If you’re growing a small business or a startup, brand advocates can help your business expand at a much faster rate. These individuals are often designated as low-cost, high-return marketing strategies, and though they’re excellent for newer companies, they can also be used to give established brands a boost.
Discovering and cultivating brand advocates does take some time and effort, but once you have a good system in place, you can depend on these individuals to spread the word about your brand in a positive way. The following guide will help you figure out some creative and effective ways to encourage your brand advocates to become active and engaging. These tips and strategies will help transform regular customers and industry influencers into excellent representatives of your company.
Increase customer advocacy
In the past, brand advocates didn’t have many options for getting the word out about a product or service that they loved. But with the rise of social media and the proliferation of smartphones, it’s much easier for these individuals to spark conversations with others and, hopefully, gain you some new customers. Here are some of the key steps you’ll need to follow if you’re hoping to use advocacy marketing to give your brand better recognition in the marketplace.
Identify advocates with the most potential
To figure out who your best brand advocates will be, you need to pay attention to how things work in your industry. Does popularity spread mostly by people’s word of mouth, or are social media influencers an important piece of the puzzle? Look for where your customers are getting their information and move your focus toward those channels. Even something as simple as a survey asking customers how they heard about your brand can offer great insight into this process. Often, you’ll need to attack multiple channels in order to advocate for your brand.
Once you know where customers are getting their intelligence, start looking for the big names in that area. Is it an Instagram user with thousands of followers, or is it a customer who leaves great reviews on your website? Start a conversation with these people by thanking them for their interest and positive comments. Reaching out to these individuals is an important step, so be sure to make a good first impression on behalf of the company.
Create incentives for your brand advocates
Getting brand advocates to spread the word about your company can be challenging. These individuals won’t want to just post about your brand for no reason, so you’ll need to give them an incentive to get them started. Here are a few ways to do it.
- Offer them free products or services. You can allow your community of brand advocates to receive products or services for free in exchange for their honest feedback. Ask that they leave a review on your site or create a Facebook post or Instagram video documenting their experience and their thoughts about the product.
- Ask them to get involved. Your brand advocates are some of your most active customers, so it only makes sense that you get their feedback on things other than your existing products. Ask what they think about your branding and messaging and what does or does not appeal to them. Get their input on the development of new products, and ask them to detail what improvements they’d like to see in terms of customer service.
- Add a personal touch. Don’t treat your brand advocates as one cohesive mass. Refer to each person by name, and avoid sending out email blasts to all of them at once. Instead, engage with them on an intimate level. Find out what types of customer advocacy they’d like to participate in and which products or services interest them the most. You can even send a handwritten note every so often to thank them for their contributions.
- Feature them on your site. Whether you use your main company website or your brand blog, featuring your brand advocates makes them feel special and allows them to do a little promotion for themselves at the same time. When others see that brand advocates get to be featured on your site, they may even reach out to you to become advocates themselves.
Customer advocacy is a delicate area where bribery is not tolerated. You can’t offer individuals incentives only if they offer positive reviews. Honesty and transparency are paramount, so be sure your incentives are all above board, and encourage brand advocates to disclose when they receive a product for free in exchange for their review (good or bad).
Get other customers interested
Having brand advocates who are willing to participate in your marketing campaigns is wonderful. To get the best results, however, you’ll want to set up some strategies that allow their outreach to be as effective as possible. These are basically directions that you can give your brand advocates in order to make their advocacy even more compelling to potential customers. Here are some ideas for increasing customer interest through advocacy marketing.
- Use a hashtag. Implementing a hashtag for specific contests, marketing campaigns, special products, or new services will encourage other customers to do the same. Have your brand advocates use the hashtag and to encourage their followers to use it every time they review a product, participate in a contest, or leave a comment on social media.
- Set up loyalty programs. If possible, offer upgrades, discounts, and free products to your customers based on points assigned for each purchase. This will encourage them to try your brand, since there is the promise of free rewards in the future. Of course, you should also extend this program to your brand advocates and offer them extra incentives for their feedback.
- Give bonuses for referrals. One great way to bring in new customers is to create a referral program. This is something that your brand advocates can spread the word about in their social media posts. Present them with a coupon code, extra loyalty program points, or a freebie of some sort for referring friends and family. You should also offer some type of incentive to the new customers who sign up through the referral program.
- Create engaging contests. Brand advocacy can become a fun, participatory activity when you turn it into a contest. Have your customer advocates tell their followers about a contest being hosted by your company. One great option is to have customers post a photo of themselves using your product and to add a caption with a branded hashtag. Offer rewards to the winners of the contest and make sure to hint at future contests in order to encourage those who weren’t winners this time around.
- Deliver exclusive content. Another way your brand advocates can excite their followers is by allowing them to reveal exclusive content. This could be a behind-the-scenes look at your company, or even a sneak peek at an upcoming product that hasn’t been released yet.
Measure your results
Once you have a brand advocacy program in place, it’s wise to start tracking the results of your efforts. This will help you to determine which of your influencers are getting the most traction and leading to the most conversions on your site. Collect as much data as possible, including how many likes and comments brand advocate posts receive via social media and how many click-throughs you get from their links. These data points will be very important when it comes to figuring out how to best reach out to your target audience.
Over time, you may realize that certain approaches and strategies need to be modified in order to obtain your marketing goals. Be flexible and approach your customer advocacy program with an open mind; it will likely change over time, and brand advocates with poor results at the beginning may end up being important influencers in the future.
There’s something about word-of-mouth advertising that other forms of marketing simply can’t attain. It’s incredibly effective at garnering new customers, which is why brand advocates are a must-have for any emerging business or company looking to reposition themselves in the marketplace. Use the tips and strategies detailed in this guide. Develop engaging brand advocates who help you increase sales and create greater brand recognition.
