is a good opportunity for your executives to then show the love to those customers that are no longer happy and work on repairing those relationships. As a result, you’ll be able to track a new metric – number of revalidated customers post-merger – and share this reporting alongside your standard reporting.

My experience has found this to be quite an enlightening metric to continue to track long after the acquisition to help ensure that your program effectively aligns with the new state of business and tracks any trends in the customer base.

Changes in executive leadership:

In this scenario, it is crucial to understand if there has been a change in direction or priorities because of the new leadership. What is important to the new CEO or new CMO for example, may differ from what was important to their predecessor. Many CMOs are now investing increasing focus on aligning their teams with sales organizations on top of more traditional responsibilities for demand generation and brand perception. A perfect example of this is the trend towards account-based marketing (ABM), which tightens sales and marketing alignment.

If ABM is a priority for leadership, you may consider evaluating how well your advocacy program metrics align with sales goals. For example, you may already be tracking how many case studies your program creates, but add how frequently those case studies are used to win sales deals or include co-marketing activities in your measurement of customers’ total lifetime value.

Changes in executive leadership are often important signals that your metrics strategy needs to evolve to stay relevant to business priorities.

Investing in creating an online customer community:

If your organization has invested in creating an advocacy hub or online customer community, make sure you are taking full advantage of all of the great information that you can harvest from those customer interactions. An online community is a great way to touch many customers simultaneously and keep them engaged and informed on what is going on with your company. Your CMO can quickly become interested in the contribution of your membership if you highlight the right metrics about their business value. Some metrics you may want to report include:

• How many members register for user groups, webinars, and blogs via invitations extended through the community.

• The number of social shares, completed challenges, and engaged advocates in the community. This type of engagement with your brand can even be included when measuring a customer’s total lifetime value.

• The level of engagement with specialized campaigns designed for attaining a specific goal, such as increasing online analyst reviews for a specific product. Your director of analyst relations is likely always looking for more voice-of-the-customer evidence. If you can demonstrate the advocacy’s program contribution to sourcing that type of evidence through metrics on activity in your customer community, seize the opportunity.

• How many new customer advocates joined the community. If your company focuses on certain accounts (for instance Fortune 1000), ensure that management is aware of how many of your community members are part of that specific group. Adapting your metrics to highlight not just the number of new community members, but also the percentage of new members that come from a target growth area can help you elevate your reporting from a nice-to-have to an update the business eagerly craves each month.

These are just some suggestions, but the opportunities and options for evolving your reporting strategy abound! Especially as an advocacy program manager, it is important to always keep your ears and your eyes open for shifting business priorities and signals your company may be interested in different types of metrics. The more you can illustrate the impact that your team and advocates have on company priorities, the more successful your program will be.

Interested in discussing how to adapt your program metrics to changing business goals? Contact us! We’d love to strategize with you.