[ Managed Advocacy · Retained ]
Your customers are the salespeople your buyers actually trust. We turn them into a channel.
Existing customers already influence your deals. It's just not a channel yet. Kindling's managed service installs one.
Recruiting, content prompts and coaching, verification, compliance, tax forms, and analytics are all handled. Your customers create content in the places your next buyer is already looking. You own the channel it becomes.
1. Forrester, 2023 B2B Brand and Communications Survey (90% trust peers; 29% trust vendor salespeople) · 2. Engagement research cited in The Advocacy Operating System · 3. Edelman-LinkedIn, 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report
[ The problem ]
Your customers already influence deals. You just don't have a system for it.
Right now, a buyer in your pipeline is asking one of your customers whether the product actually works. The answer will shape the deal, and you will never hear it. Customer influence is already at work in your pipeline. Nobody is running it.
Enthusiasm with nowhere to go.
Your happiest customers say remarkable things in renewal calls, Slack threads, reference calls, and hallway conversations at events. A screenshot lands in a slide deck, and then nothing happens. There is no mechanism that turns any of it into public advocacy, consistently.
Nobody asked.
Most happy customers are never given a reason, an opportunity, or the infrastructure to participate. Advocacy depends on someone remembering to ask, and in a busy quarter nobody remembers. The willing majority stays silent by default.
Nobody knows what it did.
When customers do advocate, you rarely know what content exists, where it traveled, which buyers saw it, or what pipeline it influenced. Influence you cannot see is influence you cannot defend, fund, or repeat.
Customer advocacy already exists in your company. It is running on happy accidents. Kindling turns it into an operating channel, sourced, activated, distributed, and measured, quarter after quarter.
[ The trust shift ]
The most credible voice in your go-to-market belongs to your customers. It is already working on your deals.
There is a moment in every B2B purchase that matters more than any other. It happens outside your funnel, and nobody on your team scripts it. It is the moment the buyer asks someone they trust whether your product actually works. The practitioner who answers, or who posts about your product and reaches 2,000 of the exact people you sell to, carries the thing credibility is made of. They have used it, and they are believed.
1. Forrester, 2023 B2B Brand and Communications Survey · 2. TrustRadius, 2024 B2B Buying Disconnect
That credibility compounds for the companies that organize it. A competitor can match your features and undercut your price. They cannot manufacture a mature bench of credible customer voices, or twelve months of authentic customer content, on demand.
[ The system ]
The Advocacy Operating System.
The missing piece is not customer enthusiasm. It is infrastructure. Every working advocacy program runs four functions, whether it knows it or not. When a program underperforms, the diagnosis is almost always one of these four being weak or missing. Most companies run two of them well. The engagement installs all four, on software built for exactly this.
Source and verify.
Find the customers who fit the advocate profile and confirm they are real. They work at a customer account, they use the product, and their experience is true. Verification is the credibility mechanism of the entire channel.
Without it, this is influencer marketing with extra steps, and one soft advocate damages the channel for good.
Activate and produce.
Turn willing advocates into a steady stream of content without ever crossing into assignment. Briefs are a menu, never a quota. Onboarding, rate card, 24-hour review, and prompt, transparent payment.
Without it, you have verified advocates and nothing happening. Enthusiasm without infrastructure is a trickle.
Distribute and amplify.
The organic post is the credible asset. Paid amplification extends its reach, with Thought Leader Ads behind the best-performing customer posts, targeted at your ICP. Then repurposing with permission, and content tagged so an AE can surface a peer voice mid-deal.
Without it, great content goes unseen. A screenshot in a slide deck, and the story ends.
Measure and attribute.
Earned media value, content velocity, and pipeline influence tracked deal by deal with confidence levels, assembled into the case finance accepts. Advocacy competes with channels that have cleaner dashboards; this function wins that fight.
Without it, the program works and nobody can prove it. That is how real channels lose budget fights.
[ The engagement ]
We run it until it runs itself.
Retained consulting and a working program come in one number, $10,000/month with a six-month minimum. This is an install, not a strategy deck you file after the readout. The four functions go live one by one, every phase ends with a named artifact, and first advocate content is typically public inside 60 days.
Audit and design.
Discovery interviews with your sponsor and CS lead, customer base mapped against the advocate profile, opportunity sized in pipeline terms, and the program designed, from rate card and content guardrails to payout rails and goals a CFO would sign.
→ You receive the Advocacy Audit, an advocacy strategy, and a rate card.
Build, recruit, first content.
The program stands up on the Kindling platform, configured to your accounts. Your first advocate cohort is invited, verified, and onboarded, W-9s collected before the first dollar moves, and the first organic posts go public.
→ You receive a live program on the platform, a verified cohort, and your first published content.
Operate and optimize.
The weekly rhythm covers prompts tied to real milestones, editorial support that never puts words in an advocate's mouth, payouts on the 1st and 15th, Thought Leader Ads behind the winning posts, and pipeline influence tracked deal by deal.
→ You receive monthly performance reports, amplification campaigns, and a growing content library.
Ingrain and hand over.
Your team is trained on all four functions and the program is yours, including the advocate bench, rate card, content library, and reporting. Keep us on retainer after that or run it yourself on the platform. Both are wins.
→ You receive a program operations manual, a 90-day forward plan, and the channel itself.
[ The division of labor ]
We run the program so you can run marketing.
Every row below is a job the channel requires. None of them should be yours.
We recruit and verify every advocate,
so you never ask a buyer to trust a stranger.
We deliver content prompts tied to real milestones,
so the feed never goes quiet and nobody is ever assigned a post.
We review every post inside 24 hours for accuracy and FTC disclosure and route it to you for approval,
so compliance is never the reason you lose sleep.
We collect W-9s and file 1099-NECs,
so your finance team never touches a tax form.
We run payouts on the 1st and 15th,
so advocates stay paid, happy, and posting.
We monitor verification and engagement for fraud,
so every number you report is real.
We amplify winning posts and tag content for your sales team,
so your best stories reach buyers your advocates' networks miss.
We track pipeline influence deal by deal,
so you can defend this budget in one slide.
We write it all into the operations manual,
so in month six the machine is yours.
[ The offer ]
One engagement. One number.
Advocacy Audit
We map your advocate bench and size the channel in pipeline terms before you commit to anything larger. Every dollar credits toward the engagement.
- Customer base mapped, likely advocates identified
- Opportunity sized in pipeline terms
- Program design you keep either way
Managed Advocacy Program
Program creation, weekly operation, and optimization until advocacy is ingrained. Everything below is included. No setup fees.
- Program design and a standing weekly working session
- Advocate recruiting, verification, and onboarding
- Editorial support in the advocate's own voice
- Payments and tax compliance end to end, including Stripe Connect, Tremendous, W-9s, and 1099-NEC filing
- Attribution reporting your CFO will actually read
- The Kindling platform, included and configured
The platform normally runs $299 a month. Inside the engagement it is simply included, and it is what your team graduates onto in month six.
[ A quick diagnostic ]
Do you have an advocacy problem?
"Advocate content is organic or it's worthless. The system doesn't produce content. It creates the conditions where content happens naturally."
[ Accountability ]
Run by a system. Signed by a person.
The method exists because of a pattern we watched for twenty-five years of selling enterprise software to marketing and revenue leaders. Customers had enormous influence on buying decisions, and almost nobody had a system for activating it. Kindling is that system, and it does not depend on any one of us being brilliant in a given week.
It does come with a name on it. Every engagement has one accountable owner, a standing weekly session, and a playbook that is yours whether you keep us or not.
"I am not learning this buyer. I am this buyer." · Brian De Groodt, Founder
[ FAQ ]
The things people ask first.
Who pays the advocates?
You do. You set the compensation budget and approve every payout. Kindling handles everything else: verification, payment processing, tax documentation and disbursement.
Is this consulting or software?
Both, for the first six months.
Kindling is a working advocacy system delivered with an operator. We build the program, recruit the first advocates, run it with you, and install the operating rhythm in your team. The software and operating system remain when the engagement ends.
When should we expect to see something working?
First advocate content is typically live within 60 days.
The six-month engagement isn't six months of planning. We design, launch and operate the program while your existing marketing continues. Six months gives us enough time to turn the initial activity into a repeatable system your team can run.
What should I compare this budget to?
Paid media is the closest comparison, because it is the other line item that buys reach. The two do different jobs.
Paid buys controlled distribution: your message, your audience, your timing. It is the right tool for a launch, a campaign, or a hard CTA. Advocacy builds credible customer participation and a library of customer content you keep using after the original spend. And paid can amplify the strongest advocacy content, which is why Thought Leader Ads are part of the program.
Budget usually comes from paid, customer marketing, advocacy, community, or a combination, depending on how your team is organized. We don't recommend turning off paid to fund it.
The managed program is $10,000/month. Advocate compensation, the 15% transaction fee on those payments, and any paid amplification you choose are additional.
What happens after month six?
You can run the program yourself on Kindling or keep us involved.
Either way, the advocate bench, content library, operating playbook and program stay with you. We built the engagement to eliminate dependency, not create it.
Do you make our customers post?
No.
There are no posting quotas, scripts or assigned content. We give advocates relevant opportunities and prompts, then support them when they have something genuine to say.
Their voice has to remain theirs or the model doesn't work.
How is this different from influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing starts with an audience.
Kindling starts with actual customers.
Every advocate is verified as someone with real experience using your product. Their credibility comes from that experience, not from being paid to have an audience.
Doesn't paying customers undermine their credibility?
Not if the relationship is transparent and the opinion remains theirs.
Advocates are compensated for the time and effort required to participate — not for saying something positive. Compensation is disclosed, rates are standardized, and customers decide what they say and whether they participate at all.
What if we're too early?
That's one of the things the Advocacy Audit determines.
We look at your customer base, the strength of your potential advocate bench, your pipeline and the economics of the program. If there isn't enough there to support a meaningful channel yet, we'll tell you before you commit to the six-month engagement.
Start with two weeks.
Your customers are already influencing your market. The question is whether that influence stays accidental or becomes a channel. The audit is $3,500, takes two weeks, and credits toward the engagement in full. You will know what your advocacy channel is worth in pipeline terms before you commit another dollar. And if the numbers say you are not ready, we will tell you that too.
If you do nothing else today, pull the transcripts from your last ten renewal calls and read what your customers said. That is some of the most persuasive language your company owns, and right now it is reaching no one.