How To Develop A Scalable Customer Advocacy Program

AA Season 3 Ep. 16 Kevin Lau Audio Only
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[00:00:00] Stephanie Liu: According to Social Toaster on average, brands generate a 650% ROI for every dollar invested in influencer and advocacy marketing. And yet, the vast majority of brands and agencies today still don’t have a customer advocacy program. We all know that word of mouth is the most powerful marketing channel, but how do you leverage and scale that?

And what if you want to start and manage customer marketing programs for your agency clients? Friends. That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Agency Accelerated

Welcome back to Agency Accelerated, the show for [00:01:00] agencies who want to get bigger. Stick with us to learn how you can simplify your growth strategy with practical tips from the marketing pros. I’m Stephanie Liu and I’m here in sunny San Diego. Those of you watching live right now, let us know where you’re tuning in from the comments.

Yeah. So leave a comment, let us know where you’re tuning in from and PS, by the way, if you’re watching the replay, leave the comment #replay, and we’ll definitely reach out. So for those of you who watch and engage live here, as a reminder, this is a really great opportunity for you to get your questions answered in real time.

Now we’re live every other Wednesday at 2:00 PM Eastern time, 11:00 AM Pacific time on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and of course, LinkedIn. Make sure you head on over to agorapulse.com/calendar and subscribe so you don’t miss any episode and remember to stay until the very end because you’ll get a chance to get your [00:02:00] hands on a creative way to grow and scale your marketing agencies.

So shout out to Carrie for being here. Good afternoon, friends and nice to see you. So today we’re diving into the topic of customer advocacy. Many of you might be wondering, what that even means and how it applies to agencies? Trust me on this by the end of today’s show, you’re going to appreciate just how important customer advocacy is.

So let me give you one example. Back in season one, we had Benedict Stohr from Squarelovin on the show to talk about UGC, user generated content. And what we realize is that 84% of consumers say they trust peer recommendations above all other sources of advertising. But it’s one thing to want your customers to talk about your brand and then it’s another thing to encourage it and foster the kinds of relationship that you would make customers want to rave about you. So whether you’re looking to develop a program for your own agency [00:03:00] or on behalf of your clients, there’s going to be a lot of work to be done. And that’s exactly what our guest today is going to talk to us about.

Kevin Lau is the Global Head of Customer Advocacy at Adobe, where he’s developed customer advocacy and retention strategies to drive brand loyalty, customer thought leadership and customer evangelism. He’s had over 12 years of experience as an industry thought leader in customer advocacy, lifecycle marketing and digital marketing.

His achievements include influencing hundreds of millions from advocacy programs, increasing customer engagements and maximizing retention rates by over 90%. Kevin was recently named the number one customer marketing and advocacy influencer. So you can see why we’re so pleased to have him with us today.

Awesome. Hey, Kevin, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Of course. It’s not that often that I get another guest from San Diego [00:04:00] to be on the show. Whenever I say, oh, hey, it’s Stephanie from sunny San Diego. And then someone tells me like, oh we’re in St. Louis and it’s 19 degrees. I’m like, oh, okay.

I love it. All right, Kevin. So tell us a little bit about your role at Adobe and help our viewers understand what customer advocacy means to you.

[00:04:22] Kevin Lau: Sure. So I’ve been at Adobe now for a little bit over five years. I actually came from the Marketo position a couple of years back. So I was really deep in all things kind of marketing automation, building scale, how to engage and nurture your customers. And when we actually think about what customer actually means to us, it’s really about how do we turn our customers that raving fans of Adobe products and solutions. And so we have built out a center of excellence around all things, customer engagement, and influencing.

What does that dream look like from the time that they sign? The paperwork on the dotted line to becoming a [00:05:00] user? So at the time that they have a road map conversation with our Adobe account teams and making sure that we, surprise and delight them throughout that process.

[00:05:08] Stephanie Liu: Oh, I love the surprise and delight process because there’s nothing like when you’re an agency and you sign up a SaaS platform and you have the salesperson, that’s super excited to solve your problems and all the different things.

And then all of a sudden you sign on the dotted line and they’re like, poof gone.

I love it. So what do you think customer advocacy is important, particularly from the perspective of a marketing agency?

[00:05:36] Kevin Lau: Yeah, I actually got my first start in the social media world and actually as a consultant to many agency, and I would say, especially if you’re trying to build up your clientele, you’re trying to create an image that you’re larger than life. I think this is a great opportunity to actually think about who are your die hard customers, the folks that [00:06:00] you can rely on pretty heavily to help advocate on your behalf. And it doesn’t have to be an amazing getting thousands of people to write great reviews about you.

It can really just be a handful of some of your top customers and treating them as VIP’s and giving them the tools and resources to help talk about your company, your brand and your solution. And so I think it can start off very similar to how, if you’re running social marketing campaigns, it’s really focused on surprise and delight.

It’s activating those users to help you with maybe a launch or an initiative that you’re running throughout the year. We’ll tie up a little bit more detail about what does it actually look like. There’s some kinds of things to, to create those light bulb moments in your eyes about how you could leverage advocates in your company.

[00:06:49] Stephanie Liu: I love that. As someone who livestreams a lot, whenever one of my favorite platforms, they reach out and hey, do you want to be a beta tester? [00:07:00] First look. You and I both know this is, just being like. I do Marvel and Star Wars and all the different things. But when you have the first peek, right?

Like the first trailer and you get to see all the cool things. That’s awesome. That to me is like the VIP. Roll out the red carpet, it’s like, hey, look at me now. It makes it really fun. So, Kevin. If I have a marketing agency or even a SaaS company, and there’s no existing customer advocacy program or processes, how do you recommend I get started for myself or just even on behalf of my clients, if they don’t have the built-in audience right now?

[00:07:39] Kevin Lau: There’s a couple of things you could do. One of them in particular is actually just talk to your customers, find out what are the actual potential gaps to helping them see value?

What are some things that they could have learned initially? And just do these sort of brainstorming sessions with maybe four or five customers that you [00:08:00] work with day in, day out. Ask them, what was your onboarding experience? Ask them for candid feedback and think about how

anytime you have a new customer joining you or user centered solution or technology, how can you make it slightly better incrementally? It doesn’t have to be world’s better, do small things that are gonna make a big impact. I think the other side of the too is almost think of them as if you’re building a sort of like your board of advisors and you want the heavy hitters that are going to bring the best feedback that are gonna help you build your personal brand reputation, but at the same time, what’s also new for them. And so thinking about like, how can it positively impact their own careers and their own branding and the process, so it becomes like a win-win situation.

[00:08:47] Stephanie Liu: I love that you mentioned that as far as letting them know what the expectations are.

Because let’s say if you’re a company just starting out and you do want to leverage ambassadors and develop a customer [00:09:00] advocacy program, would you say that it’s best to have everything outlined and expectations, or is it something that you could build with your ambassadors along the way?

[00:09:10] Kevin Lau: Yeah, it’s definitely tends to be like a fluid process and no companies can operate exactly the same as everyone else.

And so I think depending on what your particular niche is or who your target audience is, it’s going to change. Right? Like from an Adobe standpoint, we’re very focused on enterprise organizations that are going through this whole like digital transformation effort. But if you’re an agency that’s servicing, let’s say, the restaurant audience, and you’re trying to help them bring more business into their stores and repeat business. You might think about things like how could you create like VIP experiences where you have different types of rewards and recognitions to get people to come back to your store.

You could talk to some of the top customers that come back every month and maybe put together like a small [00:10:00] surprise and delight moment where, you give them a discount and give them like their favorite cupcake or whatever, when they come to the store. Things like that, that don’t really take up additional time, but it shows really that you care about that customer and you want to ensure that they continue to go back to your store.

[00:10:17] Stephanie Liu: I love that. You’re familiar with little Italy in San Diego, you’ve been there before? Yeah. Some of the best restaurants there. And not only that though, but coffee and baristas. And so our agency was located in little Italy. And I kid you not, every morning, my best friend and I, we would walk across the street as part of like our morning walking meetings, we would go to Papa Leko, have you been there?

[00:10:42] Kevin Lau: I have not.

[00:10:44] Stephanie Liu: You got to go. Yeah. You got to go with the fam. And so we would walk into Papa Leko and I would order my croissant and my soy vanilla latte. But before I would order, Kevin, they would always say, Ciao Bella, how are you? And I was like, [00:11:00] oh. My day couldn’t go on until I had that surprise and delight.

And so when you’re talking about creating these VIP experiences where they know who you are, and there are times when I went on vacation and they’re like, where have you been? And I was like, oh.

And that reminds me, let’s go get some Papa Leko. So hey friend, if you’re just tuning in, we’re talking about marketing agencies and we’re talking about how marketing agencies can be much more effective and empowering in working with their customers and their clients’ customers, but first, here’s a quick story about how one relationship marketing agency has been able to grow with the help of Agorapulse.

[00:11:45] N/A: Hi, I’m Jessica Phillips with Now Marketing Group. We’re a relationship marketing agency, works with clients across the US and abroad, and we help them maximize repeat and referral business. So reducing churn, keeping that customer for the [00:12:00] longterm. Yeah. So it’s not just me. It’s me and a team of account managers that are working with several brands.

And they’re helping them maximize the opportunities on social media. And we needed a tool that would allow us to schedule some of the day-to-day posts and then give us more time for engagement and the real time content that we want to push out. So we needed a tool that could help us both with maximizing the scheduling, knowing the times to post, but then also for us, and doing our due diligence and telling the clients how it’s working a reporting tool that we could give back to them and say, here’s where, you’re getting your value.

Here’s the kinds of content that’s working. And in a way that made sense to them because some of the jargon that using insights doesn’t make sense. So something that was like appealing and good to look at, that was in graph form, that they could see how their social media ROI is performing.

We are using like 4 and 5 tools at times to get it all done, so to speak. So it was very challenging. One would change and then you have to learn it again. And we’re using one for the reporting, one for [00:13:00] scheduling, another one for a monitoring, and then one for our, keeping content notes on the customer.

So it became really challenging. We were trying to try out several different platforms. And when I heard about Agorapulse, I was like, yeah, I’ll give it a try, but I was not helpful at first because I just heard all the promises before, until I did the 30 day trial. And then, fell in love with it. Like we were able to cancel all the other tools that we’re using, moved all of our clients over there.

They worked with us, they helped train us on how to get everything up and going. And we were able to cancel out all the other tools that, we didn’t need anymore. So it saved us a lot of time and a lot of headache for my team members as are, now they only have one tool that they could maximize their clients.

[00:13:42] Stephanie Liu: Now, if you’d like to learn more about how Agorapulse helps thousands of agencies grow and scale their business, head over to bit.ly/AdAgencyRevenue. Now let’s get back to your agency with Adobe’s Kevin Lau. All right, Kevin, come back. Let’s see you. All right. So, Kevin, one topic I’ve seen you talk [00:14:00] about is how to engage users throughout the entire customer journey. So can you tell us a little bit about that and how social media plays a role in it?

[00:14:09] Kevin Lau: Yeah, so it’s definitely a big thing. I mentioned a little bit at the beginning of the podcast where you have a customer that actually signs the dotted line. They go through the onboarding experience.

And then they have different engagements with their account teams. And then ultimately they decided to renew with you, especially if you’re a SaaS organization. When I think about like customer engagement and what does that actually look like from start to finish? I think it focuses around like the pillars of what customer access is all about. So one of it is, how can you get your time to value with your customers, to a point where they start to see immediate return on investment within their first 30, 60, 90 days. Typically you think of that as like the window when the most active, the most engaged are you using your product day in and day out.

And so you give them the tips and strategies to help them along that path and see [00:15:00] success right out of the gate. I also try to map three areas of focus when I’m engaging customers, regardless of what size organization they are. It comes down to how could we really wrap our arms around them so that they feel like they’re validated, they are appreciated.

They want to continue to engage with them and give them opportunities throughout that process throughout that business relationship, is it boils down to a couple of years. One of them is personal branding. So how is it, how are we creating like win-win situations where we’re leveraging them to help us with thought leadership content or posting stuff on social, how are they using our solution from a tips and strategy standpoint, and how are they actually learning from it now also helping educate others. So that’s about creating user generated content that’s going to essentially serve both purposes. It’s branding themselves as an expert using our technology that also shows them that they really know their chops and they’re doing well.

The second one is all about like facilitating or like peer networking [00:16:00] engagements. So typically when you’re working with a customer, they want to learn from someone else. And so we connect the dots and be that facilitator. So being that user where you can connect your customer to another customer, that’s using your technology and they can have those conversations outside of Adobe, facilitating it, but really giving those customers a chance to kind of network with each other, talk shop, learn about technology a little bit more and the different use cases. And then the third one is really about rewards and recognition. And this is big, especially in the social space. It’s really about, it could be small things like tagging a customer with their name on Twitter or LinkedIn giving them a spotlight where it features their headshot or just giving them a call out that says hey, this such-and-such customer is like a VIP and the database amazing stuff. So those are a couple things that kind of help you think about the customer journey and how to influence it from a social standpoint.

[00:16:54] Stephanie Liu: I love all of those three key points. And as you were describing them, I was thinking of one of our past [00:17:00] guests that was on the on Agency Accelerated. It’s Katie Fox from the E-camm Network.

And they’ve done some amazing things as far as fostering and developing their community. They have a very active Facebook group. And so when you’re talking about having peers teach each other. They do that, and someone’s hey, how do I get my e-comm to go into zoom? Because I want to use my virtual camera and they figure it out.

And it’s so amazing to see that. Not only that though, but E-camm also works with influencers, these content creators, right? Cause they’re live streaming, they’re podcasting, they’re Youtubers and whatnot. And so often, I see them in their editorial calendars build out to ah, oh my God, check out. Kevin’s studio . Look what he did. He just leveled up how and how he’s using this particular software. And I thought that was really cool. And the way that you framed it in those key three points, I was like, Katie, you’re crushing it. You’re doing it. And so I love that you map that out for everyone.

[00:17:55] Kevin Lau: They don’t have to be huge activations that are going to cost [00:18:00] tons of money. These could actually literally happen. And, you mentioned Facebook groups, we’re very active in Slack channels could even just be like Twitter conversations that are happening real time where, people’s may, at the end of the day, they want to feel included.

And they want to feel that they’re part of a movement. This goes pretty much hand-in-hand with the social all the time. It’s right. It’s the folks that are part of the VIP experience and there’s the folks that are looking in and they’re observing and they’re thinking about like, how can I be that next, the thought leader or that next user for Agorapulse as an example, and how can I build that reputation with that brand and that agency?

[00:18:36] Stephanie Liu: Love it. So Kevin, once we have buy-in on the idea of customer marketing and advocacy, as marketers, how do we build programs that are scalable and repeatable? Because I think when you’re first starting out and you’re like, okay, I’ve got time in my day. I could block it out of my calendar.

What do you do now when you’re like, oh, there’s 50 of them or a hundred. And it grows. How do you make that [00:19:00] scalable and repeatable?

[00:19:01] Kevin Lau: Yeah. So there’s a couple of ways you can think about it. One of them is in particular, if the end goal is to scale this to thousands of users, I would really think about the foundation work and they initially connect with each other.

So if you have some type of community or online forum where they can just talk shop, have conversation, whether that’s a Facebook group, a Slack channel. It could also be a, literally an outlet for them. Like we actually use Coras as one of our technologies to do that. And then from there, in other ways, actually identify the folks that are really volunteering their time pretty heavily and tap them on the shoulder and ask them to be like a top contributor or like a more dedicated brand ambassador and give them a little bit more of an elevated experience.

So for example, you can give them different incentives or rewards, as mentioned earlier, to make it worth their time. So whether it’s being, access to your solution, full stop, maybe giving it to them for free or a discount, maybe [00:20:00] giving them extra swag, like whether it’s like personal branding.

And we do that quite a bit. If it all will be from time to time, just giving them access to certain teams. So from our stand point, it’s talking to our product teams that are very technical talking about the roadmap on like having access to make decisions and giving feedback on what is the technology’s future going to look like?

It was just a couple of things you could do to help scale.

[00:20:25] Stephanie Liu: I love that idea of having your advocates in a group or have some type of quarterly meeting where you’re saying, okay, tell us how you’re using the product, what’s worked for you, what hasn’t worked for you. Are there any features that you would absolutely love to have and then really just share that product roadmap so they could start thinking about, okay, then I want to test this out.

Or if I already have an onboarding process or a framework, let’s test this next campaign and then we’ll give you feedback for it. So that’s a really cool way to look at it. Awesome. So Agency Accelerated friends are [00:21:00] getting close to wrapping things up with Kevin. So if you’ve got questions, now’s the time to go ahead and drop them in the comments.

And you already know that I’ve got one more question on my own. You don’t want to miss it because when we talk about like customer advocacy and all the things, I definitely want to make sure that you grab notes too. PS, by the way, our producer put in the comments, Kevin, he said at the end of the day, people want to feel included.

And that is so true. Everyone is craving a sense of belongingness. And I think even now when so many of us are far apart, where we can’t travel, we’re working remotely and all of those different things. If we’re trying to streamline our workflow process or find solutions to the certain pain points that we have, if we could be a part of a Slack or Discord or whatever that is to really voice our opinion and get feedback, that’s always going to be helpful.

How do you actually measure the impact of customer programs like this? So if we’re surprising, delighting customers having these [00:22:00] focus groups and whatnot, how do you go back to the C-level executive team and say, this is working. Let’s invest more into this initiative.

[00:22:08] Kevin Lau: Yeah. So this is always like the hot button topic of discussion.

And part of it is looking at, essentially like the programs that are running today. At Adobe, we run probably seven to eight different programs that are designed around recognition, customer rewards, customer satisfaction. And so you can actually look at the data. We look at integrating different technologies that look at everything from attendance and meetings.

Attendance for say, user group. Attendance for a webinar or attending like our larger conferences. And also, what is the influence that some of our advocates have when it actually translates into driving new businesses for us? So typically, this is no surprise that if a happy customer is excited, they want to use your technology every day and they’re happy to refer four or five of their friends and that actually drives net new business. That’s definitely a positive [00:23:00] influence of how we’re actually driving new net, new logos and acquisition, but also at the same point, even more important is customer retention. And so when we think about how are we actually ensuring that a customer wants to stay with us long term, it’s probably also no surprise that a customer that has bought for you one time, it’s a lot easier to continue to work with them month after month and sell them what these new products or new solutions down the road, as opposed to find, trying to acquire a new customer. And so we actually try to serve up a lot of those different data points and different types of dashboards that we send to our VPs and our executives to actually show them what’s the real value of customer marketing or customer advocacy. That’s actually driving progression for the business.

[00:23:47] Stephanie Liu: That to me is fascinating because it’s true. When you acquire one customer and you focus so much on retention, there’s that lifetime value for that particular client, but not only that though, but [00:24:00] they’re advocating on your behalf.

And we talk a lot about in the marketing world, the paid, owned and earned media and advocacy in and of itself. That’s them seeing it in their own words. That’s them going out to their particular niche and translating the business product details in a way that really connects with their audience and tells a story.

Thank you so much, Kevin, this has been such a fun interview. I love geeking out. So Kevin, can you tell folks where they can connect with you and learn more from you?

[00:24:32] Kevin Lau: Sure. So I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, Twitter. You’re more than happy to just add me as a friend, happy to chat further. If you have a specific use case, I’m also happy to do more of a one-on-one conversation, help you with your particular situation.

[00:24:47] Stephanie Liu: That’s awesome. See, I’m telling you Agency Accelerated. We have the best connections here, and I’ve always said this before. There are resources in relationships. So start building them now. As you heard [00:25:00] from Kevin, find him on LinkedIn or find him on Twitter. And with that said, that’s all that we have for today.

In our next episode, we’ll be talking to David Fisher to help agencies better leverage LinkedIn for sales and then, our very own Head of Agency Business for Agorapulse, teresa Anderson, will be joining the show. Now, if there’s a particular topic that you’d like us to cover, right? Example, customer advocacy.

If there’s something that you want us to cover in detail, or if there’s someone that you would love to have on the show, head on over to AgencyAccelerated.Live and drop us a note. Let me know who you’re interested to learn from, and we’ll have our producer go out and pitch them. Yes. Absolutely. We’d love to hear from you.

Now, I’ll see your agency accelerating into the [00:26:00] next show[00:27:00]