5 min reading time

Beyond Adoption: How Education Fuels Customer Advocacy and Growth

Flavia Bianchi, Content Marketing Manager at LearnUpon

Picture this: your customers are activated, satisfied, and engaged. They know how to use the features, and actively benefit from your product.

But growth has slowed. Renewals feel uncertain. Upsells? A rare sight.

The problem here isn’t that your customers aren’t getting value from your product—but that they don’t know how to get more value.So instead, they stay in “maintenance mode”, while your organization misses an expansion opportunity, experiences a decline in product stickiness, and suffers with a low NRR (Net Revenue Retention).

But there is a way out! Breaking through this plateau takes more than engagement—it takes education that drives continuous growth.

And with that, welcome to the Grow stage: the final phase of LearnUpon’s customer lifecycle framework, designed to leverage education across every phase of the customer journey. Followed by the Attract, Activate, and Engage stages, this is where customer education goes beyond teaching how to use your product. It transforms your academy into a strategic engine that drives revenue, loyalty, and advocacy.

Education as the Catalyst for Growth

Now, let’s flip the script: imagine a world where your customers don’t just use your product—they grow with it. They uncover new ways to get value, feel confident and capable, and proudly advocate for your brand. Sounds like a dream, right?

At the Grow stage, customer education goes far beyond satisfaction. Continuous learning keeps customers realizing value, which drives retention—in fact, 90% of organisations say customer satisfaction and product usage have a direct impact on their business, showing the measurable power of education-led growth.

Another Grow-stage strategy, advanced courses open up new features and use cases, naturally creating opportunities for expansion. As customers master your product, that confidence turns into advocacy—transforming users into champions who amplify your brand.

That’s the real power of education at this stage: growth that fuels itself.

From Power Users to Champions: What Growth Really Looks Like

Growth shows up when customers start going beyond the basics—exploring, experimenting, and mastering your solution.

So, what does it look like on the ground? Customers deepening product adoption, integrating your solution into their daily workflows more and more. Peers sharing tips, shortcuts, and best practices, helping each other get more value out of your product.

Growth is reflected in a real sense of pride and ownership: customers feel confident in their skills and empowered to solve problems independently.

Even small wins matter. Completing a challenging workflow, mastering a feature, or contributing advice in a community forum can spark confidence—and that’s contagious. Confident customers naturally want to share their knowledge, inspiring others along the way. That’s the first ripple of advocacy taking shape, even before formal programs or badges come into play.

How to Turn Customers into Advocates: Your Playbook

Now that you know why education works as a catalyst for growth, and what this growth looks like in reality, here’s how you can turn your customers into loyal advocates. Think of this as your personal customer education playbook for the last stage of the customer journey.

Define your growth objectives

Growth looks different from one organization to another. Before planning your customer education strategy, ask yourself: what does expansion or advocacy mean for your business? Does it look like deeper product adoption, increased renewals, or customers actively advocating for your brand? Identify the key behaviors and outcomes that signal your customers are expanding their use of your product and gaining confidence.

Will your customers growth be measured by an increase in advanced features use, certification completions, or maybe success stories being shared with peers? Defining these objectives upfront gives you a clear target for your education programs.

Map opportunities for expansion

You’ve identified your company’s growth signals, and now it’s time to find where it can happen. How? Look for underused features or workflows that customers haven’t fully explored yet.

In your customer academy, design learning journeys that help customers discover and adopt these features with hidden potential, helping them to unlock more from your product while naturally expanding their usage. By mapping these opportunities, you turn untapped value into (you guessed it!) growth.

Build advanced certification programs

Develop advanced or role-based courses for your power-users, so learners see only what’s relevant to them—keeping them focused, challenged, and actively engaged.

Use this personalized education to inspire mastery and pride—the secret sauce of the Grow stage. Then, take it a step further with formal recognition. Certifications, badges, or advanced credentials give learners a way to showcase their expertise and celebrate how far they’ve come.

And the data backs it up: organisations with 250–500 employees report that 95% have seen a direct ROI from their customer education efforts when leveraging certifications or advanced programs.

Celebrate success and foster advocacy

When your customers succeed, celebrate it! Publicly recognizing achievements, such as completing a certification or mastering a new skill, builds on this confidence.

Encourage your customers to share their wins—whether that’s showcasing badges, telling their stories, or engaging in your customer community. Each success story fuels advocacy and strengthens the connection between your customers and your brand.

Take a look at HubSpot Academy: with their sharable and publicly valued certifications, HubSpot changed the game. It’s easy to spot their badges on LinkedIn, and they serve a dual purpose: helping customers advance their careers while amplifying HubSpot’s credibility and reach. That’s advocacy powered by education.

Craneware’s Success Story: Empowering Customers to Expand and Advocate

Craneware Academy uses certifications to reward learners for completing courses and mastering advanced features. These shareable badges and recognitions help customers feel proud of their expertise, encourage continued learning, and encourage advocacy—turning educated users into confident champions of the platform.

Consider monetization strategically

When it comes to certifications, monetization is always an option—but not always the right one. Before you decide, revisit your growth objectives and ask whether premium learning or paid certifications align with your goals.

Monetization should feel like a natural extension of the value you already deliver. And when leveraged the right way, education becomes more than a growth driver—it becomes a new revenue stream.

Measure impact and refine continuously

The only way to improve is to measure impact and uncover new opportunities. While 89% of organisations track ROI from their customer education programs, 48% still struggle with unclear KPIs. At the Grow stage, focus on metrics like course completions, certification rates, advocacy activity, and revenue growth. Together, they help you connect your results directly to your Grow-stage efforts.

With the data in hands, put it to use. Address the gaps that are now visible and turn them into opportunities to evolve your academy into a stronger growth engine.

The Endgame: Turning Education into Advocacy

Throughout the customer lifecycle, you’ve guided your prospects into becoming customers, from onboarding to engagement, and now into growth. Along the way, education has empowered, inspired, and created a pathway for lasting success.

But here’s the truth: customer education doesn’t end with adoption or retention—it grows into expansion and advocacy. Growth doesn’t stop when customers master your product; it continues when they share their success, champion your brand, and help others do the same.

Final takeaway? When customers keep learning, they don’t just grow with your business—they help your business grow, too.
Want to see how customer education drives value across the lifecycle? Download our whitepaper, Customer Education in 2025, for the latest trends, strategies, and insights shaping education-led growth.