ALG Toolkit / Value Exchange Canvas

Design the engine that makes sharing worth it

Advocacy-Led GrowthALGA go-to-market motion where people who completed a meaningful experience with your company become the primary engine of distribution, trust, and pipeline. Unlike employee advocacy, ALG activates external participants at natural completion moments.Not referral programs. Not influencer marketing. Not asking employees to share company content. ALG only works when sharing serves the participant's own goals. only compounds when every actor in the loop gains something. If any actor is subsidizing the others, the loop decays. This canvas helps you design the value exchangeValue ExchangeWhat each party gains from the sharing act. The participant gains credentials, recognition, or economic access. Your company gains distribution and signal density. The participant's network gains discovery of something genuinely relevant. All three must be positive, or the loop breaks.A partner earns your certification (they gain client trust), shares the badge on LinkedIn (you gain distribution), and their network discovers a vetted technology (the audience gains a qualified recommendation).Not: "share our blog post and we'll give you points." That's a transaction where only the company gains real value. True value exchange means the participant would share even if you never asked. across your entire organization - not just one team, one moment, or one audience.

Participant
Credentials, recognition, economic access
↔
Company
Distribution, signal density, pipeline
↔
Network
Discovery of genuinely relevant solutions
The Diagnostic Question
"If we removed our name from the share, would the participant still want to post it?"

From the framework: Section 05 - Value Exchange

Screens: 5
Time: ~8 minutes
Output: Enterprise Value Exchange Map
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Step 1
Who are your participant populations?
Most companies only think about customers when they think about advocacy. But every group that interacts with your company has completion momentsCompletion MomentThe point where someone crosses a finish line they personally invested in. Each population has different finish lines: customers deploy your product, partners earn certifications, community members graduate cohorts, event attendees complete workshops.Don't count passive interactions like downloading content, visiting your website, or opening an email. Completion requires effort and a sense of accomplishment. and sharing motives. Select every population that exists in your organization today.
Customers
People and teams who use your product or service. They deploy, onboard, achieve milestones, earn certifications.
Typical motive: Professional credibility
Partners & Agencies
Firms that build on, resell, or service your platform. Certifications, awards, co-marketing moments.
Typical motive: Economic access
Community Members
People in your forums, Slack groups, user groups, cohort programs. They contribute, graduate, earn recognition.
Typical motive: Peer recognition
Event Attendees
Speakers, workshop participants, conference attendees. Time-bound cohorts with concentrated energy.
Typical motive: Professional credibility
Certified Professionals
People who passed your exams, earned your credentials, completed your training. The credential IS the share.
Typical motive: Career signaling
Internal Teams
Employees who complete internal programs with external credential value. Sales certifications, engineering achievements, leadership programs.
Typical motive: Career signaling
Alumni & Former Users
People who've moved on but still carry the experience. Former employees, graduated cohort members, past champions.
Typical motive: Identity & belonging
Analysts & Influencers
Industry analysts, thought leaders, journalists who cover your space. Their motive is audience relevance, not your brand.
Typical motive: Audience credibility
0 populations selected
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Step 2
Map the primary sharing motive for each population
Different populations share for different reasons. A partner shares for economic accessEconomic AccessThe deepest motive layer in ALG. When membership in your ecosystem creates revenue opportunities, advocacy becomes economically rational. Partners promote certifications because it attracts clients. Developers showcase skills because it opens job opportunities.Salesforce consulting partners promote their Trailblazer certifications because each badge signals competence to prospective clients. The partner's self-interest and Salesforce's distribution goal are the same action.Not loyalty programs, not discount codes, not "refer a friend" bonuses. Economic access means the ecosystem itself generates income - not that you pay people to participate. - the certification attracts clients. A community member shares for peer recognition. Getting the motive right determines whether the exchange is self-sustaining or forced.
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Step 3
What shareable artifacts exist across your organization?
A shareable artifactShareable ArtifactThe tangible, visual thing the participant actually posts, displays, or references when they share. A certification badge on LinkedIn. A speaker card from your event. A milestone dashboard screenshot. A co-branded case study. The artifact carries your brand as infrastructure, not as the message.An AWS certification badge is a perfect artifact: it displays the participant's achievement (their message) with AWS branding embedded (your distribution). The participant posts it for career reasons. AWS benefits as infrastructure.Not a blog post you wrote about them. Not a social media template they fill in. Not company content they're asked to reshare. The artifact must belong to the participant's story, with your brand riding along. is what the participant actually posts or displays. Mark each artifact's current status in your organization.
Certificates & Digital Badges
Verifiable credentials that participants display on LinkedIn, resumes, email signatures. Automated at scale.
Speaker & Participant Cards
Branded visual cards for event speakers, workshop completers, award winners. Designed for social sharing.
Milestone Dashboards & Screenshots
Visual displays of usage milestones, project counts, anniversaries. The screenshot IS the share content.
Award Announcements
Partner of the Year, Customer Innovation Award, Top Contributor. Public recognition with inherent share value.
Co-branded Case Study Features
Joint content where the customer/partner is the hero. They share because it positions their team, not your product.
Leaderboard Rankings & Profiles
Public-facing contributor rankings, expert profiles, community status pages. Gamified recognition with career value.
Project Showcases & Galleries
Public portfolio pages where users display what they built with your platform. Functions as both proof-of-work and portfolio.
Cohort Graduation Proofs
Completion certificates, cohort photos, graduation announcements for group programs. Triggers the cohort cascade effect.
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Step 4
What's blocking the exchange today?
Even when the motive exists and the artifact is ready, friction kills activation. These are the most common enterprise friction points. Select every one that applies to your organization.
Timing Friction
Late sharing prompt
You ask people to share days or weeks after the belief windowBelief WindowThe brief period right after someone finishes something real where sharing feels natural. For a conference speaker, it's 24-48 hours after their talk. For a certification, it's the day they pass. If you miss the window, sharing goes from natural to awkward.Not a CRM automation trigger. Not "7 days post-event" in your marketing calendar. The window is biological, not operational. has closed. By then, the moment has passed.
No prompt at all
The completion moment happens but nobody surfaces the sharing opportunity. No email, no in-app trigger, no human nudge.
Artifact Friction
No shareable artifact exists
The moment happens but there's nothing visual, tangible, or screenshot-worthy for the participant to share.
Artifact isn't designed for social
A certificate exists but it looks like a PDF from 2005. Not optimized for LinkedIn, not visually worth sharing.
Organizational Friction
No cross-functional owner
Product builds the feature, marketing wants the shares, CS knows the customer - but nobody owns the end-to-end exchange.
Legal/compliance bottleneck
Every customer mention needs legal approval. The review cycle takes weeks. By the time it's approved, the window is gone.
Manual artifact production
Each certificate, card, or announcement is created by hand. Works for 10, breaks at 500. Can't scale without automation.
Completion data is siloed
Event attendance lives in one system, certifications in another, product milestones in a third. No unified view of who completed what.
Current artifact production model
Mostly automated
Certificates, badges, and cards generate automatically from platform events or LMS completions.
Semi-automated
Some artifacts auto-generate (e.g., certificates), others require manual design (e.g., speaker cards).
Mostly manual
Marketing or design team creates each artifact by hand. Case-by-case process.
No artifact production
We don't currently produce shareable artifacts for participants. The exchange infrastructure doesn't exist yet.
Value Exchange Canvas / Results
0
EXCHANGE
READINESS