As a savvy marketer, you already recognize the immense potential of brand advocacy in your marketing mix. You understand that brand advocates — those passionate customers who love promoting your brand — can dramatically increase brand visibility, credibility, and customer engagement. But how do you design a strategy that identifies these advocates, nurtures their potential, and harnesses their influence effectively? In this post, we’ll delve deeper into the nuances of crafting a successful brand advocacy strategy that will amplify your marketing efforts and elevate your brand to new heights.
Building your brand advocacy strategy
Create strong relationships
Solid customer relationships are the foundation of a successful brand advocacy program. This starts by showing genuine appreciation and gratitude for their loyalty, offering rewards in return for positive reviews or recommendations, and providing a platform to share their thoughts and experiences with your brand.
Leverage existing fans
You may already have people passionate about your brand — now is the time to find out who they are and strengthen those relationships. You can do this by connecting with them on social media, engaging with their content, and rewarding them for their promotion of your brand.
Develop content to engage advocates
Create compelling content that both engages existing advocates as well as attracts new fans. Share helpful articles, blog posts, infographics, or videos related to your brand. Make sure the content demonstrates your brand’s “voice” and speaks to what your fans care about. Encourage people to share this content and use it as a springboard for discussion across social media channels.
Reward fans
Creating an incentive program is another great way to engage advocates and reward them for their loyalty. Offer discounts on products or services, exclusive access to events and products, or even recognition in the form of awards or social media shoutouts. These rewards will not only create more positive sentiment around your brand but also encourage further engagement with existing fans and attract new ones.
Create opportunities for feedback
Providing customers with an opportunity to give feedback is a great way to show you value their opinion. Whether it’s via surveys, reviews, or social media posts – make sure to follow up with fans. Asking questions, responding to concerns and thanking supporters for their input will help strengthen relationships and build loyalty.
Stay active on social media
Social media is a platform for brands to connect directly with their customers in real time. An advocate marketing hub like Zuberance is another powerful option. Incorporate shareable content such as videos, podcasts, articles, quizzes and more onto your channels so that fans can learn about what matters most to them.
Provide exceptional customer experiences
Prioritizing the customer experience is a springboard to an effective advocate marketing program. By providing great customer service and keeping your relationships with brand advocates positive, you can better retain customers. One way to do that is to offer quick assistance when needed. Ensuring your customers have the best experience they can is key.
Encourage user-generated content
User-generated content plays a large role in advocacy programs. Reward UGC with social media or member hub shoutouts, leaderboards, prizes or discounts. Encouraging healthy competition among advocates gamifies their experience and motivates them to participate.
Zuberance offers solutions to help measure and keep track the impact of advocate marketing programs. In your dashboard, you can view the number of social media posts generated, the improvement in product ratings on third-party retailer websites, the number of members in your program, and more.
Re-engage advocates
It is essential for brands working with advocates to consistently share their appreciation for them. Zuberance provides brands this opportunity and more as it automatically enables the retargeting of advocates to encourage them to become more active in the hub.
Tracking and measuring success
Zuberance serves as a platform for brands to track and record the success of their advocates to discover what areas need improvement and what elements are working correctly. Zuberance allows brands access to monitor specific metrics and KPIs, (key performance indicators) such as:
Advocate army
- Total number of advocates
- Number of advocates by brand, product, location, timing, and other factors
- Where advocates are sourced (through email, social, web, etc.)
- Top 10, 50, and 100 advocates
Advocate actions
- Number and percentage of created product reviews
- Number and percentage of publishing and or sharing reviews
- Estimated reach and impressions of Advocates sharing content
Prospect responses
- Inbound traffic, leads, sign-ups, downloads, etc.
- Number and percentages of conversations
- Sales and revenues
- Estimated reach and impressions of prospects sharing advocate content
By utilizing tools and software like Zuberance, brands can leverage the power of their advocates to drive greater customer loyalty, increase user engagement, generate more high-quality leads and ultimately convert more sales.
