Building a customer advocacy program: 4 proven strategies to increase LTV by 5 percent

When Rebecca Kapler started at Jobber on their customer success team, she noticed something valuable: customers weren’t just satisfied with the product—they were genuinely enthusiastic about it. 

Yet the company didn’t have a structured way to harness this enthusiasm. Recognizing this opportunity, Kapler partnered with leadership to develop advocacy initiatives that would eventually transform into a comprehensive customer advocacy program.

“It was so obvious that we were really helping people. People really love our product and have a strong connection to it. And we didn’t really have any customer advocacy initiatives in place,” Kapler explains.

What began as simple gestures—sending gifts to customers during moments of excitement or pizza parties to teams that helped identify bugs—evolved into a sophisticated customer advocacy strategy that now drives measurable business results. After replacing their internally built referral program with a dedicated platform, Jobber saw a 5 percent higher lifetime value for accounts and an 18 percent higher average selling price.

Below is the four-pillar framework Kapler developed at Jobber to build a customer advocacy program that drives real business growth—regardless of your company size or industry. This article was derived from Season 1, Episode 2 of The Advocacy Podcast. 

How to evolve from customer support to strategic advocacy marketing

Kapler’s advocacy journey began with modest resources and a test-and-learn approach. When she first proposed expanding customer advocacy efforts, she didn’t immediately request a massive budget or extensive resources.

This incremental approach allowed her to demonstrate value before requesting additional investment. Early initiatives included:

• Sending thoughtful gifts to customers during key moments of excitement
• Recognizing teams that helped identify and solve product issues
• Developing basic review acquisition processes
• Identifying customers for case studies and success stories

Transforming ad-hoc advocacy into a strategic business function

As these early initiatives showed promise, Kapler worked with leadership to formalize advocacy as a core business function. The transition from ad-hoc activities to a strategic program happened gradually, with each success building momentum for the next phase.

“Looking back, we’ve grown a lot at how we’ve kind of collectively painted that story of the value that we’re bringing to Jobber, growing and helping more businesses,” Kapler explains.

What began as qualitative victories—like positive email responses from delighted customers—evolved into a data-driven program with clear metrics and proven business impact. This evolution reflects a crucial lesson for advocacy professionals: start with the wins you can measure now, but continuously build toward more sophisticated measurement.

The 4 pillars of customer advocacy that drive measurable business growth

Pillar 1 — How to secure leadership buy-in for your advocacy program

Kapler found that internal support is critical for advocacy program success. At Jobber, she developed multiple approaches to build company-wide enthusiasm:

Customer videos at quarterly town halls: “At our quarterly town hall meetings, I work on customer videos. So I interview a customer, ask them how Jobber is helping them and just even non-Jobber related things like what do you like to do on your weekends? Are you a fishing person? Is Jobber helping you spend more time with your family? So really painting that full like in and out of work picture for the team.”

Slack integrations for real-time celebration: “We recently connected our reviews and our referral program to Slack. So anytime a review comes in or a referral comes in, we can all celebrate those together.”

Customer testimonial libraries: “When I work on projects, I’m always trying to look at that opportunity—what would be useful for the team, what would be inspirational for the team. A recent example of a project, I got quite a few like hundreds of videos of customers. So I’m currently working on making those available to our team.”

These initiatives help build customer empathy across the organization, particularly with teams that don’t regularly interact with customers, such as product development and finance.

Making advocacy everyone’s responsibility

One of Kapler’s key insights is that advocacy isn’t solely the responsibility of marketing or customer success—it’s a company-wide effort.

By helping each department understand their role in creating advocacy-worthy experiences, Kapler ensured that advocacy became embedded in Jobber’s company culture, not just a marketing initiative.

Pillar 2 — Building an industry-focused community beyond your customer base

Instead of focusing solely on creating a community of Jobber users, Kapler and her team built a broader community around home service businesses. This approach recognizes that customers don’t just want to connect with your company—they want to connect with peers facing similar challenges.

“It’s a big part of just Jobber’s mission overall. And we want to be inclusive of customers and non-customers,” Kapler explains. “Our Facebook group, for example, has customers and non-customers in it. And we also realize there’s so many different members of the home service community that aren’t always going to be customers.”

This expansive view of community includes:

• Business owners in the home service industry (both customers and non-customers)
• Vendors and suppliers
• Business coaches
• End consumers

By positioning Jobber as a champion for the entire industry, not just its own customers, the company builds goodwill and establishes itself as a trusted resource.

“A lot of people don’t know what home service is or they don’t think about them much, but really they’re the people who keep our communities safe and running. They’re our plumbers, they provide essential services. Electricians, house cleaners provide that mental health lift. There’s so many amazing contributions these businesses make. So we’re all about being their number one fan and spreading the word.”

Creating ongoing engagement opportunities

Jobber’s community approach includes multiple touchpoints for engagement:

• Ambassador program: Identifying and nurturing relationships with highly engaged customers.
• Social media engagement: Creating platforms for customers to connect with each other.
• Online and offline events: Bringing the community together for learning and networking.
• Grant program (Boost by Jobber): Providing financial support to home service businesses.

Kapler notes these community initiatives build loyalty that extends beyond the product: “The connection to advocacy there is we’re building loyalty where we’re really showing off our altruistic side. And I think when consumers see that they’re more emotionally connected to a brand, they’re more bought in and they’re going to talk about it with each other, with their communities.”

Pillar 3 — Designing a multi-channel referral program that converts

One of Jobber’s most successful advocacy initiatives was transforming their referral program. Kapler and a cross-functional team identified the opportunity to improve their existing in-house solution.

“It was identified as an area of opportunity by our leadership team, by me, and we basically had one of our product teams….. already in this area that was focusing on kind of more growth initiatives.”

The implementation involved:

1. Assembling a cross-functional team with product, business operations, and marketing.
2. Setting clear success criteria.
3. Conducting customer research to understand preferences and pain points.
4. Researching vendor options and selecting a platform (impact.com/advocate, formerly SaaSquatch).
5. Working in small, achievable milestones to maintain momentum.

The methodical approach paid off with impressive results: 

Balancing automation with personal touch

Kapler emphasizes the importance of finding the right balance between automated, scalable advocacy initiatives and high-touch, personalized interactions:

“In the beginning I think there was probably too much focus on the manual side of things like referral asks, review asks. And so looking back, I would look at automate as much as you can, because it’s going to save you time, it’s going to be a better probably experience for your customers, for your internal partners, like your sales and CS teams.”

However, she also cautions against full automation: “I’m a big believer that a certain percentage of your job as a customer advocacy marketer should be non-scalable. It should be personalized. And that’s really great for relationship building and getting those first-hand insights and research and just checking your assumptions and building relationships so you can continue leveraging them as you do more advocacy work.”

One particularly effective high-touch approach involves customer success representatives:

“We have an amazing customer success team at Jobber. And I’m not just saying that from a bias brand standpoint because I was on the team. It’s a great team. We really [care] about our customers and we have such an opportunity there in the one one-on-one phone calls, chats, where they have really great and meaningful conversations… Super personalized. So much relationship building there. And I think that’s a great opportunity for customer success teams to say, have you heard about our referral program?”

Pillar 4 — How to measure and communicate customer advocacy ROI

Kapler’s approach to measuring advocacy success goes beyond simply tracking referral counts or review volumes. Instead, she focuses on demonstrating the business impact through multiple metrics:

• Lifetime value (LTV) comparison between referred and non-referred customers
• Average selling price (ASP) differences
• Retention rates
• Churn risk reduction
• Referral rates

By comparing the behavior of advocates to non-advocates, Kapler creates a compelling business case for advocacy investments:

Creating dashboards that tell a story

Kapler also identifies secondary benefits that might be overlooked in traditional ROI calculations:

Reduced research costs: “A lot of advocates I’ve built, I’m able to recommend them to numerous product teams, leadership teams to talk to, to get more information. [This] would otherwise be like really costly research, pulled in from another separate third party agency or something.”

Content creation opportunities: “We’ve recently had a customer or we’re about to have a customer lead one of our events at a trade show in Las Vegas. So that saves us time and planning from being there.”

Authentic storytelling material: “We’ve had customers invite us over for dinner down in Tennessee. We’ve had great relationships. You know, we can DM them on Instagram like, hey, what are your thoughts on this? Or on Twitter like, hey, what do you think about this?”

By quantifying these benefits and including them in advocacy program reporting, Kapler ensures that leadership sees the full picture of advocacy’s impact.

Step-by-step implementation roadmap for building your customer advocacy program

Phase 1: How to conduct effective customer advocacy research in just hours

Customer interviews: quality over quantity

Kapler emphasizes that effective advocacy programs start with customer research, but this doesn’t need to be a massive undertaking:

This approach makes customer research accessible even for teams with limited resources or tight timelines. Kapler adds: “You don’t always have to reward someone for helping out. Oftentimes we always try to position it as this is going to help us help other business owners. And oftentimes people are really excited for that more altruistic side of it.”

Building your cross-functional team

When implementing or enhancing an advocacy program, Kapler recommends bringing together representatives from multiple departments:

• Marketing
• Product development
• Business operations
• Customer success
• Sales

At Jobber, this cross-functional approach was crucial to their referral program success:

“We had things like weekly check-in meetings, monthly check-in meetings. We pulled in that we actually got everybody involved in the research that was on that team. So that was really fun or quite a few of them we went through. So everyone was talking to customers, finding out.”

Setting clear success criteria at the outset helps align the team around common goals and maintain focus during implementation. Kapler’s team also broke the work into manageable pieces to maintain momentum:

“We worked in like small… kind of bite-sized goals to work towards and I think that was really helpful just for overall team morale.”

Phase 2: Launching high-impact advocacy initiatives in 3-6 months

Starting with high-impact, low-effort initiatives

When it comes to prioritizing which advocacy initiatives to implement first, Kapler recommends a systematic approach:

This effort-versus-impact scoring helps teams focus on activities that deliver the most value relative to the resources required. Early wins build momentum and help secure additional resources for more ambitious initiatives.

Phase 3: Scaling your advocacy program for sustainable growth

Increasing automation while preserving relationships

As advocacy programs mature, automation becomes increasingly important for scaling impact. Kapler suggests evaluating each process to determine what should be automated and what should remain high-touch:

“Always looking at where you can scale the most. That being said, I’m a big believer that a certain percentage of your job as a customer advocacy marketer should be non-scalable.”

She recommends automation for:

• Regular email communications
• Referral link distribution
• Review requests
• Basic reward fulfillment
• Performance tracking and reporting

While keeping personal touches for:

• Building relationships with potential ambassadors
• Gathering in-depth customer stories
• High-value customer recognition
• Special opportunities (speaking at events, co-marketing)

“Looking back I would look at automate as much as you can, because it’s going to save you time, it’s going to be a better probably experience for your customers, for your internal partners, like your sales and CS teams.”

Expanding your advocacy channels

As programs show results, Kapler suggests selectively adding new channels based on customer preferences and business objectives. Jobber’s advocacy expanded to include:

• An ambassador program
• Social media engagement initiatives
• Online and offline events
• PR and grant programs

Each expansion should be based on data from previous initiatives and informed by ongoing customer research. Cross-promotion between channels can multiply the impact of each individual effort.

Real-world results: how customer advocacy increased LTV by 5 percent and ASP by 18 percent

Customer advocacy’s direct impact on business growth

Kapler’s advocacy initiatives at Jobber demonstrate clear business benefits:

• 5 percent higher lifetime value (LTV) for accounts acquired through referrals
• 18 percent higher average selling price (ASP)
• Substantial contribution to overall sales
• Strong loyalty and retention among referred customers

From customer to event leader—a real-world advocacy success story

One of Kapler’s advocacy success stories involves Royce Ard, owner of My Amazing Maid in Georgia:

“I’ll give a shout-out [to] Royce Ard from My Amazing Maid. He’s in Georgia. He’s a longtime customer and doing really great things. He’s such a good advocate.”

Royce evolved from being a satisfied customer to leading events for Jobber at trade shows. This progression illustrates how customer advocacy can grow naturally when nurtured properly:

1. Initial stage: Satisfied product user.
2. Growing engagement: Participating in community events and providing feedback.
3. Ambassador role: Representing the brand at industry events.
4. Peer leadership: Guiding other customers and sharing expertise.

This case demonstrates that advocacy isn’t just about attracting new customers—it’s about developing long-term relationships that create value for all parties.

Overcoming the top 3 customer advocacy challenges with proven solutions

Challenge 1: Proving advocacy ROI with limited data

Kapler acknowledges that proving the value of advocacy can be challenging, especially in the early stages when data may be limited:

“There’s a lot of data, a lot of unknown. So one thing we got to eventually was pulling our advocates or just people who have referred us and then also people who had like similar behavior to those people who have referred us and then the non-advocates and we pulled things like the LTV, the ASP, their referral rate, their risk of churn, things like that.”

Her recommendations for overcoming data challenges include:

• Start with the metrics you can measure now, even if they’re primarily qualitative.
• Capture and share customer feedback, testimonials, and success stories.
• Gradually build more sophisticated measurement capabilities.
• Compare behavior patterns between advocates and similar non-advocate customers.

Challenge 2: Securing resources for customer advocacy initiatives

Securing resources for advocacy initiatives often requires demonstrating value with limited initial investment. Kapler suggests:

• Start with small programs that require minimal resources but can show clear impact.
• Document both qualitative and quantitative results.
• Connect advocacy metrics to core business objectives like customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and retention.
• Highlight the secondary benefits like reduced research costs and authentic content creation.

“Pull out as much as you can… sell all of the value you can of advocacy. That’s gonna help you get more resources for your work, get more buy-in across the company.”

Challenge 3: Maintaining program momentum and preventing advocate fatigue

Keeping advocacy programs fresh and engaging over time is another challenge Kapler addresses:

To maintain momentum, she recommends:

• Regularly refreshing program elements to keep them interesting.
• Rotating the spotlight among different customer advocates.
• Creating tiered engagement opportunities for advocates at different commitment levels.
• Staying connected with the broader advocacy marketing community for fresh ideas.

“Because customer advocacy, customer marketing is a pretty new thing, it’s always changing and evolving. New tactics are being discovered, I think, utilizing your industry connection. So that’s one thing that’s been a big help for me over the last few years.”

Future-proof your customer advocacy strategy: emerging trends and expert advice

Kapler sees customer advocacy continuing to evolve in importance and sophistication:

“Customer advocacy is such an exciting area of marketing to be involved in. It’s growing all the time. It’s changing all the time.”

She believes successful advocacy professionals will increasingly:

• Take a more data-driven approach to measuring advocacy impact.
• Leverage technology to scale personalization.
• Integrate advocacy across the entire customer journey.
• Shift from siloed advocacy programs to company-wide advocacy cultures.

Expert advice: leveraging customer advocacy as a high-potential marketing channel

When asked about her advice for marketers looking to develop customer advocacy programs, Kapler emphasizes:

She encourages advocacy marketers to:

1. See themselves as core members of the marketing team, not a separate function.
2. Connect with others in the field through industry groups and regular conversations.
3. Stay curious and experiment with new approaches.
4. Focus on both scalable systems and meaningful customer relationships.

Start small, but make strategic moves

Building an effective customer advocacy program isn’t just about creating happy customers—it’s about strategically positioning enthusiasm to drive measurable business growth. Kapler’s four-pillar approach at Jobber demonstrates that even with modest initial resources, a thoughtful advocacy strategy can deliver significant results.

The key lessons from Jobber’s success include:

1. Start small but think strategically.
2. Secure internal buy-in by connecting advocacy to company mission.
3. Build a community around your industry, not just your product.
4. Balance automated systems with personalized relationships.
5. Measure impact comprehensively, beyond just referral counts.

Whether you’re just beginning to explore customer advocacy or looking to enhance existing programs, the most important step is to start conversations with your customers. As Kapler emphasizes, even just five 15-minute customer conversations can provide the insights needed to build more effective advocacy initiatives.

By implementing these strategies, you can transform satisfied customers into powerful advocates who drive business growth through increased lifetime value, higher average selling prices, and authentic word-of-mouth promotion.

Want to learn more about how customer referral strategies can grow your business?  Check out these resources:

• How to win back lost customers: 7 marketing tactics that rebuild customer loyalty [blog] 
• 5 successful ecommerce referral programs and why they work [blog] 
• How to switch to a new referral platform in 6 easy steps [blog] 
• Top 6 customer referral marketing trends your brand can leverage in 2024 [blog] 
• 7 referral marketing strategies to grow your retail business [+stand-out brand examples] [blog]
• Turn delighted customers into revenue-driving advocates [ebook]
• More than a pop-up: Building a customer referral program that scales [+ the tech that drives it [blog] 

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