Advocate Marketing Best Practices to Implement

By encouraging existing customers to promote your product, you can reach customers authentically and affordably. If you’re ready to utilize advocate marketing to engage your audience and drive results, here are the best practices to consider. 

Advocate marketing best practices to follow 

Advocate marketing can benefit your brand only if you approach it with best practices in mind.  

Take a customer-first approach 

You’ll naturally create a loyal following by making customers your main priority. While it takes time to cultivate relationships, if your brand makes decisions that are in customers’ best interest, trust will grow.  

Deliver an unparalleled brand experience 

Advocates are more likely to speak up when a brand provides a superior experience. What does that mean, exactly? Your brand treats each touchpoint as a way to win over customers. Everything from customer service and online checkouts to social media interactions and in-store layouts is executed with customers in mind.  

You should also audit your customer experience regularly to make improvements.  

Identify advocates  

Every brand, no matter its size or product sold, has advocates. How do you find them? Your brand can identify advocates by: 

• Looking at purchase history for frequent buyers 
• Checking your review sites for happy customers 
• Reviewing your social channels for customers that tag your brand  
• Exploring social comments left by customers 

Simply put, you can use your sales data and online marketing channels to find advocates who have already positively mentioned your brand.  

Mobilize advocates 

While some customers will take to social to endorse your product independently, most advocates need a nudge. Your brand likely has many silent advocates willing to refer your brand or provide a positive testimonial, but you need to mobilize them. They need a call to action to respond to.  

By using an advocate marketing platform, you can invite customers to join your team, provide tasks for them to complete, and incentivize them with rewards.  

Zuberance helps you invite customers to the platform, where you can ask advocates to leave a review, share a post on social, or complete a challenge. For each action taken, advocates earn points that they can use towards things like free products or gift cards.  

An advocate marketing platform mobilizes customers, providing incentives to encourage your silent advocates to go public.  

Comply with the rules 

Advocates can become an extension of your marketing team, but remember, there are certain rules you must follow.  

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sets requirements for advocate marketing and advertising to protect consumers from fraud, deception, and unfair business practices. While every company should familiarize itself with FTC’s guidelines, here are a few key points to follow: 

• Always be honest about your product. Don’t make false claims.  
• If you incentivize customers to leave reviews, don’t condition it on being positive, which could introduce bias. 
• Ensure advocates disclose their relationship with your brand. 
• Learn about disclosure rules dictated by each social channel.   

Amplify efforts 

When advocates share a video testimonial or a product demo, share it on your channels, or consider turning it into UGC ads. Not only will you expand your reach and get more mileage out of advocate-created content, but you help fill your content pipeline with authentic posts and ads.  

Amplification is easy with an advocate marketing platform. Using built-in tools, you can share advocate content (UGG content) on your social channels and website.  

Foster community  

Advocate marketing is a long-term marketing effort. You want advocates to continually promote your brand and products, releasing a steady drumbeat of content. To achieve this goal, you must foster a sense of community among your advocates. Communicate with them regularly, show your appreciation, and consider asking them for input on new initiatives like a new product, website, or logo.  

Track your results 

Every marketing effort has analytics tied to it; advocate marketing is no different. You must monitor your metrics to ensure your efforts provide a solid ROI. To gauge efficacy for advocate marketing, you can monitor KPIs like Net Promoter Score, customer satisfaction, referral rates, and mentions on social media.  

If you rely on an advocate marketing platform, you can turn to the robust analytics in your centralized dashboard, which makes it easy to quantify performance data and make informed decisions. 

Ready to learn more about an advocate marketing platform that can empower your customers to act on your behalf? Check out the Zuberance website to explore its features and request a demo.