Chris is the CMO of FlexMR, a hybrid research agency & tech firm that empowers brands with agile insight. He also hosts the MRX Lab podcast.
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In 2006, Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey published a book called The Ultimate Question, compiling their previous research into the net promoter score (NPS) metric. It’s in this book that, in my opinion, one of the most compelling statistics about customer advocacy can be found: “A twelve-point increase in NPS leads to a doubling in a company’s rate of growth.” And this single nugget of information has captured the imaginations of business leaders ever since.
Net promoter score is a metric basic in both concept and execution. It’s derived from a single question on a 1-10 scale: “How likely would you be to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” That’s it. From this, marketers seek to understand the quality of a customer experience, expected brand loyalty and anticipated volume of referrals. Since its inception, there have been challenges to the methodology and concerns over implementation, but in its most basic form, the NPS score remains a powerful indicator of customer advocacy.
So, how can you achieve a higher NPS score and encourage customer advocacy? Well, the answer, first and foremost, depends on the nature of your business. There are well-documented pathways to building B2C consumer advocacy:
• Build personalized loyalty programs through data (like Tesco).
• Offer simple, clear and direct rewards for referrals (like Tesla).
• Make sharing clear, simple and easy (like Coca-Cola).
The route to building B2B advocacy is a little less clear. Of course, the fundamentals still remain. It’s important to deliver a high-quality experience aligned to the needs and values of your market. But advocate and referral activity rarely happens naturally; it needs to be promoted, activated and rewarded.
Set Plans Into Action
As with all strategic projects, before we can begin to lay out the actions that will form the nuts and bolts of our B2B advocacy plan, it’s important to take the time to set goals and align with the wider commercial strategy. The first question to answer is: What do we want to achieve with our advocacy program? The secret to a great program is there is rarely just one output. So, try to find three to four major goals and rank them in priority order. What is the single most important outcome and what else do you hope to achieve? Common examples include:
• A higher volume of direct, unprompted referrals.
• Developing closer relationships with existing clients.
• Building a pool of clients who can support sales opportunities.
• Delivering a stronger overall customer experience.
• Increasing organic brand awareness.
Once you have a list of objectives that align with and support commercial goals, it’s time to build a strategy. To do this, you’re going to need to understand three things: what actions will be part of the program, how you’re going to measure the success of your actions, and who else within the business needs to be involved. This last point is crucial because advocacy isn’t solely a marketing activity. A robust plan will need support and input from sales, operational and client support staff, in addition to senior buy-in.
Tactical Activities
Let’s take a look at some of the tactical activities that might form part of your B2B client advocacy program. Not all of these serve each objective equally, and each will require a different level of investment and support, so choose wisely:
Client Advisory Board (CAB): An advisory board enables you to invite your most trusted clients to join your senior leadership team in making key decisions that steer the future of your business. A CAB can help to foster one-to-one relationships through regular meetings, bring direct feedback into strategic conversations and ensure valued clients feel invested in your success. In practice, advisory boards can take a number of forms, but a particularly effective format is to host quarterly forums that split the agenda between executive updates and open-floor time for client-led discussions.
Online Client Community: Where an advisory board focuses efforts on a small volume of high-value clients, an online community is open to all. These private spaces provide a space for clients to interact, share knowledge, deepen their connections to each other, pool resources and succeed together. Not only can members help each other, but you can monitor and reward active members to further their relationship with your brand. By opening communities to potential customers and interested parties, the value of these spaces grows exponentially, acting as showcases for success and a valuable, educational network.
Roundtables and Private Events: It’s easy to recognize the value of a public event. You can improve brand awareness, hold a captive audience and set the agenda. But to build an effective advocacy program, it’s important not to underestimate the power of the private event. Formats such as roundtable discussions and private webinars for clients and partners work well to create a safe, noncompetitive space in which you can really dig into their challenges, work collaboratively to create innovative solutions and build relationships that will form the backbone of an advocacy pipeline.
Reviews and Testimonials: Did you know that 76% of B2B buyers consult three or more advocacy sources before purchase? That means a successful program can’t rely on one or two strong ideas. So don’t neglect to ask your customers for reviews, testimonials, case studies and social shout-outs.
Referral Programs: Lastly, if referrals are your objective, be upfront about it. Just as B2C brands reward referrals from customers with money off, freebies and loyalty tiers, the approach is equally effective for B2B brands. Ultimately, it’s people who make referrals, and people are more likely to refer if they know you want them to.
At the end of the day, the stats don’t lie. Generating B2B client advocacy is an opportunity too large to ignore. But doing so will take clear vision, hard work and patience. Good luck on your journey.
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