If you are seeking to build Customer Advocacy into your marketing content mix in 2026 what are the major considerations for optimising these programmes?

Much of the thinking for this piece also came through in a conversation I had with Sarah Lafferty, co-founder of B2B Tech PR agency Round Earth Consulting, as part of my vodcast interview series. You can view this here.

Gen AI is a double-edged sword for marketers – so how do we wield it safely?

It is clear that the advent of Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Co-Pilot and Gemini have created an enormous opportunity for marketing teams to increase their productivity in terms of written and video content. Indeed, the rollout of ChatGPT 5.0 earlier this summer continues Gen AI platforms’ quest for greater speed and accuracy - accommodating a wider range of writing styles, augmented by more impressive videos, images and illustrations. You can read more on how Chat GPT 5.0 can help marketers better than earlier versions in my next blog due out in my Learning Centre by the end of September.

Gen AI has forced a greater focus on building trust as well as credibility

However, the other less positive development coming out of the explosion of Gen AI is that so much more of the content we currently consume (and create) in these platforms is still inaccurate, poorly written and just plain uninspiring, despite all the hard work of the likes of OpenAI to address these weaknesses.

The result is that our thirst for Quality, Accuracy, Authenticity, Proof and Trust is growing. The content we as marketers produce must bridge the trust divide sooner rather than later to help differentiate our clients from their competitors. We must sharpen our collective pencils to continue to deliver authoritative and differentiating share of voice in a Gen AI age.

We’ve been running a ‘trust deficit’ for a long time in B2B tech anyway

There is no doubt that marketing of technology over the years has anyway been building up a ‘trust deficit’ over many years as many new technologies, including AI arguably, have tended to be over-hyped. Tech marketers and sales people alike have often been guilty of over-promising and under-delivering, especially in areas like CX (Customer Experience) and customer support.

This endemic trend in tech was captured way back in 1995 by the Gartner analyst Jackie Fenn when she outlined the tech ‘Hype Cycle’ which is captured in this illustration (provided for me by Chat GPT 5.0, of course):

There is no doubt that Gen AI platforms run the risk of becoming the tool of choice for perpetuating and even accelerating this Hype Cycle trend. More marketing BS about a new product or service’s capabilities can be churned out and published with greater speed, but also potentially, with even less accuracy – ‘over-hyping’ them even more than before. How do Gen AI platforms, and more importantly we as tech marketing practitioners, ensure that doesn’t happen?

Customer Advocacy is key ingredient in building trust in the Gen AI age

When both Sarah Lafferty and I began working in PR more than 20 years ago (I’ve actually been working in PR for over 30 but that makes me feel way too old!), case studies were the holy grail.

They got us away from the tech spec-orientated Product Launch Press Release writing and the relentless ‘forward features’ pitches for trade publications. Case studies required us to gather the views of our clients’ actual customers. We found out how our clients’ products and supporting services really helped a specific customer get ahead.

To be honest, in all of that time, they never really went away as arguably the most prized pieces of marketing/PR content. They were, and still are, great sources of high profile media coverage (just less of it than was once the case even 10 years ago – more on this later).

The bottom line is that you can lie about the features and capabilities of your products, services  and people, but you can rarely persuade a paying customer to lie on your behalf! Indeed, if you can persuade your best customers to talk openly about the benefits they have derived from your product and/or service, this is likely to spawn a real marketing breakthrough regardless of where your product category is on its Hype Cycle. In fact, if your product category have reached the dreaded ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ then detailed case studies and ROI studies are going to be your most powerful weapon for pushing through and up out of that trough ahead of the competition.

Does Customer Advocacy still work when there are so many more decision-makers in buying groups?

Harking back a little to my vodcast interview with Graham Reed of Tech Sales Enablement and ABM specialists Ice Blue Sky, how do we run Customer Advocacy campaigns when we have so many different decision-makers (with different agendas and pressure points) which our case study material needs to appeal to?

To understand the potential tech sales paralysis which larger IT firms are exposed to, have a read of Gartner’s October 2020 study entitled ‘How to Market to B2B Buyers’ which reported that 14-23 different decision-makers are typically involved in enterprise software buyer groups today.

Ted McKenna, co-author of the JOLT Effect, put more meat on the bones of this topic by unveiling findings from his own team’s research that up to 60% of enterprise IT sales founder simply because the prospect chooses to do nothing at all – often due to collective indecision, preference for the status quo, or FOMU (Fear of Messing Up).

What are the Top 4 considerations when starting Customer Advocacy campaigns?

1. 'Just get started' with the right customers
   

   Miles Clayton was in conversation with Sarah Lafferty at Round Earth Consulting

Sarah Lafferty addressed this dilemma really well in my latest vodcast by urging marketers not to get paralysed by the multi-audience comms challenge. Customer Advocacy is just too important to be left in your pending folder. Her message is ‘just get started’ by looking for prospective Customer Advocates amongst not necessarily your most high profile or high value customers but with customers which would themselves benefit from your work to capture their story.

2.Hunt for the Win-Win!

It's this WIN-WIN Effect which is the key to successful Customer Advocacy campaigns; that and being sensitive to what exactly those customers are saying about your company (or client if you are an agency).

To ensure that your customers become your best advocates, you need to put yourselves in their shoes before you pop the question: “Can we do a case study about your use of our product/service?”. If you do that pre-planning, you may well prefer to ask a different question. What about:

“We would like to put your ‘x’ project in the centre of this year’s highly prestigious industry award entry and we would like to offer you the resources to put that award entry together. Can we talk to you with a view to building that entry?

If you are very lucky (and have done your research) there is an internal imperative within the team running the project (which involves your product/service) to trumpet the success of that project.

So, securing a shortlisting or even a win in the right category of that key award is exactly what they need to market the good work their team has done over the last 12-18 months. It would be good for the morale of the customer team. It might help retain their top IT talent. It will help with the budget discussions for the next phase of that project. Also, be aware that it may be a springboard for the leadership of that project to build their own personal brands (for their own personal reasons!).

Now we are talking Win-Win, and the great thing about an award entry is it’s the ideal catalyst to build an arsenal of Customer Advocacy Content. You can work it: start by writing the full case study with sections appealing to different key stakeholders. You might want to think about a video case study. Perhaps there will be video interviews from those running the project and keeping it on track. There will be the answers to category-specific questions for the award entry. And most importantly of all perhaps, there is a clear deadline to get it all approved and submitted.

Once the short listing comes in, presuming it’s a well-chosen, highly innovative project which has been well captured by your content creators/PR team, you can run out a press release on your website, socials and to the publication(s) which support that industry award. Likewise, you have the very visual celebrations and camaraderie of the awards dinner captured by team members’ socials posts, as well as the Win Press Release and the all-important badge on your website.

3.Don’t force customer stories into your marketing templates

To keep customer advocates on side it is important to give customers the space to tell the aspects of the project which really moved the needle for them. Try to resist forcing this case study content into an overly prescriptive template. Don’t make it promote your product feature by feature, when actually what made you stand out for them was the quality of your tech support or the collaborative support your development team provided. It must feel like your customer’s story told their way. In that way, you customer will feel a sense of ownership over it and will be inclined to help you to write the next chapter of it when the time is right.

4.Customer Advocates as ‘Raving Fans’

At the end of all that you really have a very strong Tier 1 Customer Advocate. In the parlance of the great customer service guru Ken Blanchard, you are well on the way to having a ‘Raving Fan’.  This is the type of customer that you might do to offer a trial on your latest AI-enhanced version which are planning to launch more widely in a few months’ time.  You can ask them for vital feedback.

They might be able to provide bug fix recommendations and help you prioritise your wish list of product enhancements to fill out the roadmap, and of course, provide that all important early testimonial when the product is ready to be publicly launched.

What are the Top 5 considerations for ensuring your Case Study Content Appeals for better GEO?

Tailoring Customer Advocacy Content the Gen AI platforms

Stepping back a little into what all marketing types have to worry about right now - Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) - we need to answer the question how do we ensure the content we are creating in our Customer Advocacy work is pulled out by search engines like Google Chrome (AI Mode) and Gen AI platforms such as Chat GPT? There are several considerations here:

1.Business benefits need to be specific, highly relevant and highly measurable

Firstly, it’s important to put hard numbers on business benefits statements and results sections of case studies. So, if your advisertech software enables an IFA firm using your software to automate 85% of all new customer fact finds within the first month and increase the number of target new customers onboarded by 25% to 50 per month, all within three months of installation, you must highlight this. The more specific, the better. Gone are the wishy washy benefit statements like “we improved our paraplanner productivity or “we increased the accuracy of our customer data”. That sort of content will not cut through to those vital ‘AI Overviews’ (sometimes called Position Zero) on Google.

2. Gain authoritative, relevant third party reviews

We live in an age where those third party reviews are vital to win new customers. Agai, it’s about conquering that trust deficit and striving for accuracy for those Gen AI platforms. For Enterprise IT vendors a positive review on the likes of Gartner’s G2 or Peer Insights, Trust Radius (particularly if you have in-depth case studies and ROI or TCO studies built), Capterra, or Forrester Peer Insights will help feed relevant AI summaries.   If you are running a restaurant or coffee shop, Trust Pilot reviews are going to be just as vital. Each market will have its own key review sites.

3. Consider specialist peer bulletin boards and online forums

As Sarah explains in my latest vodcast, for developer-led software businesses, it’s wise to get the developers within your company or client talking to their developer peers to spread the word about their use of your tech. In short, leaning into your new focus on authenticity, developers don’t want to hear from PR people or read the content that we are likely to put together. What they value is having developer to developer conversations in their dedicated forums.

So, PR people need to support your clients’ ‘Developer Advocates’ to be more active in bulletin boards and chat platforms relevant to their specialisms. So, you might be advising them on how to contribute content, ideas and experiences on Stack Overflow, Reddit or HackerNews. Help them to reach out to their peers in their way, authentically. This can help a great deal in B2B developer-led software businesses.

These sorts of platforms are avidly crawled by the Gen AI platforms. Bear in mind that an increasing amount of coding is going on in ChatGPT. The tech roots of the likes OpenAI naturally lead their algorithms into addressing problems for developers even before creative types like us marketers.

4. Earned Media is becoming more valuable…again

Again, in Gen AI platforms’ quest to make accurate summaries and recommendations has  importance of authoritative media endorsement, or at least mentions. The snag is that earned media is much harder to secure than it was earlier in my career where a well written launch press release, case study or article could be placed in many different trade publications.

Now there are less high value titles, and a lot less good, properly paid journalists out there running their slide rule over the stories as they flood in. Most content sent to media titles today languishes in untended inboxes. Those lucky few stories that are picked out are often offered some sort of advertorial, ‘pay to place’, deal. In short, it’s much harder to find an editorial home for even the most carefully crafted, insightful and original content.

Quality not quantity: So, it’s important to think less about quantity of coverage, and more about quality of coverage. Gone are the days that you delivered 20, 30 or even 40 pieces of highly targeted media coverage per month for an enterprise client.

Think in terms of 1-4 pieces of high quality content being placed in high value trade publications each month. In my latest large software client engagement, I would aim to write 4 thought leadership articles per month, and 1 customer story per quarter, with a view to gaining 3 pieces of really high value coverage per month. That level is likely to be closer to the norm today.

5. Award wins and shortlistings

Again, what’s a more impressive third party endorsement than that award entry you wrote for your Customer Advocate winning that key award with your client’s solution at the heat of it all. That’s the kind of thing that will turn up in your prospects’ desk research. It is exactly the kind of thing which will put you head and shoulders above the competition if and when they decide to reach out to your sales team for more information.

Customer Advocates as Sales Enablers

And remember according to Forrester it is likely that more than 70% of your prospect’s research and selection work will have been completed well before they contact you. So, making sure your customers are advocating powerfully for you is vital if you are to get those sales calls perhaps 9-12 months after they first recognised they had a business requirement which your products, services and capabilities can address. Typical sales cycles for the 40-50% or so that complete, have risen to up to 18 months. This is a long game to build it into your annual content plan.

Conclusion

Customer Advocacy campaigns have never been more important for B2B tech firms. There are several key reasons for this:

1.An ever growing premium being placed on trusted, authentic and reliable information as it is becoming more difficult to ensure these things as more and more marketing content is automated and less business is being done face to face (until much later in the sales cycle).

2.Search engines’ and Gen AI platforms’ response to the above has been to ‘up rank’ third party endorsement from award wins, product review sites, bulletin boards, Tier-1 trade media coverage, industry analysts, influencers, and above all the results which your customers have reported deriving from your products and services.

3.As more and more pre-tender research is being done on the web and via Gen AI platforms the value of having Customer Advocates actively advocating for you off their own backs is much more valuable than your slickest sales pitch and slide deck. They need to find out how good you are and how much expertise you have way before your sales or business development guys get to tell them all that directly!

In short, Customer Advocacy content and campaigns, combined with a finely honed ability to secured earned media coverage, most probably underpinned with Market Research-led Thought Leadership campaigns, offers the root stock of integrated sales and marketing success the emerging Gen AI age.