Traditional reference activities are becoming less effective. At HPE Software, we set out to attract our key customers and partners into an advocacy program by applying a four step targeted recruitment strategy. We grew our program from 50 to 2,500 highly involved advocates in just 18 months.

Nothing builds credibility faster with a customer than connecting them with one of their peers. Especially someone who has already received real business benefits from use of your products. However, many organizations rely on traditional reference programs to recruit and grow their reference community.

Recruitment is often done with the sales organization at the time a product purchase is made, but then these customers are typically put into a reference funnel where they wait…and wait…and wait. This leads to references who are either out of date, or ones who are not in the best position to speak on behalf of your company, when you need them the most.

CHALLENGE

As the Operations Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software's Customer Success group, I play a key role in connecting with our most strategic customers to ensure their success. It's all about "connecting the dots", bringing information and people together for everyone's success.

In order to build any successful reference program, our team felt it was critical to complement our existing strategies with targeted customer advocacy efforts. Our goal was to find the most effective way to build a network of customers willing to perform various reference activities, such as sharing personal stories, providing online reviews, and engaging on social media.

APPROACH

When we launched our advocate program in 2014, our strategy was to recruit our ideal customers. We implemented a 4-step process that started with the customers we knew the best, then extending to those outside of our "known" network. Here's how we grew from 50 to 2,500 customers in a little over a year.

Step 1: Start with Personal Relationships

Within the first 30 days, we were able to quickly identify the customers who were already advocating for HPE Software. We also looked internally at our own employees who had deep relationships with customers such as our Product Managers and Customer Success Managers. Reaching out those customers first, and tagging them as our first recruits, was a wise step because it helped to create a sustainable network of ambassadors to talk on our brands' behalf. These were employees and happy customers willing to go that extra mile to get the word out about the great work HPE Software was doing.

Step 2: Let the Community Recruit on Your Behalf

We managed our advocate community with Influitive's AdvocateHub. After we invited our partners and existing customers into an AdvocateHub, they then invited their peers and fellow employees. We made the experience engaging by creating challenges and contests within the program to get current customers actively recruiting new members. For example, we ran a contest for partners to recruit as many qualified customers as they could within a two week period, with prizes awarded at the end. Within 3 months we were adding an average of 100 new members per month into the program.

Step 3: Promote your Advocate Program

Once we had successfully recruited a respectable number of advocates into our community, we started to promote our program outside our network. We used external channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to advertise our advocacy program.

For example, when we reached our 1,000-member milestone we created an announcement on Linkedin and allowed our customers publicly comment on the benefits they were receiving from the program. Other customers responded positively to that announcement, leading to even further growth in our community. Essentially, our advocates were advocating not just for our products but for the advocacy program itself.

Step 4: Let the Data Complement Your Recruitment

We knew from the start that we had a rich set of data in our existing systems about our customers and their interactions. For example, our support systems track all customers who log support cases or have enhancements they would like to have developed. We reached out to the customers that we felt could gain the most benefit from being active in the community and allow their voices to be heard. It was an important tactic to include customers that could give use constructive feedback.

Only 18 months after kicking off the Advocacy Program, we successfully recruited 2,500 members willing to participate in reference activities and share their personal stories. 

Since launch, the advocate community has generated the following:

• Over 5,200 social media shares

• Close to 1,500 online posts

• Written over 60 online product reviews

• Generated more than 10 blog articles written by the community.

Additionally, we published the first e-book with content written entirely by our customers and partners.

3. RECOMMENDATIONS

Your customers want to share their experiences, and they see advocacy as an opportunity to be part of a community of like­-minded peers.


Every customer can be an advocate.

When you give happy customers the opportunity to speak on your behalf, you create a dialogue that improves customer service, your products, and ultimately, customer satisfaction. But don't limit

yourself to just happy customers. In some cases, customers who seem overly critical may be coming across that way just because they believe in what your company stands for and want you to succeed. 

If you get them in front of another customer, they may surprise you and turn out to be a great advocate for your products. The same caution goes with Net Promoter Scores (NPS). Don't assume that someone with a low NPS will be a poor advocate, or visa-versa. At the very least, your unhappy customers can be an important component of your advocacy program as they can provide specific feedback to improve your products.

The moral of that story is just don't assume that you already know your happiest customers. Sometimes the least likely candidate becomes a great resource for your advocacy program.

Focus on authorship.

We realized our program was a success when customers raised their hands to create content, and share personal stories about HPE Software without being prompted or asked. We create tweets and blog posts that customers are happy to share but it's so much more rewarding when we see our customers doing it on their own. 

In the end, we discovered that potential buyers placed a great deal more weight in content authored by their peers than from the company directly. To be truly successful in building a powerful advocacy program, you need to get to know your customers individually and keep them engaged. A great reference program is filled with leads that you can trust.