6 Ways Brand Advocates Can Promote Your Product

With the right customer advocacy strategy, you can turn customers into an organic marketing crew that supports your brand and product. A structured customer advocacy plan gives you the ability to identify, communicate, and mobilize VIPs in a way that promotes your brand and rewards their efforts. 

What kind of efforts can your advocates help with? Here are six brand-supporting ideas to draw from.

Share product-endorsing content on social media

Authentic endorsements from happy customers are powerful. When an intrigued follower sees someone they trust endorsing a product or sharing their experiences, they take note. These authentic posts aren’t seen as ads but as a recommendation from a friend. 

You can ask your brand advocates to share content on your behalf. 

As you prepare to activate advocates for a user-generated content (UGC) campaign like this, follow these steps:

• Set a goal 
• Pick one product to focus on
• Identify the list of advocates you’d like to participate
• Create a branded hashtag to accompany all content
• Provide specifics like content type, content channel, and a deadline
• Offer an incentive to encourage participation
• Review metrics and evaluate success

Of all the steps, pay special attention to the campaign details that you provide advocates. The more information you can give them, the better. For example, ask them to share a picture of themselves using your product on Instagram or a video demonstration of your product for YouTube and set a deadline for submission. 

Here’s a great example of a product endorsement on Instagram. This brand advocate was incentivized to post their experience at Buca Di Beppo with rewards points.

Write a review

Eighty-seven percent of shoppers regularly check product reviews before making a purchase, according to a survey from Power Reviews. Since reviews have become an essential part of the buying process, brands should actively work on earning positive customer feedback. 

Create a campaign that mobilizes your loyal customers, asking them to leave a review on a specific site, be it Google, Amazon, or Yelp. 

Share a testimonial

Reviews and testimonials are similar, but they’re not the same thing. A review is an informal message from a customer about a specific product, while a testimonial is more formal. Usually, testimonials are a more structured account of a customer’s product experience and include specific results. 

Testimonials have many uses. You can post them on your website and social channels to engage customers, or the sales team could share testimonials with prospects.

Refer a friend

Your most loyal customers likely LOVE your product, making them well-suited to pitch your product to friends and family. When they make a product recommendation to their inner circle, the recipients are likely to respond and are also likely to convert based on their close relationship with the advocate. As a result, advocate referrals are pretty valuable.  

If your organization lacks a referral marketing strategy, it’s time to consider one. Remember, referral marketing rewards both the existing customer and the potential customer. A new customer might receive 20% of their first purchase, while the existing customer might get a commission on the sale, a free product, or special access to new products. 

Share your brand’s content

A simple way to leverage your team of customer advocates is to ask them to share your social posts. This could be an ongoing request or you could reach out to advocates when there’s a specific post that you’d like help sharing, like one that mentions a new eBook or an upcoming event.

Something like this can be accomplished with a simple email request or through a customer advocacy platform, where you can communicate with subscribed advocates quickly.  

Promote events

Advocates can play a role in your events. From promoting the event and inviting their followers to attend or even participate, you can decide how much involvement you’d like from your VIP customers. 

For this type of mobilization, you should hand-select the advocates. If, for example, you’d like an advocate to host a panel discussion at an upcoming conference, you should work with an advocate who’s not only familiar with your product but also has public speaking skills. 

To maximize your advocacy efforts, consider a platform like Zuberance. You’ll invite loyal customers to join the customer advocacy platform, where you can communicate with them, invite them to participate in different challenges and campaigns, collect feedback, and reward them for each action they take. Learn more about Zuberance by requesting a demo.