Sara WilliamsAll big names in the market have their brand ambassadors to promote their products. When the ambassadors talk about your company online, it impacts the people who follow them and trust them. The words from the brand advocates or ambassadors are the golden words that can make or break customers for you. Thus advocacy marketing is important to implement to your business.
For instance, Nike-a niche sports apparel/shoe brand has its brand advocates coming from different industries to attract people from all over the world. They have got big names as their advocates, who promote their products. Irrespective of the price and the type of product you will see the customers flowing in their stores to buy products. This shows the power of advocate marketing.
According to many surveys, 93% of people trust online reviews before buying any product or service from a particular brand.
Now that you have some idea of how the advocate marketing works and is a necessity to get an enormous customer base. Let us now know in detail what Advocate Marketing is and how it works.
Who are Advocates?
Advocates are the precious customers of yours who have great trust in your brand and your services. The advocates are those who have been with you for the longest time and then become the best sales representative. Brand advocates are the most trusted and credible. They will talk, the good about you, which will eventually result in generating leads for you.
There are people who trust Nike and others might believe Adidas is better. Thus, the advocates of both the respective brands will defend their favorite brand and promote it. You what is the best thing about getting advocates for your company? You don’t need to spend a penny in asking them to promote your brand.
You can’t and don’t buy advocates.
There are two categories to which advocates can fall into, earned advocates and owned advocates. As the name suggests,
1. Earned advocates are those who are the most credible and trusted customers. They are earned over the hard work of many years, giving out the best products and services. They are known as the best sales representative.
2. Owned advocates are the influencers who have a huge fan base and they are paid for their market value. The paid advocates include celebrities, athletes, etc. who can attract customers to your brand by doing various promotions.
What is Advocacy Marketing?
When your most trusted customers share the good word about you without asking for any extra benefits is advocate marketing. They will brag about you even if you are not doing well (in a particular time period). They will defend you and continue to spread the good words for you.
But if you want your customers as your brand ambassadors you need to serve them the best beforehand and make a good relationship with them.
Advocacy marketing is a necessity in this digital era, as there are no people who buy products without reading online reviews or hearing good about the brand from their friends. Thus, you need to work hard to get your customers to your side and make them your advocates.
What are the benefits of Advocate Marketing?
1. Reduces Customer Acquisition Cost
When your customers do brand marketing for you, it saves you from spending bundles of money on advertisements.
Suppose you went to a new restaurant last night. And you received a fanciful experience with exotic food. Now what you do the next day? You will post pictures on the social platform and tell all your friends about the restaurant. After hearing good about the restaurant, they too will visit there to get an experience as you did.
Recommendations from friends are more credible than paid promotions. Thus, word of mouth through advocates is the best way of advertising.
2. Increases Brand Value
Have you ever heard of a brand named Apple? Of course, you have. The customer base of Apple is immense. You will always see long queues of their advocates standing outside the stores whenever a new product launches, irrespective of the product’s features or product value of the price. People love to buy Apple products because, over the years, the company had made such strong trust amongst the people that one likes to switch their phones with other brands.
This trust of Apple in its advocates has made the brand a niche in the market, and even if apple increases its prices, the customers will buy it.
This is the power of advocates. They will go the extra mile once they find trust in you. This all leads to an increase in brand value.
3. Less need for Online Reputation Management (ORM)
When your trusted customers advertise for you, the need for brand reputation management minimizes. Because as the digital world is expanding its arms, it has become easier to write reviews about anyone online, be it good or bad. Thus, to keep pace with the reviews posted online on a daily basis, it has become a necessity to hire a team to manage online reputation.
But with the advocates on the side, you don’t have to think much of managing your online presence because customers will keep coming to you through word of mouth. Advocates recommend you to their friends/ family, and they will trust your brand without considering the negative online reviews.
4. Loyal Customers
There is various advocates marketing software in the market who work only for finding the best customers, aka the advocates for you. The software creates various campaigns to find you, loyal customers. The software works on a simple term they create interactive advocacy campaigns for the advocates, and then the advocates share the campaigns further with their friends. And when the advocates recommend you to their friends, they too will be driven to your creativity.
The recommended customer is the most loyal.
5. Increased Conversion Rates
Creating attractive and interactive advocate programs leads to customer engagement. When the customer increases their involvement on your web page, the brand value will increase, and this leads to the increased visitor on your web page. There are various advocate marketing software in the market that works solely for creating advocacy campaigns.
According to a survey, if your website ranks the search engine page, the number of customers visiting your page will get converted into paying customers.
Conclusion
Advocate marketing is not a complicated task to do. You need to know how to retain the customers and how to provide them with the best services. All brands should consider adapting advocate marketing in their practice to get effective results without spending a hefty amount and time.
Now that you know what advocate marketing is how it benefits your business, I’ve got a question for you. Whose word do you trust the most before buying a product, your friend or the sales representative of the company?
Shivani
