#13: Scaling advocacy, Value to the C-suite, Spiders

If you’ve noticed, during February, I’ve been a bit quieter than usual. I’ve been rethinking how I deliver value to the community and the consulting services I offer. But I’m ready to heat things up with…

March 2023: Scaling Customer Advocacy

There will be 3 strategy/workshop calls, special guests, short articles in this weekly newsletter, posts on LinkedIn, and exclusive content for the CMAweekly community. I hope you’ll share this and participate.

Upcoming Calls

🗓️ Friday: CMAweekly: The Power of Customer Programs for Customer Marketing & Advocacy w/ Ashley Ward. (this is tentative) register here.

Quiet week it seems 🤔

Great Content:

Proving value to your C-suite

• Dana Alvarenga on The Advocacy Channel Podcast: How customer marketing influences revenue and how to prove it.

• Ciana Abdollahian shared on LinkedIn: How Customer Marketers can show their value to the CEO. 

• Bill Lee & Jeff Ernst: The Great Downsizing & the opportunity that comes with it.

• Beating The Drum: Career Progression and Understanding What Metrics The C-Suite Cares About with Kevin Lau

From LinkedIn

Loved this carousel about how women can speak confidently in the workplace.

How to hire a great writer by Joel Klettke

Asking customers the right questions (NOT NPS) by Jan Young

New LinkedIn feature

Copywriting & messaging is a skill we all need - this post helps a LOT.

Callie Rojewski shared about CABs with Captivate Collective (today) on LinkedIn

The Startups Guide to Customer Advocacy - Kalina Bryant

From the Community

Zoe Millette from The Advocacy Channel: A Customer Marketing Podcast is looking for people interested in being on the podcast. Contact her on LinkedIn.

Who’s Afraid of Spiders? Check out this discussion to see a grown man who screams when they see a spider, jump in here and leave your reaction to spiders as well.

Customer video testimonials with StoryPrompt, check out this tool and a few others the community recommends.

Scaling Advocacy article: Your Own CRM

As a Community Manager, I learned a lot of practices that contribute to the work I do today in Customer Marketing and Advocacy. One of these practices is building my own CRM.

I’ll start with why you need your own CRM:

• As you meet a lot of people in Community or Advocacy, you are going to learn nuances about them; they like to travel, they just got a promotion, just got married, love baked goods, love to donate to animal charities, like certain types of rewards/perks, have goals they need to reach, are looking for a new position, what topics they like to speak about, the products they use, etc.

• These points of info can help you cater the experiences you offer your advocates. Further, understanding the type of Advocate will help you send the right requests.

Why you need something beyond SFDC: 

• A lot of SFDC instances have permissions that prevent you from adding the data you might want to save OR keep you from fixing the data that isn’t accurate.

• Often, teams with SFDC do not have the bandwidth to make changes in the near future, meaning you either wait several months or do it yourself.

• Additionally, having complete control over the data you collect gives you creative control to make changes and constantly improve your process.

The how: 

1. I started with a spreadsheet years ago. Today, you can do some fancy things with Airtable (I’ll be joining a call with them this month to learn more about this approach).

2. Start with your most active customers/advocates. You don’t have to have everything perfect from the beginning. You want to make sure you track the people who are most important to your operation. You get to decide what that is and make future changes.

3. Import from SFDC (within the bounds of your org’s permissions). I used a Google sheet and linked each person’s name to their record in SFDC.

4. This is a manual process at first; you’ll learn ways to automate it, improve your processes, and focus on the important data.

Using your CRM:

When a new request comes in, check your CRM.

Do you have someone that loves to talk at events about a specific topic? (this is where traveling & speaking come together)

Do you need someone to host roundtables that enjoys sharing on a topic?

Do you have several gift cards to give out? (check to see who likes earning gift cards)

Finally: 

Revisit some of your older requests and look for trends, patterns, and opportunities to save data from your conversations & interactions with customers.

PS: If you are using this for communities as well, keep note of members who post and comment, this way you have a list of people to message and ask to post/participate when engagement is down.

Closing

Register here to get more from the Scaling Advocacy Series!

Any questions? I’m on LinkedIn 

And.. please help your colleagues by sharing this newsletter on LinkedIn, in email, etc. :)