SaaS Customer Advocacy

There’s a difference between customer advocacy and collecting logos. Too many early stage SaaS companies still think the game is: ☑ Get a big name logo ☑ Put it on your homepage ☑ Job done (Dare I even say one of our competitors' site has quite a few logos that aren't their customers, some are even ours 🤷 ) ...and I think buyers are wising up to this... Same goes for influencers. If they’re not using the product or if they’re not mentioning you without being paid to, you’re not building brand. You’re renting inauthentic attention. At trumpet 🎺 we’ve started leaning heavily into real advocacy. The kind that isn’t bought, briefed or branded. What it looks like: → Users looping in colleagues offering great case studies → Our Slack channels getting DMs oh how users are getting results and telling us excitedly → Prospects mentioning us before we’ve even reached out → Champions posting about us unprompted on LinkedIn → Customers recording walkthroughs for their wider team → Referrals landing in our inbox with a one-line intro That’s the gold. It doesn’t just drive pipeline. It compounds. If you want to actually use advocacy beyond a throwaway customer quote on your site, here’s what we’ve found works: 🔁 Give them a reason to share. Make the product so damn useful (or delightful) they want to talk about it. Most advocacy is a reflection of product quality, not just marketing effort. 🧠 Involve them early. Co-create features, roadmap check-ins, share sneak previews. People advocate for what they help shape. 📦 Re-Package the advocacy. Turn casual quotes into killer social proof. That Slack comment? It can become a slide. That LinkedIn post? It can become an ad. But only if it’s genuine. 🙋 Celebrate the humans, not the logos. Spotlight your champions. Not the company they work for, but the person who took a bet on you. They’re the ones who’ll take you into their next company. We're not perfect at this yet - but it’s the main kind of “marketing” that doesn't need large budgets and that everyone can do. Logos are easy. Advocacy is earned.

Keep your $50 Amazon gift card. Your customers don't want it. They want a product experience worth talking about. Your customer success playbooks say to: ‣ Offer gift cards ‣ Create advocacy programs ‣ Send fancy swag ‣ Make it "quick and easy" Yet your advocacy metrics stay stubbornly low. Why? Because you're solving the wrong problem. The most successful CS teams I've worked with don't focus on getting testimonials. They focus on creating experiences worth testifying about. When customers genuinely value your solution, they'll advocate without incentives. When they don't, no amount of gift cards will change that. Think about it - when's the last time you enthusiastically gave a testimonial? Was it because someone offered you $50? Or was it because the product genuinely changed how you work? As CS leaders, we track NPS religiously but rarely ask: "Would I personally recommend this to a friend if I wasn't employed here?" Before building complex advocacy programs, ask: ‣ Are we creating "aha moments" that customers want to share? ‣ Do we solve problems in ways that make our champions look like heroes? ‣ Have we made our customers' lives measurably better in ways they can articulate? The best customer advocacy strategy isn't about streamlining the testimonial process. It's about delivering experiences so valuable that customers actively want others to know about them. No advocacy program can compensate for a mediocre customer experience.

Most SaaS companies still rely on static health scores. The problem? By the time they fire an alert, the customer is already halfway out the door. Instead of static scores, you need a health system — a framework that tracks signals, triggers alerts, and connects to action playbooks, in real time. A score tells you what. A system tells you when and how to act. When alerts are tied to signals and playbooks, your team moves from reactive firefighting to proactive engagement. That’s the difference between waiting for churn… and staying one step ahead of it. So how do you actually build one? It comes down to 5 practical steps. 1️⃣ Map the customer journey -> Define the key checkpoints: onboarding, first value, adoption, renewal prep, expansion. -> Write down what “healthy” looks like at each stage. 2️⃣ Define the right signals -> Leading indicators (daily usage, exec engagement, QBR attendance) → trigger early. -> Lagging indicators (NPS, renewal outcome) → track for context, not action. 3️⃣ Set up two types of alerts -> ✅ Milestone alerts – pre-scheduled based on the journey (e.g. Month 6 QBR, Year 1 ROI review). They keep customers moving forward. -> ⚠️ Risk alerts – event-driven, triggered by negative signals (e.g. drop in adoption, sponsor silence, high support escalations). They help you act before churn. 4️⃣ Link every alert to a playbook -> An alert without a clear next step is just noise. -> Decide: who acts, what they do, and by when. 5️⃣ Close the loop -> Track which alerts triggered, which actions were taken, and what changed. -> Refine thresholds and signals over time — let data make the system smarter. What’s the most valuable alert you’ve built into your CS process? I’m building a library of best-practice alerts to share in a future post. Drop your most valuable one below 👇 #CustomerSuccess #CustomerHealth #SaaS #AIinCustomerSuccess #ProactiveCS

Is your customer advocacy programmatic, or a collection of projects and campaigns? How many of the boxes can you check below? You wouldn’t bring in a string of short-term consultants to build lasting customer relationships — yet many companies relegate advocacy efforts to one-off initiatives tied to launches or quarterly targets. A thriving customer advocacy program demands committed professionals who understand relationship-building, content strategy, voice-of-the-customer insights, and long-term engagement — not just ad hoc execution. A programmatic approach to customer advocacy means: 🔲 Clear ownership: A dedicated Customer Advocacy Manager or senior leader responsible for program strategy and outcomes. 🔲 End-to-end integration: Advocacy touchpoints embedded across the customer lifecycle — from onboarding to renewal — and cross-functional coordination (sales, marketing, CS, product marketing). 🔲 Measurement and feedback loops: Tracking not just reference activity and content production, but also customer engagement, satisfaction, influence on pipeline, and advocate health. 🔲 Governance: Advocacy aligned with company goals, embedded in marketing and customer success planning, and visible on leadership dashboards. 🔲 Culture: A company-wide mindset that sees customers as partners and celebrates advocacy — reinforced through recognition programs, internal training, and leadership support. Customer advocacy maturity is when your program is seen as a strategic asset driving growth, retention, and brand trust. Companies must evolve toward advocacy as an enterprise capability, not just a marketing function.

Customer advocacy isn’t just a customer marketing function. It’s your most underutilized product marketing asset. After building advocacy programs at Docusign, HubSpot, and now InvoiceCloud, I’ve seen how customer proof becomes the bridge between what you say your product does and what prospects actually believe it can do for them. Here’s how advocacy powers product marketing 👇🏾 1️⃣ Customer stories validate your positioning Your messaging says your product solves X problem. A customer saying “This solved X for us” proves it. When product and advocacy teams align on which stories to tell, your positioning moves from compelling to credible. 2️⃣ Case studies drive adoption Buyers don’t just want to understand your product — they want to see themselves in it. Stories mapped to ICPs and use cases help them visualize success. That’s not just marketing. That’s adoption strategy. 3️⃣ Advocates are your competitive edge Features can be copied. Customer loyalty can’t. When you activate advocates at the right moments — launches, analyst briefings, competitive deals — you’re not just telling your story. You’re proving it through voices prospects already trust. 4️⃣ Alignment creates measurable impact The best advocacy programs don’t live in silos. They partner with Product Marketing on launches, with Sales on deal acceleration, with CS on expansion plays. When customer proof is embedded across your GTM motion, you can finally measure what matters: pipeline influence, deal velocity, win rates. Truth is — customer marketing and product marketing aren’t separate functions. They’re two sides of the same growth strategy. The companies that get this right? They’re the ones turning customers into their most powerful growth engine. #CustomerMarketing #ProductMarketing #CustomerAdvocacy #CustomerStories #B2BMarketing #MarketingStrategy #GrowthLeadership #SaaSMarketing

100% of my customers in EMEA are advocates 💃🏾 How’d I do it? Assumptive Advocacy 🤓 Salespeople know about the “assumptive sale”. It’s a tactic where you approach a conversation with confidence that a buyer is already on board. This mindset can help ease friction and make the journey to “yes” feel natural. But what if we took that same mindset into customer advocacy? 🤔 I’m calling "assumptive advocacy" a proactive approach to customer partnerships where we don’t just wait for our customers to be ready to share their success; we build our relationships with the assumption that they want to become advocates. Here's how it can look: 💫 Showcase Success Early: Instead of waiting for a “perfect time” for customers to speak up, we actively identify opportunities for them to share their journey, whether it’s through case studies, keynotes, or reference calls. 💫 Normalize Their Expertise: Frame their experiences as valuable lessons for others. By positioning our customers as leaders in their space (which they most likely are!), we empower them to see advocacy as a natural part of their success and of their journey with us. 💫 Make Advocacy a Milestone, Not an Ask: We don’t approach advocacy as an extra favor but as a key milestone that reflects our shared success. When advocacy is assumed, it’s integrated into their journey as naturally as our other growth metrics. With Assumptive Advocacy, we create a customer experience where advocacy becomes a celebrated extension of the relationship. It’s about helping our customers take pride in their wins, while they help elevate our shared story. Could this approach help you redefine your customer partnerships? Or maybe I’m just good at manifesting ✨ customer advocates 😁

This is the SaaS equivalent of a customer walking into a restaurant, ordering a steak, eating half of it, and then saying, “Actually, I wanted chicken. Can I get half my money back?” As the Nasdaq moves into correction territory, this might be something that begins happening more often: Companies will tighten budgets, and some will come back mid-contract, asking to reduce their user count. If you’re not prepared, you either: - Cave and let them reduce (killing ARR) - Play hardball and say no (risking churn) The better move? A structured “give & get” approach that keeps revenue predictable while creating a win-win. Here’s how: 1. Anchor to the original agreement When customers ask for a reduction, start by reinforcing why they got the pricing they did. If they received discounts based on a multi-year term or user volume, make that clear. “Your current pricing reflects a commitment to X users over Y years. If we adjust that, we’d need to revisit the rate.” Most won’t want to pay more per user, which gives you leverage for alternatives. 2. Offer alternative levers Instead of an outright reduction, steer them toward options that protect long-term revenue: - Swap for other products – Reallocate spend to new features/modules they haven’t adopted yet. - Extend the contract – Reduce short-term cost in exchange for a longer commitment. - Adjust payment terms – Offer quarterly vs. annual billing to ease cash flow without reducing ARR. - Usage review & optimization – Help them ensure all licenses are being used before reducing. 3. Keep the relationship, not just the revenue Customers remember how vendors treated them in tough times. If you take a hard stance without flexibility, they’re gone at renewal. If you accommodate too much, they’ll expect it every time. The balance? - Be firm on contract integrity. - Be flexible in how value is delivered. The best companies trade reductions for future growth. If you let a customer shrink today, do it in a way that locks in expansion tomorrow.

Look, I’m going to say the thing everyone at the office pretends not to know after their third bourbon. 𝗪𝗲’𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀, and it’s driving me insane. Every day, I watch teams obsess over their shiny new features like they’re showing off a new car to the neighbors. Meanwhile, customers couldn’t care less. Nobody wakes up excited about your SaaS platform, your enterprise solution, or whatever shiny jargon you’re using this quarter. They wake up stressed about their own problems. Full stop. They are worried about missing their numbers. Worried about looking bad in front of their boss. Worried about losing budget. Worried about wasting time on initiatives that go nowhere. And what do we do? We talk about ourselves. It’s marketing narcissism, pure and simple. The brands winning today aren’t the ones with the prettiest logos or the longest feature lists. They’re the ones that articulate their customers’ problems better than customers can themselves. When someone reads your copy and thinks, “This company understands my situation better than I do,” you’ve already won. The money isn’t in the product. It’s in the pain. It’s in the articulation of the problem they barely have language for. You have to make them feel the pain they’ve gotten numb to. You have to put a price tag on inaction. You have to show them what it’s costing them every single day they stay stuck. You have to connect that slow bleed to bigger outcomes — revenue, promotions, reputations, careers. Make them realize it’s not just an annoying issue. It’s a career-limiting move to ignore it. And for god’s sake, stop rushing to pitch your solution before you’ve earned the right to even talk about it. Most marketing fails because it’s like walking up to a healthy person and trying to sell them medicine. First, build diagnostic tools that help them self-identify. Use real customer stories that trigger that flash of recognition. Mirror their pain back to them so clearly it feels almost invasive. Because the best marketing doesn’t just describe the solution. It makes the prospect feel seen. The secret weapon most marketers miss is owning the problem narrative. While your competitors are busy measuring vanity metrics and arguing about features, you’re doing something smarter: you’re defining the rules of the game everyone else has to play. You are not just selling the fix. You are controlling the battlefield. When you own the problem, you own the conversation. When you own the conversation, you own the decision. And when the prospect is finally ready to buy, there’s only one solution that feels inevitable: yours. That’s the real game. Most marketers don’t even know it exists.

Many SaaS companies are BLEEDING customers right now and MOST of this is avoidable - here is my 4pt checklist that every CEO/Sales/Success Leader and reps need to fix the problem for good! Reason #1: Monthly “check-ins” and QBRs should not solely be an update on usage or read-off of XYZ reports. Solution: Have specific, non-product value based details to add in every call and interaction. Your goal is to help make them industry experts and be an additive addition to their professional growth Reason #2: You should not be talking about renewals the month of of 45-days out. Solution: Here’s how to run a 120-Day renewal: 120 Days out: Run a "Their upcoming priorities for this and next year call" plus year and impact in review 90 days out: Come up with V1 of the new partnership plan 60 days out: Have conversations between calls and have V2 of plan 30 days out: They have the final contract ready to sign based on strategic alignment Reason #3: Main POC Left Solution: You should have 2-3 relationships within a company. Do a sprint this quarter to get at least one other person you meet with at least quarterly. Reason #4: No clear/concreate goals or outcomes we are tracking. Solution: SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals that we are aligning to at least quarterly to make sure we are impacting their business and not just if some people are using this. Run this 4 piece play and you will watch your quarterly churn plummet... #innovativeseller

Let me tell you a quick story about how customer support saved the day for a SaaS startup I worked with. 🔓Free strategy inside! A few months ago, a small team of developers reached out to me for help with their SaaS product—a time-tracking tool for freelancers. They were struggling with churn. Every month, users were signing up, trying the product for a few days, and then disappearing. The tool itself was great: sleek, functional, and exactly what freelancers needed. But something was missing. After a few user interviews, the problem became clear: their support was practically non-existent. 👎 What was happening? Freelancers, especially those new to time-tracking, often felt stuck during onboarding or didn’t fully understand how to customize the tool to fit their needs. Without anyone to guide them, they simply gave up. Here’s how we turned things around: 1️⃣ Added a Live Chat Feature We set up a super simple live chat option that connected users to real humans (not bots in this phase). Within the first week, users started asking questions they hadn’t before—and sticking around longer. 2️⃣ Created a “First 5 Days” Email Series We designed short, friendly emails packed with tips, GIF tutorials, and FAQs to guide users through their first week. These emails got an impressive 60% open rate. 3️⃣ Offered Free One-on-One Setup Calls This was a game-changer. The team spent just 20 minutes with each user, walking them through setup and answering questions. Customers LOVED the personal touch—and the feedback we got helped us improve the product. 👍 The Results? Within three months, their churn rate dropped by 25%, and word-of-mouth referrals increased. Customers started leaving glowing reviews, not just about the product, but about how supported they felt. 💡 Lesson learned: Great customer support isn’t a “nice-to-have”—it’s a competitive advantage. When your customers feel seen, heard, and guided, they’ll stick with you and tell others. What’s one thing you’ve done to make your customers feel supported? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments! . . . #SaaS #CustomerSupport #StartupGrowth #RetentionMatters —— 📓 Document, Don’t Create Series