Quiz: How Mature Is Your Employee Advocacy Program?

Most employee advocacy programs think they’re doing well, and they have the numbers to prove it.

Shares are up. Reach is climbing. That LinkedIn post from last Tuesday got 200 reactions.

But here’s the problem: activity is not the same as impact.

A program that generates noise isn’t necessarily generating pipeline, reputation, or revenue.

The programs that survive and scale aren’t just tracking reach. They’re measuring influence, executive activation, content quality, and commercial impact. That’s what separates a mature advocacy program from one that’s stuck on a plateau it doesn’t know it’s on.

To help you find out where you stand, we built a three-minute maturity assessment that gives you an instant answer.

But first, here’s the framework behind it.

Your level is built across five pillars. Together, they give a complete picture of whether your program is generating real business value or just social media activity.

The most common reason advocacy programs plateau is that they were never connected to anything that matters commercially.

They live in a marketing silo, measured in shares, reported to no one senior, and treated as optional by most of the business.

Mature programs look different.

They have defined objectives tied to pipeline or revenue.

They’re integrated into campaign planning.

And critically, senior leaders aren’t just aware of them, they actively participate.

Executive voices carry disproportionate weight on platforms like LinkedIn, and programs that harness this tend to outperform those that don’t significantly.

If your program isn’t aligned to a business goal, it’s a vanity channel waiting to be cut.

Looking at adoption figures alone can be misleading.

A program with 500 registered employees but 30 active ones isn’t a large program… it’s a small one with a lot of dormant accounts.

What matters is monthly active participation, and more specifically, who is participating and how.

Mature programs don’t just track headcount.

They identify which advocates whose posts consistently generate clicks, comments, and reach, and build around them with training, opportunities, and tailored content.

Barclays’ Creator Club is a great example of this:

Reach is a useful starting point, but it only tells you how many people could have seen something.

It doesn’t tell you whether they clicked, engaged, or took any action.

Programs that stop here miss the opportunity to understand what’s actually working, and to improve it.

Mature programs measure engagement, website traffic, and performance by campaigns and employee segments.

This turns content distribution from a gut-feel exercise into something you can improve.

You start to learn what resonates with which audiences when shared by which types of advocates, and that’s when your advocacy content strategy gets genuinely useful.

Employee advocacy doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Your competitors have programs too, and without external benchmarking, you have no way of knowing whether your performance is strong or just average relative to your market.

Mature programs identify their top internal influencers and invest in developing them.

They benchmark program engagement against company page performance using metrics such as earned media value and comparative cost-per-click against paid social spend. This is often where the strongest business case for advocacy lives.

This is where advocacy programs either prove their value or lose their budget.

If you can’t draw a line between employee posts and website traffic, leads, or pipeline, then advocacy is always going to feel like a nice-to-have.

Mature programs use UTM tracking and their CRMs to attribute traffic, leads, and revenue to advocacy activity.

They can show up to a senior leadership meeting and say, with data, what advocacy is contributing to the business.

Without this, you’re always one bad quarter away from being defunded.

Now you know what the pillars are, it’s time to see how your program stacks up.

The quiz takes less than five minutes and gives you an instant maturity score across all five areas, along with a clear picture of where your gaps are.

After completing the assessment, you’ll fall into one of four maturity levels below:

Not sure where your program stands against competitors?

Get a free competitor analysis review and see how your advocacy performance compares in your market.

Want to see what a mature program looks like in practice?

Book a demo, and we’ll walk you through what’s possible.

More resources you’ll find helpful:

• Employee Advocacy Roles & Responsibilities Template.
• Employee Advocacy Platform RFP Template.
• How to Choose the Best Employee Advocacy Software for Your Needs.