Why Customer Advocacy Should Be at The Heart of Your Marketing with Mark Organ, CEO of Influitive

Are you connecting with and empowering your customer advocates?
If not, you should. Here’s why.


Customer advocacy marketing programs help you increase revenue by
improving customer acquisition and retention (and they’re also
your best source of leads).


How? Because you’re helping to motivate happy customers to speak
about you positively to others. And delighted customers are your
most powerful hidden sales force.


For example, in 2016, IDC research found that only 10% B2B
companies surveyed had a customer advocacy program in place. This
year, “The Role of Marketing in Customer Advocacy”
report found that has increased to 67%, which is a 570% increase.


That’s why I interviewed Mark Organ (@markorgan). Mark is the
Founder and CEO of Influitive, and he’s been a thought leader in
the space of sales and marketing technology, a real innovator.
I’m excited to bring his thinking to you on customer advocacy.
Tell us a little bit about your background and what
inspired you to start Influitive?

Mark: Yeah, thanks. I’m really excited to be here, Brian. I think
this is an amazing podcast, and I’m excited to share my story.
I’ve lived several lives already. One of them, before I started
Eloqua in 2000, was as a research scientist. I was actually a
Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Northwestern University in
Chicago.


I was really fascinated by how the brain works and what were the
biological bases of behavior. It was fascinating for me. Although
research, while fascinating, has some challenges concerning it,
especially getting paid well. I also wanted to spend more time
with my wife, so I left the research world to get into the
business world and joined Bain & Company as a management
consultant; from there, I started Eloqua.


The other big thread in my life other than being a scientist was
being an entrepreneur. I started companies even as a teenager, as
far back as age 13. I’ve always been really fascinated with
working for myself and satisfying customers.


Really, I think now I’m bringing both of those together in my
company where I still feel like I’m a scientist. I still feel
like I’m trying to discover what makes human beings really work
and tick, but also being an entrepreneur, building software for
marketers, and leveraging the understanding of people and what
drives them.


Regarding what motivated me to start Influitive – we’re an
advocate marketing software company. So we believe that the
future belongs to companies who, as opposed to marketing
directly, do a better job of discovering and nurturing, and
mobilizing their customers to do the marketing for them.


We think the future is for companies to get their customers to do
the sales and marketing. We built some software for discovering,
nurturing, and mobilizing advocates.


I got the idea while I was at Eloqua. It was 2005, and great VC
convinced me to spend a couple of weeks out in the field to
understand how and why people bought my software. What I learned
was when we sold software efficiently, it was because there was
tons of this advocacy involved. There were multiple referrals on
the way in. Many case studies were relevant on the website, the
best references, and those prospects went very quickly.


At the time, Eloqua was a bootstrap startup, so selling our
software quickly was super important. I got really excited about
this idea of advocacy, but it turns it was way harder than I
thought to generate consistent advocacy. That’s because we didn’t
actually understand what motivated the advocates.


I really wanted to understand better what motivated the
advocates. Through some interviews and lots of other things like
that, I began to figure out what drove advocacy. Unfortunately, I
couldn’t work on that when I was at Eloqua, but when I had a
chance to transition out, I had an opportunity to work on it at
Influitive.
What are some of the lessons you’ve learned about
building a company with the customer at the heart of your
business?

Brian: That’s really cool just hearing how you brought together
the two worlds as the scientist to understand what motivates
people and then putting in a way that you’re able to help people.
I’d love to hear some of the lessons you’ve learned about
building a company where from the beginning, the customer is at
the heart of your business model.


Mark: I’ve learned a lot just about how to build a company.
Regarding putting customers at the heart of your business model,
one of the things I learned the hard way, coming from Eloqua, was
how important the employee experience is.


One of the big differences between the two companies is that
while I was at Eloqua, I was very obsessed with what we called
our True North, which was measurable value to the customer, and
that’s a pretty good thing to obsess about.


If you are making your customer money every day, you’re likely to
have some success. Still, one big change that I made at
Influitive was really treating my employees as my primary
customer, making sure that I was providing the best possible
experience for them.


There is so much money available for companies to generate growth
and generate an efficient business model. The people who create
that efficient business model and that growth are our people.
Talent is a scarce resource today.


That’s a big fundamental shift for me, and honestly, I think it
mirrors a significant shift even in the marketplace. If companies
today don’t treat their employees as their primary customers, the
future will not look too bright for them. That’s one key thing
that I learned regarding building a company.


We built our software came from the knowledge that I gained from
interviewing hundreds of super advocates. Literally,
understanding people who might generate several referrals a
quarter and be available for references on demand and love to
speak on stage for you…all those active advocates that all of us
really depend on.


None of us can build a successful business without our customers
doing that sales and marketing for us. Our lifetime value of the
customer and customer acquisition cost would be entirely out of
whack if we didn’t have that working in our favor. There were
some things that I’ve learned about that.
Three important things about customer advocacy

On the macro level, there are three things that I’ve learned that
are really important.


The first was that people advocate more when they feel like their
part of an exclusive tribe, like when they belong to something
bigger than themselves, then that’s when you see a lot more
advocacy.


For example, you can see that at a sporting event. When you go to
your local stadium, you’ll find people whose faces are painted in
the team’s colors. Why do they do that? Well, they do that
because they want to belong to something bigger. They want to be
part of an exclusive tribe.


That’s what we found. When companies do advocacy programs, if
they can give it the right name and the right feel and the right
brand and really make people feel special and exclusive, you get
a lot more advocacy. That’s the first thing.


Second, we learned that people want to be able to experience the
impact they made on a company. I learned this firsthand. As part
of foundational learning for starting my company, one of the
things that I was excited to do was learn Mandarin Chinese. I
thought it would be a cool thing to do.


I learned to speak enough Chinese with this amazing product that,
after six months, I was able to have a meeting in China without
an interpreter. It was a pretty amazing experience. I used this
product called ChinesePod.com and what I found was that (you can
see now, I’m still advocating for it) my advocacy really waned
over time, and it was because I wasn’t really feeling the impact
I was making on the company.


I didn’t know what the results were of the referrals that I made
as an example.


We’ve learned that if you give advocates feedback, they respond
better.


If you let people know the impact of those referrals that they’ve
made if you let people know if they’ve written a guest blog post
or been on a podcast, just like this, how many hits did that
podcast get?


Did they get a thumbs up?


Those sorts of things generate a lot more advocacy because people
are getting that feedback.


The third is social capital. If people are experiencing benefits
in their life, their career as a result of the advocacy they are
making, they are going to do a lot more of that.


Those are three sorts of social/psychological things that I
learned were really important in generating a lot of advocacy.
Then, the micro-level makes it easy, making it fun, making it
more rewarding.


For example, a lot of games do that. They build things to make it
more addictive, all work. We’ve bottled all that, and we’ve put
that into our product so that you’ve got that exclusive tribe,
the people are getting feedback, they’re getting social capital,
and they make it “game-ified” and fun, so that people want to
come back in again and again. It really works.


We’ve now come to the point where I think that we’re building
something that will become a new standard for how companies go to
market by putting their customers at the heart of the way they go
to market.


Brian: That’s really cool.
How important are customer advocates, and why should we
create or be involved in their community?

Mark: Here’s one of the things that I’ve seen, especially lately.
Maybe it’s because I’m running a company that’s all about
advocacy, but the industry leaders in almost every sector are
also the advocacy leaders.


Like for example, Tesla in cars. Tesla’s market cap is equivalent
to, I think, nearly all the other car companies combined at this
point or very close to it. I’m thinking, why is that? They are
also an advocacy leader. They don’t have any commissioned
salespeople. They don’t do traditional marketing. All their
marketing is done really through their own customers.


The impact of that is just incredible because you’ve got this
massive unpaid sales force that’s way more efficient than any
sales force that you hired could be.


Brian: Right.


Mark: The other thing that we’ve learned is that advocacy is kind
of like a beneficial virus. For example, a company built with
advocacy, which has a lot of advocacy, and those who become a new
customer because an advocate recommended them, they, themselves,
are much more likely to advocate. Essentially, there is a culture
of advocacy around these companies.


These companies rocket up to being industry leaders. They are so
much more efficient regarding their sales and marketing, and
they’ve got the culture that keeps this sort of positive feedback
group happening, which I think is really exciting. We see that
with a lot of our customers, they’re industry leaders.


So many of our startup customers have gone public (i.e.,
MuleSoft), or there are so many of them that have gone public, or
they’re industry leaders like Oracle or SalesForce, IBM. I think
they do well because of this financial power of having a large
unpaid army of advocates.


It feels amazing to work for companies that have a lot of
customer advocacy. It gives you that sense of purpose, like, I
know why I’m here. We’re adding real value. Look at all these
customers we’re delighting, but they are helping us grow.


It’s such an empowering, exciting thing to be a part of. I think
the most important thing entrepreneurs can do to build advocates
and mobilize them. Now, also have a fantastic product and
terrific service, but we don’t actually get involved in that
area. We actually only work with companies that have a great
product, and that’s because we’ve learned the hard way that our
product works really well for companies that are already
delighting customers.


Early in our history, we had a couple of customers who, frankly,
we’re not doing a great job, but they might have had a handful of
happy customers. And they wanted us to help give them a megaphone
to mostly make it look like they had that kind of advocacy even
if they didn’t.


Honestly, we’ve learned that’s not a good business skill. We tend
to work with companies that already do an excellent job
delighting customers, making sure they win. It feels like we are
really doing good for the world because we’re helping the good
guys win.


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Brian: I appreciate you saying that. This is going to segue us
into talking a little bit about empathy. Often in marketing and
sales, it had been outside-in, and what I hear from you is, no,
it’s from the inside out. It needs to be authentic. You connect
with your employees.


As you know, I’ve been doing some work in empathy-based marketing
and selling and how it can help us connect with our customers and
create better results.
How can empathy and advocacy based-marketing connect
and help empower companies?

Mark: I love this work you are doing on empathy. As an
entrepreneur, with every year that goes by, I realize that it’s
the number one skill, I think, that business leaders need to
develop to win.


Often it’s thought of in an employee context for sure. For
example, I’ve worked with a coach for the last three or four
years, namely developing my skills as a leader, which includes
being more empathetic. Meaning truly and deeply understanding my
employees and, in particular, feeling what they are feeling, but
it extends way beyond employees.


That is why I love the work you are doing about being empathetic
for companies and understanding their experience. In fact, this
whole business that I’m doing came from empathy in the beginning
because it was all about understanding the most desirable buying
process for someone to go through.


Brian: Yes.


Mark: If you think about the last amazing buying experience
you’ve had for something that wasn’t just a commodity, but
something you had to think about, really. The chances are that
process you went through had some trusted people, whether those
were other customers you trusted or that salesperson you worked
with did such a good job that you truly and deeply trusted that
person. You trusted this individual had your best interest in
their heart.


The chances are that trust and that transparency were just
completely interwoven in that buying process you had.


That’s what I learned when I was at Eloqua and trying to figure
what was going on that some of these prospects bought in four
days instead of four months?


That experience had tons of advocacy all over it. People talk
about customer experience all the time. I’m not sure some people
even know what it means.


To me, customer experience is all about feelings. It’s all about
the way people feel at different parts of their journey with you.
So if we want to make people feel great, if we want to make
people feel like there’s trust, then you’ve got to infuse that
buying process with the power of authenticity, authentic other
customers. There’s an intersection right there.


If you care about your buyer, if you care about their experience
and want them to feel great when working with you, you should
probably talk less as a salesperson and as a marketer. And have
more of their trusted, relevant peers do the talking for you, not
because it’s more effective, but because they like it. That’s the
experience that they really want more than anything. I think
there is a massive overlap between the ideas of empathy and
advocacy.


Brian: I love that, and I agree with this as I’ve researched
understanding this perspective and thinking of customers and how
they are feeling. Do they want to know how you’ve helped people
like me? What has worked for others in my field, and how can I
get better doing what I’m doing? Because there is that authentic
someone who’s been in my space or experience.


I just wanted to talk about some actual tips you might have for
our listeners today who feel inspired. They realize they have
advocates right now. They may not have even used that term. I
love the word advocate and what it means.
How can marketers start identifying and better
supporting their customer advocates?  

Mark: That’s a great question. We’ve produced an interesting
piece of software to help mobilize advocates at scale, but it
doesn’t mean you have to do that. Really, every company in the
world should be doing advocate marketing, and it may be as simple
as just having a meal a couple of times a year with some of your
best customers. There’s really no agenda there other than to get
people together and to ask how to improve and maybe share a
little bit about where you’re going as a company. That alone can
cost very little.


We have these dinners all the time, and they cost $1,000 to get
eight people together at a nice restaurant and have a small
boutique meal, and wow, it just makes a big impact. Because those
people are your best customers, they want to affect your company,
right?


They want to help shape your company. In some cases, they may
already feel like they are more a part of your business than
their company because they believe so passionately in your idea.
Giving them an exclusive tribe and saying, hey, this dinner is
not just for any one of our customers.


It’s for our most special customers. Not because you buy a lot
from us either, by the way. It’s not about purchasing. It’s
because you get it. It’s because you believe, and we think that
your ideas are leading edge and will be ones that everyone else
is going to subscribe to, so we want to spend more time listening
to you. We want to take care of you. That message will always be
well received. It’s very inexpensive, and it’s got a very high
ROI. Just beginning there is a great place to start.


I know many companies are already doing that before we start
talking to them, and they have people believe in advocacy, and it
appeals to them.


The next step is to centralize your advocacy with a single person
doing the talking. Many of the companies we work with before we
started working with them had four or five different people in
their organization who are all doing little bits and pieces of
advocacy in their own way.


You might have one person in charge of referrals, another person
in charge of talking to customers. The problem there is you’re
really missing out on a lot of potential advocacy. That same
person that can be a reference for you is also willing to speak
on stage.


If you have a point person in charge of advocacy for your
company, you’ll get a lot more, three or four times as much,
without spending any more money. In fact, you could actually end
up saving a lot of time, money, and frustration because you
centralize that process.


Again, that’s actually a very empathetic thing, right? Because
what you’re saying is: you know what I care about more than the
types of things that advocates do? We care about the advocates
themselves. We actually care about people. We care about their
experience. We want their experience to be great.


By having a single person in your company in charge of that, I
think that shows a lot of respect and appreciation for these very
important people. If you just do those two things alone without
buying any fancy software, you’ll get a lot more of this very
valuable advocacy for your company, and it could be quite
transformational. Then, maybe you’ll be ready to have a really
scaled-up advocacy program, and that’s what we do at Influitive.


We create communities where there are some virtual places on the
internet and on mobile where you can invite your advocates in,
make them feel like a million bucks, let them know how they can
help you, and get them to interact with each other. We have about
300 great companies that are doing that. They are enjoying the
experience, but there again, you don’t have to do anything fancy.
Just get people together and show some appreciation. You’ll get a
lot of value out of it.


Brian: That’s terrific, Mark, and thank you for the action
points. I was going to ask you one last question before we close.
What’s the question you wished I asked but haven’t yet?


Mark: Maybe something about the future? Often a good one is to
bring out the crystal ball and see what we see in the future of
marketing and that sort of thing.


Brian: That would be great.
What do you see in the future for B2B marketing or
selling macro trends?

Mark: Something that I’ve alluded to in this conversation was
around the “whys” of customer experience, and the role marketing
will have played in customer experience. One of the things you’ll
notice, some of the best companies we have, particularly in the
west, are obsessed with customer experience.


I think you have more buyers inundated with emails and websites
and all sorts of stuff. Marketers will need to have some control
over the customer experience in the future because that is going
to be the main source of where their best leads are going to come
from and their ability to convert those leads.


We see with our customers, which tend to be on the leading edge
of the curve, where marketing and customer success are starting
to merge a little bit. It’s very analogous to how sales and
marketing began to come together in my Eloqua days, under the
idea of the standard definition of a lead.


Brian: Yes.


Mark: I have done sales and marketing stuff together, and you’ve
done a lot of writing on that. I’ve learned much from you over
the years on that. There is a similar thing that is happening
now. The customer success and marketing and product are coming
together to define the optimal customer experience, and that is a
big, big move.


Marketers who can get on that and understand this new language of
customer experience and drive it will do very well over the next
few years. I think that’s one big trend.


I do think that this idea of marketing by proxy is tremendous.
It’s a huge thing, and these are skills that most marketers do
not have today. Marketers now are good at running these
cross-functional, multimodal, nurturing-style campaigns to drive
leads and this sort of thing. The ability to do that has been
really dominant over the last 10 years.


That’s changing as buyers are becoming inundated with that stuff,
yet the ability to get others to do the marketing for you and
learn those skills will be pretty significant. Because there is
such little knowledge in this area, we actually have quite an
education effort.


You can go to Influitive.com and check out our resources page,
and there are lots of educational materials, as we are trying to
train this next generation of marketers to think this way.
Instead of thinking about how do, I bombard people to get my way?
It’s how to find the right individuals who are relevant and
trusted, and how do I get them to carry our message for me? I
think that’s going to be a big deal.


And thirdly, everyone is talking about machine learning and all
that these days, and I think it’s probably going to create just
as big an impact. I think AI machine learning is probably at the
very top of the high curve right now.


Brian: Right.


Mark: Three years from now, everyone will say, well, I don’t know
what that was all about, I guess that was all hyped up, but then
in ten years from now, people go wow, that really was a huge
change.


So I think it’s definitely worth tracking what’s going on in that
technology, and we’re certainly spending quite a bit of time
playing around with it here. Some of the things I see for
marketers, (and actually, there are a lot of sales professionals
who listen to your podcast) I think empathy is just as important
if not more so for sellers and so is advocacy, so is mobilizing
your proxies if you are in the sales profession as well. I think
there are a lot of parallels.
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