Head of Customer Marketing & Advocacy

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

11h•$155,800 - $277,200•Hybrid

About The Position

Microsoft is seeking a Head of Customer Marketing & Advocacy to build and lead a world-class customer marketing and advocacy practice. This role focuses on creating a systematic, always-on advocacy program that leverages customer success as a strategic asset. The individual will define the operating model, enhance customer storytelling, and collaborate across marketing, sales, and customer success to integrate customer voice into Microsoft's market presence. The ideal candidate is both process-driven and creative, capable of establishing a rigorous sourcing and activation engine while recognizing compelling stories. This role involves close partnership with sales and product marketing to source and activate customer stories at the brand level and across events. The Head of Customer Marketing & Advocacy will be the sole owner of the end-to-end customer storytelling process, ensuring deliberate sourcing, tracking, and distribution of high-value moments.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Economics, Public Relations, or related field AND 7+ years marketing experience in enterprise technology, cloud, or SaaS, including substantial time in customer marketing, customer advocacy, customer reference, customer-evidence roles, or related work experience OR equivalent experience.
Strong first-principles POV on how to build a best-in-class capability.
Strong leadership capability to lead change within a matrixed organization.
12+ years of marketing experience in enterprise technology, cloud, or SaaS, including substantial time in customer marketing, customer advocacy, customer reference, or customer-evidence roles.
10+ years leading and building high performing teams.
Demonstrated track record of producing compelling customer stories across formats (written, video, and stage), with published examples.
Hands-on experience building or scaling a customer advocacy or reference program, ideally supported by a dedicated platform (e.g., ReferenceEdge, SlapFive, UserEvidence, or similar).
Proven ability to influence and align cross-functionally across sales, product marketing, brand, and communications without direct authority.
Direct experience working with sales and field teams to source and activate deal-win customer stories, including formalizing how the field feeds the storytelling pipeline.
Experience standing up sustained social amplification programs (e.g., executive and employee advocacy on LinkedIn).
Experience translating customer wins into business-value and ROI (Return on Investment) narratives.
Excellent writing, editorial, storytelling, and executive communication skills.
A balance of operational rigor and creativity — you build durable processes and you have a strong creative point of view.
Experience activating customers across marketing touchpoints and campaigns – both large scale and targeted.
Demonstrated use of AI tools to scale content creation and advocacy operations.
Experience operating in a large, global, matrixed organization.

Responsibilities

Design and run the end-to-end customer advocacy program as its single accountable owner, from initial customer conversation through coordinated amplification.
Transform an ad hoc approach into a programmatic, prioritized system with clear intake, sourcing, governance, and routing, and a prioritization framework.
Establish a steady, predictable cadence of high-value stories.
Identify primary, deliberate sources of stories, especially marquee deal wins.
Formalize a lightweight sourcing handshake with sales leadership and strategic account leaders.
Own a shared customer storytelling engagement map that provides a single view of customer engagement.
Drive leadership among teams that often work the same accounts in parallel.
Own the portfolio of customer proof, including written case studies, customer videos, business-value and ROI studies, executive spokespeople, data-backed proof points, and reference assets.
Ensure each customer story is compelling and reusable across formats (written, video, and stage), with business value at the center.
Partner with brand and campaign teams to feature customers in flagship campaigns and keynotes.
Work with PR and communications on earned media, momentum-signaling wins, and customer-led narratives.
Stand up an executive and employee amplification engine that produces a steady weekly cadence of amplification-ready posts.
Package case studies, blogs, press releases, and news for executives and the field to post.
Amplify the strongest existing stories and dial up sponsored editorial.
Operate at the intersection of marketing, sales, customer success, communications/PR, partnerships, and product.
Build durable alignment with brand, product marketing, field and commercial marketing, analyst relations, and sales leadership on advocacy priorities.
Define the KPIs for the function and instrument the program.
Track story production and publishing against plan, reference utilization, amplification reach, influence on pipeline and deal velocity, and contribution to brand and reputation metrics.
Deliver a clear reporting cadence to leadership and use data to reallocate investment.
Build, lead, and grow a dedicated customer marketing and advocacy team.
Staff and operate the team to ensure the core evidence pipeline never slips.
Partner with sales on dedicated funding for amplification and sponsored editorial.
Select, manage, and get consistent, high-quality output from agencies and production partners.