Why There’s Never Been a Better Time to Brush up on Your Advocacy Skills
…that’s hard.
Studying to become a better customer advocacy professional?...
...a teensy bit easier.
With all the recent interest in advocacy programs and the growing availability of training and education resources for the profession, there’s never been a better time to be a customer advocacy manager.
Customer Advocacy: A Career Path with Promising Growth
Celebrations of the long-awaited year of the customer marketer, non-stop discussion of customer experience and the role it plays in maintaining relationships with a company’s most reliable source of revenue - current customers, and the explosion of customer advocacy-related job postings all point towards one truth: professionals skilled in the art of nurturing, capturing, and leveraging customer delight are in hot demand.
SOURCE: LINKEDIN
Longtime customer-advocacy enthusiasts are certainly taking notice:
With the abundance of excitement around customer advocacy, it’s clear that there’s never been a better time to be a customer marketer that specializes in understanding and amplifying the voice of the customer.
The demand for customer marketers and customer engagement specialists is only destined to increase, as more organizations realize that customer retention and repeat purchasers are significant drivers of revenue and growth. After all, research shows that with a 12% increase in advocacy, companies can experience a 2x growth in revenue.
Moreover, the results of Forrester’s 2021 Customer Advocacy in B2B Survey revealed that companies with a dedicated advocacy team are more successful in one of the biggest challenges in customer advocacy: identifying and onboarding new brand advocates.
SOURCE: FORRESTER
With all the buzz around the post-sale customer journey and the benefits that are unlocked when a customer base is nurtured and engaged, there are many ways a new skill set in customer marketing can take your career to the next level.
For those already leading their own customer advocacy programs, capitalizing on the energy and excitement surrounding customer marketing initiatives can help you justify an increase in resources for your program. By adding a customer advocacy training course to your list of professional accolades, you demonstrate your passion for understanding how best to improve your program and your commitment to delivering the best experience possible to your brand advocates. You also expose yourself to the latest strategies and tools being used by your peers, and an understanding of how you can use these resources to elevate your program.
And, even if your role is not directly connected to the customer advocacy program, there is immense value in deepening your understanding of the guiding principles and best practices that drive a program. Most advocacy program managers collaborate extensively with sales and customer success teams to identify and nurture new brand advocates. Learning how an advocacy program functions can help you understand how to work effectively with an advocacy team and leverage the advocacy program to improve your engagement with customers.
As more companies begin to invest in establishing and growing their post-sale customer engagement initiatives, opportunities will abound for those with expertise in developing customer relationships and enriching the customer experience.
Whether you’re on the hunt for your next role or looking for ways to build your portfolio of professional accomplishments ahead of a performance review, training in a rapidly growing field of customer marketing can help you reach that next milestone.
Referential offers self-paced, online customer advocacy training courses for professionals at all levels that support the Institute of Certified Customer Advocacy Professionals (ICCAP) certification exams. To learn more, check out our course offerings or contact us for information on team training.
However you decide to invest in yourself and your career next, we’ll be cheering you on every step of the way. The world of customer advocacy is growing, and growing fast, because of professionals like you. We can’t wait to see all that you’ll accomplish!