Advocacy is evolving.

The way we build relationships, the expectations of our customers, and the metrics we’re held accountable to are all shifting. 

Over the past few years, I’ve led advocacy efforts at LRN, working closely with customer success (CS) teams to scale programs that engage customers in meaningful, measurable ways. And here’s what I’ve learned: when advocacy and customer success work in true partnership, the impact is undeniable.

Let’s explore how that alignment takes shape, why it matters, and what it looks like in practice.

Why advocacy must align with customer success

As advocacy matures, we need to tie our efforts more directly to core business metrics – like pipeline and retention. 

Advocacy and growth aren’t just compatible; they should reinforce each other. But to make that happen, we need strong alignment with CS, rooted in trust and shared goals.

One of the most common questions I hear is, “How do I get CS to care about advocacy?” The answer lies in empathy, relationship-building, and consistently showing the value we bring.

The current state of customer marketing (and why it matters)

According to the 2023 State of Customer Marketing report, most of us in customer marketing report into marketing (71%) – only a small fraction sit under CS or product marketing. These reporting lines often create silos, especially as companies grow.

Despite overlapping goals, only 31.5% of advocacy professionals say they work closely with CS. That’s a missed opportunity. While CS owns the client relationship, advocacy can enrich it. 

Long-term success depends on building many-to-many relationships that go beyond the CSM–admin dynamic to include exec sponsors, community touchpoints, and more.

How often are we really talking to customers?

Given the limited collaboration with CS, I wondered: how often are we, as advocacy pros, speaking to customers ourselves?

Happily, more than half of us talk to customers several times a week. But those conversations must go beyond surface-level check-ins. I see each one as a chance to support CS by listening, gathering insights, and building trust.

I approach every call with curiosity – asking what’s working, what’s not, and where clients need help. These insights don’t just inform advocacy; they strengthen CS relationships and deepen client connection.

Why we reach out, and what it reveals

We engage customers for all sorts of reasons: referrals, case studies, awards, events, community invites – you name it. Each touchpoint reveals where a client is in their journey and helps us gather intel to better serve them.

And the impact? Advocacy programs today are seeing the biggest returns from use case development (37.1%), followed by referrals. Cross-sell and renewal growth are gaining traction, but more slowly – understandably, since many programs are still in their early stages.

The important thing to remember is that most advocacy activities feed directly into retention. That’s why a strong partnership with CS isn’t optional – it’s essential.

Creating true alignment with customer success

If we want advocacy to support retention in a real, measurable way, the relationship between advocacy and customer success has to be more than polite collaboration – it has to be symbiotic.

Technically, “symbiotic” refers to a relationship between two dissimilar organisms. In our world, that’s CS and advocacy. Picture a clownfish and a sea anemone. The anemone offers the clownfish protection and shelter, while the clownfish offers nutrients and scares off predators. It’s a mutual benefit model. In biology, this type of symbiosis is called mutualism.

That’s exactly the kind of relationship we need to build between advocacy and CS.

CS is typically focused on account maintenance – things like retention and growth. Our advocacy activities, when done right, directly support both. 

At the same time, CS is sitting on a goldmine of insights and context – intel that fuels better content, community engagement, and the kinds of stories that drive social proof. It’s a win-win. 

But for CS to see the value in what we’re doing, we need to prove it – and make it easy for them to connect the dots.

Advocacy still feels like a luxury, and that’s the problem

According to the State of Customer Marketing report, a combined 84% of respondents said that either “some” or “none” of their organizations really understand customer marketing. Honestly, I’m not surprised. Advocacy is still a young practice. 

Many organizations haven’t had these roles before – and CS teams can’t be expected to understand what they’ve never seen in action. And let’s face it, sometimes we don’t even fully know what we’re doing. We’re still building the plane while flying it.

If you were to visualize Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for CS, advocacy would probably sit toward the top – somewhere between “nice-to-have” and “self-actualization.” For many CSMs, we might just feel like yet another voice in the mix, asking for time, clients, or attention in the middle of QBRs, training, or ticket escalations.

So the big question is: how do we move from luxury to necessity?

Prioritize, simplify, and speak their language

Instead of trying to explain the whole universe, pick your North Star priorities and stay the course. 

For me, those three priorities are:

  1. Community
  2. Client advisory boards (CABs)
  3. Customer sentiment

Let me break down why these matter so much to me – and how they serve CS goals.

1. Community

One of my core beliefs is that engagement drives all good things. When customers feel connected to your brand, engage regularly, and understand their role in the ecosystem, they’re more likely to contribute to social proof, participate in growth initiatives, and stick around longer.

Community is my number-one priority because it scales that engagement. CSMs often manage large books of business. They don’t always have the time to give every customer the level of engagement they’d like. Community helps bridge that gap. 

It’s a quick win for CS because we’re helping them deepen relationships without adding to their workload.

2. CABs

CABs are my second big priority. I could talk about them for days. The excitement a client feels when they’re invited to a CAB is real – they feel seen, valued, and connected. They build their network, they invest more in the relationship, and they often bring their enthusiasm back to the broader community.

From an organizational perspective, CABs also generate insights that feed product development and strategic alignment. Our CS team can use those insights to have more relevant, future-focused conversations with their accounts.

3. Customer sentiment

Lastly, I own customer sentiment. We run NPS quarterly, and we track CSAT alongside more transactional functions. But collecting scores isn’t enough – we need to turn that feedback into stories.

Positive comments become wins we can highlight. Negative ones become red flags we can escalate. Either way, that intel helps CS prioritize their time and strengthen relationships.

Five ways to build stronger advocacy/CS relationships

So how do we actually put this into action? Here are five tactics that have helped me build strong, mutually beneficial relationships with CS – and a sixth bonus tip that shows the payoff.

1. Get in the room

Ask to join your CS team’s standing meetings. Just being there helps you understand how they think, what their priorities are, and where advocacy can fit. 

Over time, ask for a regular five-minute slot to share updates and requests. Keep it simple. Focus on one or two priorities and tie them back to CS goals.

2. Build strategic alignment with CS leadership

Set up recurring 1:1s with CS leaders. Ask them: What are your top priorities right now? Then show them how advocacy supports those. Treat these conversations like customer discovery calls – put their needs first.

3. Develop personal relationships with CSMs

Take the time to get to know individual CSMs. What are their pain points? Which clients are tricky? Which ones are thriving? Keep notes. Find ways to include both the happy and challenging accounts in your advocacy initiatives.

For example, a few of our rockstar CSMs now include advocacy as part of their clients’ success plans. That might mean onboarding them, driving engagement, and eventually guiding them toward thought leadership opportunities. It’s a trust-building cycle – and it pays off.

4. Create feedback loops

This one’s big: close the loop. If CS recommends a client for a roundtable or CAB, follow up. Who participated? What did you learn? Was anything surprising? Did something come up that needs immediate attention?

At LRN, my team contributes to several internal newsletters with nuggets from community discussions, roundtables, CABs, and sentiment data. These updates are about more than just reporting – they’re about connection. They show we’re listening and acting.

5. Celebrate your CS champions

Use your internal airtime to spotlight CS team members who support advocacy. Did a CSM go above and beyond to help with a community initiative? Shout them out. Recognition breeds more support – and it helps advocacy become part of the culture, not just a function.

Bonus tip: Become the person they call

Here’s how you know you’ve made it: when your CS leaders are out of office and they need someone to run a meeting, they call you.

That happened to me this summer. Both of our CS VPs were out unexpectedly, and they asked me to lead the team meeting. They knew I was embedded, informed, and already had value to share. That’s what happens when you invest the time to become part of the team.

The internal audience matters too

One final reminder: nurture your internal audience just like you nurture your external one. Relationships take work. But there are some simple practices that go a long way.

  • Always loop in CSMs on advocacy initiatives involving their clients. Transparency builds trust.
  • Make your CSMs the heroes. Mention them by name when talking to clients. Reflect insights back. Show that CS is listening – and that advocacy is amplifying their work.
  • Share feedback widely. Insights stuck in your notebook aren’t helping anyone. Share them with CS, product, leadership – whoever can use them.

Customer feedback collection is fine. But customer feedback dissemination is where the magic happens. That’s how advocacy drives retention – and becomes an essential part of the customer journey.

Advocacy in action

To bring all of this to life, I want to share a few specific examples of how our advocacy work at LRN has helped drive retention and growth in collaboration with our CS team. 

Since launching our advocacy program, we’ve seen a rise in our overall retention rate. I’ll walk you through three mini case studies – real accounts where advocacy and CS worked hand-in-hand to make a tangible difference.

Customer A: From casual contact to million-dollar renewal

Customer A is a favorite at LRN – one of those clients with deep, long-standing relationships across the company. When we launched our community in January 2022, she was one of the first people we invited. Her consistent high NPS scores made her an obvious choice.

Initially, she didn’t engage much. But that changed after an in-person coffee at a regional conference with our community manager. Since then, she’s become one of our most active and visible community members.

Over the past year and a half, she’s participated in a wide range of advocacy activations:

  • A regular attendee at our monthly community roundtables
  • A beta tester for our new analytics platform, providing early feedback
  • A guest on our Principled podcast – an episode that now ranks in our all-time top ten downloads

From these engagements, we also surfaced several CQLs (customer-qualified leads) – hand-raisers from within the community that signal potential expansion opportunities. These are not fast-funnel leads. They’re slow-burning signals that become powerful talking points in QBRs. 

For Customer A, those signals pointed to multiple growth opportunities.

The result? A five-year renewal worth over $1 million. Our CS team explicitly credited our advocacy team as a contributor to the win, thanking us for the insights and value we brought to the table.

Customer B: Small engagements, big outcomes

Customer B joined our community during our soft launch. Known for being tech-savvy and engaged with our product team, he was an ideal fit. But he didn’t jump into advocacy right away.

This changed when his CSM, who’d heard me talk about the value of community during a team meeting, suggested he bring his best-practice questions to our CoLab. That simple recommendation was all it took to get him started.

He’s not as active as Customer A – and that’s okay. He’s intentional with his time, and he’s shown up where it counts:

  • Participating in client roundtables
  • Joining our product client advisory board
  • Surfacing a CQL related to our new Smart Code product

That interest is now included in his current renewal offer. Our CSM feels confident this renewal will close on time – with added growth – thanks in part to the signals and insights we were able to share from his advocacy participation.

Customer C: From at-risk to advocate

This last example is one of my favorites – because it didn’t start out as a success story.

When I first joined LRN, I shadowed a QBR with Customer C. After the call, the CSM asked what I thought. Honestly, I figured the account was already lost. They seemed disengaged, frustrated, and unlikely to renew.

But they did renew – barely. It felt like more of a hassle to switch vendors than a genuine decision to stay. That said, this client is unique: they deliver a vendor report card at every QBR. And interestingly, one section focused on value-add activities like community.

That was our opening.

Over the past year and a half, our team partnered with their CSM to engage their administrators and turn that sentiment around. Their lead became one of the founding members of our roundtable series (her idea, by the way). She joined our product CAB and has completed several other activations that have helped improve the relationship.

Two years later, their report card is nearly all green – an “A” in their grading system. They’ve left a glowing G2 review, and they’re now delivering CQLs back to us. 

This renewal, which once felt like a long shot, is no longer considered high-risk. They’re engaged, activated, and – maybe most importantly – enjoyable to work with.

We’ll see the final renewal in early 2024, but we feel confident about where this account is headed.

The bottom line: Engagement drives everything

I want to leave you with one last thought, courtesy of Forrester:

Customer-obsessed companies grow 2.5x faster than their peers and retain 2.2x more customers annually.

Let that sink in.

Our work in customer advocacy is fundamentally about pulling customers closer to the brand – through engagement, trust, and consistent, meaningful interactions. Engagement drives everything. It leads to better retention, more growth, stronger relationships, and greater internal alignment.

We have a direct impact on customer success and the wider organization. Now it’s up to us to claim that impact and continue showing the value we bring.

This article was taken from Rob's appearance at the virtual Customer Marketing Summit in October 2023. You can watch all the recordings of our past event talks when you become a Pro CMA member.