Overview
Microsoft has one of the deepest customer bases in technology — organizations of every size, in every industry, doing remarkable things on Azure, Copilot and AI, Security, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. The Head of Customer Marketing & Advocacy will build and lead a world-class customer marketing and advocacy practice that brings those customer stories to the center of Microsoft’s brand and commercial marketing.
This is a builder’s role focused on a systematic, always-on advocacy program that turns customer success into a strategic asset You will define the operating model, elevate the quality and reach of our customer storytelling, and partner across marketing, sales, and customer success to make customer voice a defining part of how the market experiences Microsoft.
We are looking for a leader who is as process-driven as they are creative, — someone who can stand up a rigorous, repeatable sourcing-and-activation engine and, in the same breath, recognize and shape the stories that move audiences. You will partner especially closely with sales and product marketing to source customer stories and activate them at the brand level and across our events. You are customer obsessed and you identify opportunities to marry the innovation of our customers with the way Microsoft enables them to do so. This leader will be the single accountable owner of the customer storytelling arc, end to end, so that high-value moments are sourced deliberately, tracked in one place and distributed through a proactive, systematic engine.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
Responsibilities
Strategy and Operating Model
- Design and run the end-to-end customer advocacy program as its single accountable owner — from the first customer conversation through coordinated amplification. Transform an ad hoc approach with a programmatic, prioritized system with clear intake, sourcing, governance, and routing, and a prioritization framework that balances high-impact stories based on business value and narrative potential with long tail customer content. Establish a steady, predictable cadence — a reliable drumbeat — of high-value stories, so that no high-value story surfaces by luck or goes untracked.
Proactive Sourcing with the Field, Comms and PMM
- Identify primary, deliberate source of stories — especially marquee deal wins, which rarely originate in marketing. Formalize a lightweight sourcing handshake with sales leadership and strategic account leaders so that high-impact customer moments are captured early and systematically, shifting from reactive, inbound requests to proactive sourcing of the wins worth telling.
Shared Visibility and a Single System of Record
- Own a shared customer storytelling engagement map that gives every team one view of which customers are being engaged, by whom, and for what purpose. Drive leadership among the many teams that often work the same accounts in parallel, and replace today’s fragmented picture with coordinated, consent-aware engagement.
Customer Evidence and Storytelling at Scale
- Own the portfolio of customer proof — written case studies, customer videos, business-value and ROI studies, executive spokespeople, data-backed proof points, and reference assets — across the product portfolio. Put business value at the center of every story and ensure each one is genuinely compelling and reusable across formats (written, video, and stage).
Activation Across High-Visibility Touchpoints
- Bring customers into the moments that matter most. 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.
Coordinated Amplification
- Treat sustained amplification as owned scope, not an afterthought. Stand up an executive and employee amplification engine that produces a steady weekly cadence of amplification-ready posts (organized by industry), packaging case studies, blogs, press releases, and news for execs and the field to post — and handing ready-to-use packages to sales on a regular cadence. Amplify the strongest existing stories, not only net-new ones, and dial up sponsored editorial to generate additional earned stories worth amplifying.
Cross-functional Leadership
- Operate at the intersection of marketing, sales, customer success, communications/PR, partnerships, and product. Work hand in hand with Communications on customer-led narratives and earned media, and build durable alignment with brand, product marketing, field and commercial marketing, analyst relations, and sales leadership on advocacy priorities, engagement guardrails, and de-confliction of overlapping customer engagement.
Measurement and Impact
- Define the KPIs for the function and instrument the program. Track story production and publishing against plan, reference utilization, amplification reach (coordinated vs. organic), influence on pipeline and deal velocity, and contribution to brand and reputation metrics. Deliver a clear reporting cadence to leadership and use the data to reallocate investment.
Team, Vendor, and Budget Leadership
- Build, lead, and grow a dedicated customer marketing and advocacy team. This is additive scope to Microsoft’s existing customer-evidence production — staff and operate it so the core evidence pipeline never slips. Partner with sales on dedicated funding for amplification and sponsored editorial, and select, manage, and get consistent, high-quality output from agencies and production partners against that budget.
How You Operate:
- **Systems builder. **You build durable, repeatable programs and operate them at scale.
- **Customer-obsessed. **You treat advocates as partners and protect the customer experience in every activation.
- **Storyteller with judgment. **You know what separates a logo from a story that moves the market, and you invest accordingly.
- **Orchestrator. **You give many teams one shared picture, de-conflict overlapping work, and make sure no high-value story is orphaned, duplicated, or left un-amplified.
- **Influence at scale. **You earn trust across many teams and turn competing priorities into shared plans.
- **Data-driven. **You define what good looks like, measure it honestly, and let the numbers redirect the work.
Success in This Role Looks Like:
- Every customer moment along from large tentpole moments to long tail high velocity — including marquee deal wins from the field — is sourced deliberately, tracked in one shared system, and amplified by design, with clear ownership end to end.
- A steady, predictable drumbeat of customer proof that senior commercial leadership can rely on, with business value — not pricing — as the through-line.
- A sustained amplification engine that reliably puts amplification-ready, industry-organized posts in the hands of execs and the field every week.
- An always-on, programmatic advocacy engine that reliably sources and activates customer stories across brand, campaigns, events, and the field.
- A portfolio of breakthrough customer storytelling that is genuinely compelling, reusable across formats, and present in Microsoft’s highest-visibility moments.
- Deep, durable partnerships with sales and product marketing that make customer voice a default input to commercial marketing.
- A measurable contribution to key business outcomes — backed by a clear reporting cadence to leadership.
Other:
- Embody our Company's Cultureand Values
Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications:
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.
Additional or Preferred Qualifications:
- Bring a strong first-principles POV on how to build a best in class capability paired with 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 you can share.
- 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) and 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, along with
- Demonstrated use of AI tools to scale content creation and advocacy operations.
- Experience operating in a large, global, matrixed organization.
Integrated Marketing M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $155,800 - $277,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $202,400 - $303,600 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about **requesting accommodations.**