Most articles about driving customer advocacy focus on how to run successful advocacy initiatives or influencer marketing programs. This is not one of those articles. Those are important topics, for sure, and I’m saving my thoughts on them for a future post. What I want to do right now is making the point that customer advocacy is much bigger than programs and tactics, bigger even than strategies and initiatives. Advocacy, in fact, is a brand’s most basic success driver, because if you’re not giving customers compelling reasons to stand up and shout your praises, why are you even in business? Today, the will and the ability to create advocates must be part of the weave of any company. It can’t just be an overlay.

It must come as a mandate from the top, and it needs to push up from the ranks to permeate every enterprise function, from product design and packaging to marketing, fulfilment and service. Jump-start customer advocacy by listening I don’t have to tell you the monetary value of advocates. It’s well documented that they spend more than the average buyer, bring in more customers and help create more buzz. But I do want to share what I believe is the most important thing about them as people: advocates enjoy feeing that they are a part of something bigger than themselves, part of a team or a movement… and they want to be listened to.

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