In the world of marketing, customer advocacy has moved in recent years from a piecemeal hit-or-miss effort to a scalable discipline and Ari Hoffman is at the forefront. Vice President of Customer Marketing & Advocacy at Influitive, he shares his powerful framework on this episode of Gratitude Through Hard Times with Host Chris Schembra. It’s all about building authentic community and loyalty to your brand, product or service not by soliciting the same customer testimony over and over again but by engaging fans as part of a growing, dynamic ecosystem. You’ll learn what makes this marketing approach so powerful, how Ari rolls out programs that generate customer obsession across sectors and why defaulting to ad-based lead generation is not the way to go in times of recession. If you’ve been trying to figure out how to connect with customers in meaningful ways and turn them into spontaneous evangelists for your company, then here’s your starting place. Ari is a thought leader with the set of tools (like his DRIVE methodology) you’ll need on the journey!

Learn more about Influitive’s Fearless 50 Elite 18 Awards and how to nominate, vote for or otherwise celebrate the customer-led marketers whose work you appreciate most!

If you’d like to learn more about Chris and his 7:47 Virtual Gratitude Experience or subscribe to our newsletter, please visit this link.

Click here to hear more fascinating conversations with Fortune 500 CEOs, professional athletes and entertainerswho have shared their human stories on Gratitude Through Hard Times.

KEY TOPICS:

• Freeze and Squeeze: Ari spells out some of the sales-centric, demand-gen defaults, like emphasis on advertising, that companies mistakenly fall back on in times of recession.
• Customer Obsession: Why companies oriented towards user experience see 2.5 times faster growth and 1.7 times better retention.
• Fearless 50 and Elite 18: How Influitive is inspiring a customer-first approach through awards that exemplify it.
• Moving Messages: Ari highlights the importance of creating ecosystems that engage customers and inspire them to proactively speak up on behalf of your product or service.
• Stepping Stones for Moving Towards Customer Engagement:
  • Start an advocacy “well,” documenting customers who are already in your corner.
  • Identify customers you’ve gone back to for testimony too often – burning them out and generating a stale message.
  • Create a mini-advocacy program that invites customers to connect.
  • Map out a handful of things to ask of your customers, including:
    • Committing to connect with other customers.
    • Writing a review.
    • Providing 30 minutes of product or messaging feedback.
• Incentivize customer advocacy by offering in exchange things like:
  • Early access to your new lines of business or free use for a limited time.
  • Swag bags.
  • Free attendance at dinner gatherings.
  • An honorary jacket.
• Scaling requires an engagement engine to nurture customers and help them see the value-add in advocacy. 
• Giving versus Taking: How customer advocacy programs can turn on generosity and other benefits in the long run.
• Why Customer Obsession is a can’t-lose campaign because it’s all about:
  • Being thankful.
  • Celebrating people who are doing things right.
  • Leveling up the skill sets of others.
  • Inspiring others while creating demand generation for your company.
• Spreading the Love: How to nominate, vote or otherwise tee up gratitude by participating in Influitive’s Fearless 50 customer-led marketing awards.
• Uncovering Marketing Gold: How Ari connects with customers and helps them see their importance by providing connections, resources and words of affirmation.
• DRIVE Advocacy: 
  • Deliver value first.
  • Refine what people are good at.
  • Iterate the Value.
  • Expand the delivery.
• Leveling Up: How Influitive trains people to become internal and public advocates for – and champions of – their own customer success and achievement.
• The Hero’s (and Heroine’s) Journey: About gratitude as a tool that taps into powerful emotions that create a symbiotic customer narrative and outcomes.
• Value Realization: You can deliver value all day long, but if the person receiving it doesn’t realize it then did you actually do anything?
• If It’s Just Transactional, It Won’t Work! The gratitude you’re giving has to:
  • #1 Be of value to the recipient.
  • #2 Be inconvenient or cost you something in some way. 
  • #3 Be genuinely something you’re glad to be offering.
• Don’t forget to check out Fearless 50 and if you’ve missed the nominating or voting window, bookmark it for next year!

QUOTABLE

• “We are the biggest of the big in customer marketing … but the reality is that the customer marketing world is a fractional sliver of the entire marketing world.” (Ari)

• “The more collective value our industry and each individual contributor and thought leader in our space has, the more that rubs off on the larger marketing community and the way that we think about leveraging our customers.” (Ari)

• “It’s about creating a community and ecosystem where customers are literally raising their hands because they want to share their success stories.” (Ari)

• “The neat thing that gratitude has the ability to do is reactivate weak or dormant ties.” (Chris)

• “I don’t make champions, but I find them and I shine a spotlight on them. I find those diamond-in-the-rough people who don’t even realize the talent they have.” (Ari)

• “(Your customers) are the champions. They are the heroes of the story. Let them shine and bring you along for the ride.” (Ari) 

• “We’re dealing with humans at the end of the day, but we lose sight of that. We get caught up in the numbers, then can’t understand why we can’t move the needle the way we want to.” (Ari)

• “The heroine’s journey is filled with emotion and connection and reflection and introspection. And gratitude is the tool that taps into those emotions.” (Chris)

• “Make someone feel personally validated, appreciated and connected to your community of customers and they will talk about you ‘til the cows come home.” (Chris)

LINKS/FURTHER RESOURCES:

• Click here to learn about Forrester’s thought leadership around Customer Obsession.
• Gartner’s Top Customer Experience Trends for 2023.
• More about Influitive’s Fearless 50 and Elite 18 at this link.
• Visit this link to learn more about Mark Granovetter’s work at Stanford around the strength of weak ties.
• Click here to find out what all the buzz about Gong is about!
• About Google’s study, "Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands."
• Learn about Barbara Frederickson’s groundbreaking research on happiness and the power of positivity.

ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Ari Hoffmanis the VP of Customer Marketing and Advocacy at Influitive. His human-first approach to work and passion for customer success are fixtures of his career. A seasoned veteran and trusted advisor, Ari supports customer-centric businesses, primarily in the enterprise SaaS industry. He is a natural organizer and people-connecter, using empathy to relentlessly shine light on others.

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ABOUT OUR HOST:

Chris Schembra is a philosopher, question asker and facilitator. He's a columnist at Rolling Stone magazine, USA Today calls him their "Gratitude Guru" and he's spent the last six years traveling around the world helping people connect in meaningful ways. As the offshoot of his #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling book, "Gratitude Through Hard Times: Finding Positive Benefits Through Our Darkest Hours,"he uses this podcast to blend ancient stoic philosophy and modern-day science to teach how the principles of gratitude can be used to help people get through their hard times.

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