7 Lessons Learned In Scaling A Customer Advocacy Program
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Cristina Melluzzi discusses Cisco's customer advocacy program called The Gateway. The Gateway is an online community that allows customers to share stories, demonstrate thought leadership, and earn rewards. Over 1,200 advocates are active in The Gateway and have generated over $400k in pipeline revenue. Melluzzi provides 7 lessons for scaling a customer advocacy program, including being brave, bold, and taking risks to get customers' attention. She also stresses the importance of executive sponsorship, continuous learning, and starting small. The future goals are to expand The Gateway globally and leverage advocates to extend Cisco's marketing and sales reach.
7 Lessons Learned In Scaling A Customer Advocacy Program
- 1. Cristina Melluzzi Head of Customer Advocacy EMEAR, Cisco Twitter: @cmelluzzi 7 LESSONS IN SCALING A CUSTOMER ADVOCACY PROGRAM
- 2. Connecting Your Values to What You Do
- 3. Imagine if 1 year from now, your customer advocates generated more revenue for your business than the sales organization?
- 7. Cisco’s Vision of Customer Advocacy What is it? • Our customers are our single most influential asset. When customers talk to one another about your product and how much they love it, their advocacy goes a longer way than any white paper, blog post, or social media program. • We need to nurture and engage our advocates so that we can turn them into vocal evangelists of our products and services. What’s the Cisco Vision? • Become an advocate-led award-winning marketing organization • Build authentic ongoing trusted relationships with Cisco customers and their peers through advocate led story-telling. • Amplify our customer’s company and individual success resulting in an advocate first revolution Did you know that word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions? - McKinsey
- 8. What is The Gateway? • Cisco’s new EMEAR Advocacy Program for Cisco customers. • An informal online community where ANY customer can: ü Share their stories/experiences with Cisco ü Demonstrate their thought leadership ü Learn and network with peers ü Build their professional network • Advocates can earn rewards through a series of fun, educational challenges such as front row seats at Cisco Live or the opportunity to be a speaker at our events
- 11. How We’re Transforming Customer Advocacy
- 12. Del Brenta Video
- 14. Results • >14,300 challenges completed • >1,200 active advocates • >100 referrals • 392 testimonials • 119 net new online reviews • >$400k in pipeline last QTR • Average acts of Advocacy: 11.1 • NPS score 72 • User generated stories 75% cheaper • ’Case studies’ now take on avg. 10 days • 50% read new ‘Upshot’ content vs. 5% standard case study
- 15. It’s Been a Tough Year…but
- 17. Lesson 1: Be Brave • How many times have you had an amazing idea and wondered how you would get people on board, to make change happen? • When you see something needs to change, don’t wait for someone else to make the move. Be brave, take risks and get comfortable with uncomfortable. • Remember: bravery is not lack of fear, it’s the ability to move forward in spite of fear.
- 18. Lesson 2: Be Bold •How do you get people on board with your idea? •Shock people with the facts.
- 19. Lesson 3: Take Risks •Do something different to get customers to pay attention
- 20. Lesson 4: Get Exec Sponsorship • Help your execs & internal stakeholders understand the power of advocacy • Spend time understanding the different goals of marketing, sales & engineering leadership • Demonstrate how customer advocacy can help with goals • Find opportunities to get in front of senior leadership
- 21. Lesson 5: Learn Every Day •Dedicate time to learning from everyone around you •Spend time networking with your peers •Continue to research and develop new concepts
- 22. Lesson 6: Don’t Try and Boil The Ocean •Start small and scale when the time is right •Focus on creating a better experience for customers
- 23. Lesson 7: Find Your Own Army of Advocates • Share your vision at every opportunity and don’t assume people ‘get it’ • Partner with people that do ‘get it’ and see the benefits • Nurture those internal ‘advocates’ as an extension of the team • If you can prove the success, the budget and resource will come
- 24. ‘Our Gateway to…campaign research’ Objectives • Investigate the business pain points that SMBs currently have to guide a campaign targeting Midsize businesses How? • Release ‘The Office 'themed campaign on The Gateway • Encouraged advocates to share their thoughts with a series of fun challenges The outcome? • Validated and illustrated midsize campaigns five key challenges for midsize businesses • Captured images and pen-portrait quotes from advocates • Content for the midsize campaign will be optimized using the results • Great customer quotes that were used for social posts “The Gateway has given us access to fully approved advocacy. It has also given us validation of the challenges midsize business face. I highly recommend using The Gateway to add depth and validity to your own content projects.” - Mike Buckley, SME Midsize, UK Marketing.
- 25. Future Goals 1. Scale program globally & curate an integrated Cisco strategy 2. Extend event recruitment strategy 3. Scale user generated content program 4. Mobilize advocate community to extend the reach of our marketing and sales org
- 26. 3 Key TakeAways 1. Let go of: Control, fear, conformity & status quo 2. Be prepared to make mistakes & learn from them 3. Find great partners and keep them with you