Customer Advocacy Fuels Success in Human Resources Technology Markets

TORONTO, March 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Influitive, the advocate marketing experts, today published the first case study showing how human capital management (HCM) vendors are mobilizing customer advocates to generate marketing and sales results.

Influitive customer Ceridian, a leading cloud-based HCM vendor with more than 100,000 clients, first implemented a cutting-edge customer advocacy program called Ceridian XOXO in 2013. "We've always been a customer-centric business, but our customer success program has really put that claim at the heart of our marketing and sales initiatives," said Carlos Gonzalez, Director of Customer Success at Ceridian.

Gonzalez recently outlined Ceridian's success with the program to his peers at the Summit on Customer Engagement. He shared how Ceridian engaged with more than 1600 customers to:

• Generate over 260 references to help Ceridian salespeople close deals faster
• Record 35 new video testimonials
• Get volunteers for 20 case studies

These results can also be found in Influitive's new case study, "How Ceridian Engaged 1,600 Advocates To Shorten The Sales Cycle."

"As the number of advocates participating in Ceridian XOXO grows, their influence reaches prospects which turn into more leads, sales and ultimately, profit," he says. "It features customers' individual successes and has become an added value proposition for being a customer. Ceridian XOXO is a powerful, strategic initiative for Ceridian."

Marketers at other leading HCM companies, including Virgin Pulse, WORK[etc], RIVS and RecruitLoop, have also recently invested in advocate marketing programs to capture the enthusiasm of customers, partners and fans, and use it to generate higher brand affinity, higher quality sales leads and more qualified revenue opportunities.

"It's no secret that technology buyers prefer peer recommendations and advice about new products and solutions over vendor marketing and sales campaigns – but this trend is even more pronounced in a people-centric industry like human resources," said Mark Organ, Founder and CEO of Influitive. "Visionary HR solution providers are taking steps now to capitalize on this trend by developing advocates and mobilizing them to share their positive experiences in social media, online communities and peer gatherings." 

Recent successes demonstrate the power of this approach. RecruitLoop, an online recruitment marketplace, sourced one third (33%) of its monthly deals from customer advocates in the first two months of the company's advocate marketing program, The Loop. Web-based CRM, project management and collaboration platform WORK[etc] has also generated more than 150 user reviews from its WORK[etc] Insiders advocate marketing program.

"The key difference between advocate marketing and an affiliate program is that the focus is all about sharing real sentiment, from real champions of a product," says WORK[etc] founder Daniel Barnett. "It means tipping your hat in acknowledgment to your true supporters, giving them public recognition throughout your community."

This strategy is particularly relevant as word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind up to half of all B2B purchasing decisions, according to research from McKinsey.

About Influitive
Influitive, the advocate marketing experts, helps B2B marketers mobilize their advocates and fans to share their positive experiences across the social web in order to influence buyers. The company's innovative AdvocateHub software and Maven mobile app make it fun and exciting for advocates to participate in more referrals, references, success stories, product reviews, survey responses and other promotional content. This approach, called advocate marketing, is proven to generate higher-quality sales leads, accelerate sales opportunities and improve brand recognition. Influitive is headquartered in Toronto with offices in Boston and Palo Alto.

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SOURCE Influitive