Addressing the False Advocate

In a B2B SaaS company's 1:many customer advocacy programs, false advocates, or more specifically, transactional advocates, are individuals who may appear to be strong advocates from an engagement perspective, but who don't genuinely contribute to the program's symbiotic success unless they're directly being rewarded to do so, or their "advocacy" (used loosely here) is half-hearted -- surface-level broad -- or just outright vague to the point of not being at all useful. All just so they can get the reward...Going through the motions without emotion.

These the so-called are advocates gaming the system for their own gain vs. being intrinsically motivated to want to advocate on behalf of your product/brand/org because they get value from it, and also recognize how you/the org benefits (win, win).

But why do we have "transactional advocates?"

Because we created them by training our customers to approach our program that way with various reward item incentives, and a lack of explanation about how it's a mutually beneficial collaboration engine.

Having run these kinds of programs myself, I can tell you it gets exhausting to police false advocates, and it can get expensive for the org to the point that when budget planning comes around, this program is seen only as a line item expense and is potentially cut. (That's the wrong move IMHO, but without the right context and the opportunity to correct the problem, I absolutely understand why it happens).

Don't misunderstand me here, gamification, badges, and rewards all have their place in a well-oiled customer collaboration engine, but making the rewards a dominant central focus just to get participation will result in the significant expense of transactional advocates, which can cloud any ROI results.

We typically want our customer advocacy programs to bring outsized value to our customers (and thus to our organizations by their advocacy output from participating). In order to do that though, there needs to be internal and external transparency (i.e. clarity) about why the program exists, so all involved want to participate.
We need our own org, as well as our customers, to opt-in to the the concept that our advocacy program is positively symbiotic.

These programs work best when you are in collaboration with customers vs. "bribing" them like a lonely wealthy person paying for lavish parties to have people hang out with them (makes me think of the song, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out").

So, if your 1:many customer advocacy program is heavy on reward items, requires a large budget to operate (beyond the cost of the software platform and team to run the program), and the quality of advocacy you're deriving from that effort is lacking, then you may need to consider revamping your approach.

Here are some thoughts to start that process:Ask your customers. Find those good advocates in the program and start a virtual advisory board with them to find out what is working for them, and how you might double-down on those ideas.

Do the same with top customers who do not participate in your advocacy program to find out what might motivate them to participate in your program. This does two things: gives you diverse insight outside of the echo chamber of your program, and helps you recruit new, right-fit, members to your program.

Think about reserving rewards for surprise-and-delight kinds of gifting -- aka non-expected rewards that are not always tied to customers knowingly getting something for completing an action. (Plus, with rewards in general be aware of anti-trust laws and anti-bribery regulations in various countries/regions that may prohibit your ability to provides rewards to begin with). Surprise-and-delight can endear customers further to your program and brand because you create positive, unexpected moments they're grateful for.

Find more intrinsically valuable ways to reward your customer members with recognition, access, experiences, and career help.

For example, create a spotlight to showcase what individual customers are doing in their role that is a win for their success using your product that other members may have interest in, and/or could learn from. Not necessarily the mega big wins, either, but perhaps the day-to-day things that are little known unless you're a deep user of your product.

Here's another thought: reward advocates with access to your org's exec team so your exec's can participate in customer listening sessions. Many execs want to speak to more customers, and often executive level titles in customer orgs want access to your execs.

Or, have your exec do a short form interview with the customer to make that customer look great for choosing to use your org's product. This can help your customer's personal brand, and provides your org more content to use. This is also an example of the next one -- experiences -- this kind of exec interview with a customer could be a motivating experience for a customer who is a VP at their org looking to build their thought-leadership.

Give something that most professional individuals can use: help with their career in the form of teaching them how to build and use their personal brand for their own professional success in their current role with their current employer (your customer account). This is useful to the individual because as we all know, we as individuals are primarily responsible for our career paths. Personal brand help is one way to appeal to individual customer members in a way that can have positive rippling effects to their employer, and what ever future employer they may eventually move on to, as well as your org for providing the training and benefitting from some of their social posts about your product.
​
A major intrinsic motivator and point of value that is actually a through-line with the above ideas is that they're mostly things that can be leveraged to facilitate customers connecting with, not only your org's staff, but more importantly, each other to grow their professional network and peer relationships, which has far-reaching benefit for all parties. ​