The Collective

I love being a customer advocate marketing manager.

Give and take. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Mutual benefits. A win-win for all.

Do you like free stuff? Of course you do. Do you sometimes do things you wouldn’t have on your own for a giveaway? Sure you do.

Hugging your haters isn’t just a nice-to-have aspect of the modern brand. Hugging your haters is what you should be doing if you want your business to succeed.

I walked into an all-day meeting back in February and on one of the tables I saw a piece of notebook paper with my name and a heart written on it. To the side of the paper was a Starbuck tea (I abhor coffee) and bottle of water.

When I ventured out into the world of B2B customer engagement and advocate marketing, I felt adventurous. Eight or nine years ago, very few B2B organizations, outside tech giants such as Microsoft, had successful customer engagement programs that were delivering measurable influence on company growth.

This article is the second in an Advocacy-Loyalty Fusion series that explores a question.

We’ve talked about customer-obsession for a while now — about the need to prioritize the customer and deliver excellent experiences.

March 11, 2020, was a warm and sunny day with a beautiful blue sky. I had just enjoyed a relaxed lunch at a sushi restaurant just north of San Francisco with my client.