Welcome to Evidently—the bi-weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits (and get honest about my misses) as a first-time VP of Marketing. If this was forwarded to you, join the 5,000+ people who apparently enjoy watching me figure this job out in real time by subscribing here.

Fiscal planning forces you to get honest in ways you’d prefer not to. I’ve written about the painful lessons learned before. IYKYK.

This is my third time running our process, and something different happened this year. The models, the tweaks, the “maybe if we try this” optimism… none of it could hide what became obvious.

We won’t hit next year’s number if marketing only focuses on new business.

That’s the part I kept trying to work around. But when I mapped out what actually moves the business (new business, renewals, upsells, cross-sells, multiple products), I realized: the customer base isn’t a “nice thing to invest in if we have time.” 

It’s the part of the business that decides whether the plan is even possible.

If I’m being honest, we’ve known this in pieces. We’ve talked about it. We’ve felt it. But we leaned hard on inbound and events this year. Both work better when customers show up inside them.

We’ve never had a real, consistent system to activate our customers in the places they can help us most—how we market and sell. And it wasn’t until we acquired Zealot that the wheels started turning for me.

Advocacy isn’t a channel. It powers our other channels.

Sounds good on paper, right? Here’s how we’re going to put this into practice next year.

See our happiest customers more clearly

Up until now, identifying advocates has been a practice of mostly gut feel and memory. Someone says something positive on a call. Someone leaves a nice comment. Someone came through for a team once. None of that makes for a repeatable system.

Next year, we’ll use our own platform to combine usage patterns, call sentiment, renewal timing, product mix, and CS notes into one view. Instead of guessing, we’ll know:

• who’s genuinely happy

• who’s most likely to say yes

• who needs space because their renewal is coming up

• who’s ideal for lighter asks vs bigger commitments

• who’s been overlooked entirely

It’ll be the difference between hoping someone is a good fit and actually knowing they are.

Make it easier for customers to help

I used to think advocacy started with the big requests. Case studies. Webinars. Reference calls. 

But most customers don’t want to begin there, and they don’t need to.

We’ll make it easy for them to contribute in simple, natural ways (recording short video testimonials, posting on LinkedIn, responding to comments in communities).

These take minutes, not meetings. And they give us stories we can use across every function in our GTM team. 

These smaller asks are the part of advocacy that actually scales.

Stop scrambling for the right customer in the moment

This is the part that slows deals down more than anyone wants to admit. A competitor pops up in a deal, and suddenly everyone is scrambling to figure out who might be the right customer to talk to.

Next year, we won’t have to do that. We’ll run with the same workflow we show in demos. Reps describe what they need in natural language. The platform surfaces the right customers based on product mix, usage, industry, size, competitor context, and sentiment. Anyone who isn’t a match gets filtered out automatically. Anyone who needs a break is suppressed. CS or Customer Marketing approves when needed.

And the full history of who’s helped will get tracked so we stop leaning on the same people over and over.

Keep our best advocates from burning out

Most marketing teams end up relying on the same people repeatedly. Not because they want to, but because there isn’t a real way to see who’s been asked recently or who’s a good fit for the ask.

Next year, we’ll finally manage advocate involvement with intention. We’ll know:

• who helped recently

• who’s showing signs of fatigue

• who consistently raises their hand

• who’s a better fit for quick contributions vs conversations vs events

• who shouldn’t be asked right now because their renewal is coming up

The goal isn’t to push harder on a few people. It’s to involve more people at the right moments.

Build the connective layer that makes our channels work better

The biggest shift next year is that advocacy will become part of the way we operate, not a side project or a nice-to-have.

Inbound will work better because buyers will see how real teams use us, not just what we say about ourselves.

Events will work better because customers will end up in the conversation, not just in the room.

Sales will work better because they’ll know which customers to bring into a conversation and why. Real customer moments will give them something credible to point to when a deal needs momentum.

CS will work better because they’ll be able to see who’s actually in a good place to help. They’ll know who’s thriving, who’s hitting friction, and who’s on the same path as the customer they’re working with—all context they can use in renewal and expansion conversations.

Advocacy will become the connective system that strengthens the channels we already rely on.

Why this matters

Underneath every tactic, buyers want the same thing they always have: show me customers like me who succeeded. They trust that more than anything we say about ourselves.

And right now, like most companies, we’re only using a fraction of what we already have.

That’s why advocacy becomes one of the systems we prioritize next year. Not because it’s shiny. Not because it’s new. 

But because it reliably strengthens the channels the rest of our GTM depends on.

This is the work our plan depends on. It’s time we actually act on it.

Stuff I’m digging promoting this week

December showed up real fast this year. We’ve got three webinars happening in the span of a few days. If you can’t make it live, don’t worry. It’s 2025, they’re being recorded. Here’s a quick rundown of each webinar going down next week:

• Tuesday 12/9: How to build a customer advisory board that drives retention, expansion, and advocacy—If a CAB is part of your planning deck next year, Evan Kraut and Marina Illischaev from Boardstream are two people worth taking advice from. They’ve built CABs that actually influence the business. We’re walking through how they structure them and what makes them work.

• Thursday 12/11: Turning research into pipeline with Recorded Future—Recorded Future treats long-form original research like a demand engine, not content inventory. They’re showing how they produce it, package it, and use it across their GTM.

• Friday 12/12: Live walk-through of UserEvidence Advocacy—We’re a sponsor of the CMA Weekly community this year, and we’re giving people what they’ve been asking for: a live look at UserEvidence Advocacy. We’ll dig into why we made the Zealot acquisition, what’s live today, a few key use cases, and what’s coming next on the roadmap.

Hold up—what does UserEvidence do again?

Most companies have great customers. What they don’t have is a way to activate them.

So the stories, the insights, and the people who would actually help end up scattered across decks, tools, and Slack threads. Things get messy. Quotes get lost. Advocates get overused. Deals slow down.

UserEvidence fixes that.

We give your GTM team one platform to activate your customer base. You can find new advocates, capture customer proof, and publish original research— then use all of it where it actually moves the deal forward.

• Advocates — Activate your best customers without burning them out.

• Evidence — Verified, believable stories and results buyers actually trust.

• Research — Original long-form research content that shapes your narrative.

UserEvidence makes it easier for your team to use your customers in the channels and moments where trust matters most.