Brand advocacy takes your loyal, enthusiastic customers and empowers them to support your brand or endorse your products publicly. Marketers who subscribe to brand advocacy aim to drive positive word-of-mouth marketing, encourage user-generated content (UGC), and leverage referrals.
Sounds great, right? But how do you put brand advocacy into action? Here are several ideas to kickstart your advocacy marketing efforts:
Ask for reviews
One of the most compelling pieces of UGC you can collect is product reviews. While customers will provide reviews independently, they’re sporadic at best.
How do you encourage customers to leave a review? Ask them. It might sound like a simple idea, but you’ll see positive results if you prompt customers to provide feedback.
And, if you provide an incentive, you’ll see even better results.
With an advocacy marketing platform like Zuberance, you can encourage customers to leave a review in exchange for redeemable points towards gift cards, free products, or experiences.
The email below, for example, asks a customer to review a recent purchase and refers to the customer by name, a nice, personalized touch.
Repurpose reviews
Once you collect reviews, repurpose them and use them in your marketing efforts. How? Add reviews to your homepage, include them in your newsletter, or create an email campaign using reviews to provide social proof.
Gather testimonials
Product reviews are usually a short overview of a customer’s experience with your product, but a testimonial goes beyond that. A testimonial is more personal and focuses on the results that stem from your product. It serves as an authentic advertisement for the product.
Encourage referrals
Customers make great recruiters. Your happiest customers are often willing to refer your business to a friend, and with a structured referral program, you can reward new and existing customers.
What kind of incentive could you give customers to encourage them to refer your product? With Zuberance, your existing customers earn points for each referral, making activation simple.
Without a platform, you’ll need to advertise the referral program yourself. You can do so on your social channels and ask happy customers to do the same.
Create an ongoing advocacy program
You expand your word-of-mouth marketing by asking customers to share content that endorses your product.
While you can create one-time UGC collections, like running a photo submission contest, many brands set up an ongoing program that asks customers to share photos of them using their product. In addition to sharing a snap and a message, the brand asks customers to use a specific hashtag.
With Zuberance, you can engage with your customers one-on-one. You can ask them questions and gather insightful feedback. You can send a small group of customers a beta product and ask them to share their thoughts within the platform.
You can also ask customers to share a question or concern they have regarding your product. You can use the information to make internal improvements or educate others, similar to the email example above.
If you’re looking to leverage brand advocacy to market your business, use the ideas above. A brand advocacy platform can help you identify and mobilize advocates with a points-based incentive system. Learn more about Zuberance.
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Businesses leverage Zuberance to fuel their advocacy programs, integrating them into their overall marketing programs. The outcome? Lowered marketing expenses, enhanced customer engagement, improved retention rates, and most importantly, positive ROI.
