I'm Erica Bartsch, and as a customer marketing professional with over 15 years of experience—now leading efforts at JPMorgan—I’ve had the privilege of seeing how impactful authentic customer advocacy can be. 

My journey spans industries and organizations, each with its own challenges and opportunities, but the core truth remains the same: advocacy is built on relationships and storytelling.

At JPMorgan, we’re redefining customer marketing by focusing on meaningful, long-term engagement with our clients, prioritizing authenticity, and tailoring our approach to fit their unique needs. 

In this article, I’ll share the lessons we’ve learned, the strategies we’ve embraced, and the steps we’ve taken to transform advocacy into a collaborative, customer-first effort that drives real results. 

Defining customer marketing at JPMorgan

At JPMorgan, we define customer marketing and advocacy as a programmatic approach to engaging, nurturing, and cultivating client relationships. The ultimate goal is to integrate our customers into our sales and marketing activities in ways that drive credibility and advocacy for our brand and products.

You may notice that our definition doesn’t emphasize sales impact, pipeline growth, or direct revenue generation. That’s intentional. While those outcomes are certainly important, our current focus is on building a solid foundation for advocacy and fostering meaningful relationships with our clients.

To distill it even further, when liaising with stakeholders unfamiliar with this discipline, we describe it as: Building real relationships with real clients to tell real stories, making buying decisions easier for our audience.

This concise explanation underpins everything we do, aligning our efforts with the broader needs of our organization. Whether it’s product marketers strategizing or sellers engaging with prospects, our work reflects and supports their goals.

A focus on relationships and advocacy

Our efforts include a variety of traditional and innovative customer marketing initiatives. While we manage references, create case studies, produce videos, and integrate campaigns, our true focus lies in relationship-building and advocacy.

Currently, our reference program is manually managed. It’s a far cry from the sophisticated platforms many organizations use today—we rely on an Excel-based system reminiscent of my early days in customer marketing back in 2008. This approach, while not the most advanced, is highly managed and tailored. 

Our team serves as a central point for requests, ensuring that every interaction is intentional and aligned with our goals.

We also support our sellers in deepening their client relationships, positioning our team as an extension of their efforts. Beyond references, we create traditional assets like customer case studies and experiential content but also explore unique opportunities such as a magazine collaboration with Wired, tier-one event integrations, and experiential activations at key events.

Harnessing the power of advocacy

We’re spending the majority of our time with customer advocacy. It’s where we see the true value of our work come to life. By cultivating relationships over time, nurturing them, and supporting account teams, we are unlocking the potential for deeper, more impactful customer connections.

These relationships don’t just happen overnight—they’re developed, nurtured, and supported through thoughtful, deliberate programming. It’s through this long-term approach that we’re seeing real results, building credibility for our brand, and making a tangible difference for our teams.

Building advocacy from the ground up

When I joined JPMorgan, our reference marketing and advocacy program was brand new—just as old as my tenure at the company. Starting from scratch brought its own set of challenges, and I suspect many of you might relate to these: a lack of shared language, unclear goals, process misunderstandings, and no clear governance model.

Over the past year and a half, we’ve tackled these obstacles head-on through a process of testing, learning, and deeply understanding both our internal and customer audiences. Through this journey, we’ve identified a few core truths that guide our approach to advocacy.

Core truths for building advocacy

1. Start with your customer and work backward.

This seems obvious, but it’s surprising how often we fail to do this in marketing. At JPMorgan, for example, we had been very marketing-centric in our messaging—engaging customers in ways that didn’t always feel approachable or customer-friendly.

2. CMA is a relationship business.

Advocacy thrives on relationships. The more you invest in building trust and providing value, the more you’ll get in return. It’s a constant reminder to focus on the customer’s needs and experiences.

3. To your customers, you’re one company.

At JPMorgan, we’re a massive organization with multiple business units. While we sit within the payments division, which is relatively young at five years old, our customers don’t see the internal silos. Nor should they. They expect seamless coordination, and it’s our responsibility to deliver on that expectation through collaboration across teams.

Learning from Sephora: A case study in rethinking advocacy

When I joined, our approach to client engagement often defaulted to a singular activity—usually a high-budget video. These videos, costing upwards of $250,000, were neither scalable nor sustainable. Worse, they didn’t always align with a customer-first mindset.

For example, we asked Sephora to participate in a reference video. The process wasn’t ideal: the video was filmed at an event, the audio quality was poor, and the experience left much to be desired. When we asked them to redo it, we compounded the ask with additional requests—a webinar, a case study, and more—all at once. 

Unsurprisingly, Sephora disengaged, and we didn’t hear from them for four months.

This experience became a turning point for our team. We realized we needed to adopt a more customer-obsessed approach that honored the client’s time and capacity while fostering mutual value.

Shifting to a customer-first strategy

Instead of overwhelming Sephora with a "big ask," we began re-engaging them through smaller, more manageable opportunities:

  • Nominations for awards: We started by nominating them for an industry award, a small gesture that positioned us as partners invested in their success.
  • Collaborative thought leadership: We invited them to contribute to a Wired magazine piece, giving them control over their messaging and providing a platform to showcase their insights without the pressure of a testimonial.

These smaller engagements built trust over time. This gradual approach ultimately paved the way for a larger marquee storytelling initiative.

The results of mutual value

By taking Sephora on this journey, we not only regained their trust but also created a foundation for deeper collaboration. 

Today, they actively participate in our events, including speaking engagements and experiential activations. This partnership didn’t just benefit us—it helped Sephora amplify their achievements both internally and externally.

For example, Sephora’s treasury team showcased their innovative work on their social channels, building their personal and company brand. This mutual value approach underscores the power of working bottom-up rather than top-down, respecting our clients’ time, and delivering outcomes that matter to them.

Mapping the customer advocacy journey

After our experience with Sephora, we began thinking more deeply about what a customer advocacy journey might look like—not just for the customer but also for our internal stakeholders. 

At JPMorgan, advocacy as a motion is still relatively new, and this has been a unique challenge. Unlike the tech industry, banking doesn’t have a long history with customer marketing and advocacy programs. Add to that the layers of regulation and compliance we face, and the process becomes even more complex.

In the banking world, what might take six to nine months in a tech company can take significantly longer. For example, Siemens is one of the few clients we’ve seen progress through this journey end to end—and even that took over a year and a half.

Siemens: A journey from reluctance to advocacy

When we first approached Siemens, they were hesitant to engage beyond a simple award nomination. Even that required persistence. It wasn’t until we met with their representative at the award ceremony and had a candid dinner conversation that we managed to establish some initial trust.

We kept our initial ask small and straightforward. At the event, we suggested filming a short thought leadership video—not about JPMorgan, but something Siemens could share with their peers. This approach made it easy for them to say yes. 

During the conversation, the client became more comfortable and even began discussing their use of our blockchain technology and programmable payments. This led to a lightweight testimonial, which successfully navigated Siemens’ PR approvals.

From there, we continued to build the relationship by offering other engagement opportunities tailored to their interests:

  • Speaking sessions at major conferences: A way for Siemens to showcase their work to their industry peers.
  • Thought leadership collaborations: Involvement in our Wired magazine project allowed Siemens to control their messaging and share insights.

A journey of mutual value

This incremental approach paid off. Over the course of a year and a half, the Siemens global treasurer became actively engaged with us, evolving into a self-directed advocate. 

In the last few months, he even approached us with ideas, expressing how our collaboration was helping him secure internal resources and budgets.

His enthusiasm has since created a flywheel effect. He brought additional Siemens leaders into the fold, including the head of payments and the North American group treasurer. 

Together, they’re now participating in a marquee storytelling effort that highlights not just their individual perspectives but also how they’re driving change within their organization.

The power of selectivity

This type of advocacy journey isn’t scalable, and it isn’t meant to be. It’s about focusing on the most strategic clients—those whose stories can amplify your broader efforts. By being intentional and collaborative with relationship teams, these journeys can deliver extraordinary value.

At JPMorgan, we’re currently working with about 200 clients in our reference database. These aren’t just names on a list; they’re clients we’ve actively engaged, nurtured, and built relationships with. 

While this approach prioritizes depth over scale, it’s laying the groundwork for lasting advocacy and creating a flywheel of influence that extends far beyond individual engagements.

Strategic account planning: A tailored approach with Siemens

One of the key elements of our success with Siemens has been the integration of customer marketing into their account plan. By collaborating closely with account teams, we’ve developed a strategic roadmap that guides how we engage with the client over time.

This roadmap is designed not just to manage our asks but also to deliver value back to the client. 

For example, in the spring, a significant portion of our engagement with Siemens focused on nominating them for award programs and amplifying their marketing messages through our channels. These initiatives were purely about giving back to the client, without requiring additional effort from their side.

At the same time, we peppered in strategic asks, like participating in a video or attending birds-of-a-feather sessions at events. These smaller, well-timed requests didn’t feel like a heavy lift for Siemens but yielded significant results for us, particularly in lead generation and business impact.

From overwhelming asks to collaborative journeys

By taking this incremental approach, we’ve been able to achieve outcomes that weren’t possible when we used a "one big ask" model. 

In our earlier example with Sephora, we tried to get everything—a video, case study, webinar, and more—in one go. The result was disengagement.

With Siemens, however, breaking down the journey allowed us to create a comprehensive set of assets over time, including:

  • Social assets: Engaging content to amplify Siemens’ story across platforms.
  • Hero films: High-quality videos showcased at conferences and in booth spaces.
  • Case studies: Full-length written materials with quotes and social copy.
  • Short-form videos: Bite-sized content that complements the hero film.
  • Sales enablement tools: Resources for our teams to use in the field.

This approach not only delivered the materials we needed but also built trust and loyalty with Siemens, making them more willing to participate in future initiatives.

A mix of client-led and company-led initiatives

One of the most exciting outcomes of this process has been the shift in dynamics. On the left side of Siemens’ customer marketing asset mix, you’ll find the activities we’ve initiated. But on the right side are initiatives Siemens has requested from us.

They’ve begun asking us for support in bringing their stories to life—a clear indication of the trust and mutual value we’ve built together. This shift is a powerful testament to the effectiveness of taking clients on a journey rather than overwhelming them with immediate demands.

Scaling the impact with diverse asset mixes

The success of this approach isn’t limited to Siemens. For example, with Paramount, we’ve moved beyond standalone videos to create a much richer asset mix. While we still produce hero pieces, we now also deliver supplemental assets like quotes, testimonials, and bite-sized content.

Even something as simple as a well-placed quote can influence a prospect’s decision-making process, making these assets just as impactful as larger pieces. By rethinking our process and focusing on incremental, customer-first efforts, we’ve been able to produce more complex and meaningful content with fewer resources and in less time.

How to get started: Core truths for building advocacy

If you’re looking to build or refine your customer advocacy program, start with the core truths. These principles have guided our efforts at JPMorgan and can serve as a foundation for your strategy, no matter your organization’s size or industry.

Start with your customer and work backward

It sounds simple, but it’s crucial. The first step is to define who your customer is. At JPMorgan, we realized we have both internal and external customers, each with unique needs.

For external audiences, we needed to understand how they wanted to tell their stories and what challenges they were trying to solve. For example, Siemens wanted to position themselves as a tech company—an image they hadn’t traditionally been associated with. We worked to bring that message to life in a way that resonated with their goals.

Internally, we had to align their aspirations with our marketing messages, ensuring that both sides were working toward shared outcomes. Every business will have its own unique model, and it’s important to tailor your approach to fit your organization’s needs.

Invest in relationships

Advocacy is a relationship-driven business. The more time you spend building trust with both internal and external clients, the more you’ll get back. This isn’t about financial investment—it’s about dedicating time to understand their needs, their goals, and the challenges they face.

Present a unified company

From a customer’s perspective, your company is one entity. They don’t see the internal silos, and they shouldn’t have to. A coordinated approach across teams is essential to presenting a seamless, cohesive experience.

Keep it authentic

Testimonials must be grounded in reality to be credible. While it’s tempting to lean into aspirational messaging, it’s authenticity that resonates most with your audience. When your stories are true, accurate, and relatable, they carry much greater weight.

Think long term

Building advocacy is not a quick win; it’s a long-term investment. Your relationship with account teams is critical to identifying the right milestones within account plans. These milestones allow you to strategically ask for customer participation and unlock advocacy opportunities at the right moments.

It takes a village

Customer marketing and advocacy aren’t standalone channels—they require collaboration across your entire marketing and sales organization. Engaging your internal stakeholders early and often will set the foundation for success. 

Advocacy programs thrive when supported by a collective effort, and this partnership will pay dividends over time.

This article is based on a presentation given by Erica at our Customer Marketing Summit, San Francisco 2024.

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