Harnessing the power of satisfied customers isn’t just about saving money on advertising; it’s about driving action. The power of word-of-mouth marketing is in its authenticity and cost-effectiveness. Done well, your brand loyalists can increase brand recognition, promote products and services to new audiences, and increase sales—all for little to no impact to your marketing budget. Just look at these stats from customers who feel appreciated by a brand:
- 87% said they plan to stay with the brand
- 83% said they plan to spend more with the brand
- 86% said they will advocate for the brand
If you’re looking for ways to incentivize your best customers and amplify their voices but don’t have the time or resources to build an advocate marketing program from scratch, it may be time to consider investing in a brand advocacy provider. Consider looking for a platform that offers these features:
Positive Reviews
Just how vital are positive customer reviews? A recent study found that 98% of consumers consider them to be an essential part of the decision-making process and nearly half (45%) said they won’t purchase products without any reviews.
When comparing brand advocacy providers, ensure that their platforms can streamline customer feedback collection and scale them with a user-friendly interface that allows you to share them across digital channels.
Customer Stories
The power of authentic stories can elevate your brand and the right brand advocacy platform makes it easy to gather these experiences.
These narrative stories can help other consumers understand the benefits of your product, such as how it solved a problem through an authenticated customer. They can also provide invaluable insights informing marketing and sales about the customer journey across various touchpoints.
The best brand advocacy platforms will have an intuitive design to make it easy for customers to share their stories.
Referral Rewards
Reward your promoters by giving them the opportunity to serve as affiliate marketers. Because these loyalists are actual customers, their firsthand experience makes their recommendations more trustworthy.
Armed with unique promo codes and discounts, your biggest fans will be incentivized through your chosen rewards. These might include digital gift cards, VIP access, deep discounts, free products, prepaid cards, free shipping, or cash payments. Zuberance’s advocate marketing platform, for example, boasts a global reward catalog with more than 1,000 options to cater to a wide range of reward preferences.
Private Community Engagement
Your brand advocacy provider should offer a secure space for communal brainstorming, feedback and two-way communication with your top customers. In this private arena, you can engage with your brand’s biggest fans through polls, surveys, and detailed feedback.
The information you gather can help improve not only your marketing efforts but also other departments at your brand, including:
- Research and development: Improve existing products and innovate for new ones
- Customer service: Improve the process for buying, shipping, and returns
- Packaging: Get feedback on first impressions and durability
- Market research: Gain competitive insights
Using a community-centric approach invites your brand loyalists to feel heard and respected through meaningful conversations and shared opinions that may be incorporated into the brand’s decision-making processes.
Social Sharing
Customer feedback can be valuable, but to maximize the impact of these powerful experiences, you need tools designed to help you share them across various social channels. It’s a cost-effective way to boost credibility and expand your reach to penetrate new audience segments.
When reviewing the features of a brand advocacy provider, look for social sharing tools that will help you reach audiences on all the major platforms. With a streamlined dashboard to simplify your efforts, you’ll be able to share reviews, testimonials, unboxing videos, demonstrations, before-and-after photos, shopping hauls, and more.
Analytics
Your brand advocacy efforts are only as strong as the results you can recognize and the right brand advocacy tools will empower your team to understand, optimize, and scale your initiatives. Think real-time engagement data, advocate performance tracking, and the ability to analyze content effectiveness.
You’ll also want seamless integration with the leading e-commerce platforms, like BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce, to measure sales impact directly. By tracing sales back to advocates and tracking how endorsements and content lead to conversions, you can adjust your advocate selections and focus on what drives tangible results.
Data provides more than a justification for your marketing spend; it provides concrete insights to inform your decisions so you can make improvements and enhance your ROI.
Support
Choosing a brand advocacy provider is about more than investing in software. You’ll want access to a team of experts who can support you from launch to analytics. The right company will be available for ongoing consultation to ensure your brand is getting the most out of your advocacy analytics. Curious to learn more about what a brand advocacy provider can do to start, expand, or simplify your current advocacy efforts? Book a demo with 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.
