Brand Advocates: How to Identify & Activate Them
Your most satisfied customers can be your most powerful marketing asset, but only if you know how to find them and put their voices to work. This guide breaks down everything you need to know about brand advocacy and how to make it work for your business.
- What a brand advocate is
- Why brand advocacy matters and how to actively encourage it
- The difference between a brand advocate, ambassador, and influencer
- How to identify your advocates and measure the ROI they drive
Plus, get tips to get started right away, including tools that can help automate the process without ever having to hire a single extra person.
What Is a Brand Advocate?
A brand advocate is anyone who promotes your business to others — voluntarily and enthusiastically. They are usually a customer, but might also be a vendor, an associate you deal with on a regular basis, or an employee who thinks your business is a great one to work for.
Whether they promote your business through word of mouth or social media, personal recommendations are highly influential in creating future customers, making brand advocates invaluable assets to any business.
A concrete example
Say you own a wellness spa.
You have a customer who comes often for treatments and yoga retreats. They frequently share images from their trips to your spa on Instagram and Facebook and encourage their friends to visit by treating them to facials and buying them gift cards. This person is an brand advocate actively spreading the good word of your business and encouraging its growth.
RELATED ARTICLE — Types of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Brand Advocates vs. Ambassadors vs. Influencers
We tend to use the phrases “brand advocate,” “brand ambassador,” and “influencer” interchangeably. But there are subtle differences between them.
The key differences
A brand advocate is anyone who promotes your brand without prompting. However, promotions may follow an initial nudge to leave a review after the first time they buy your goods or services.
A brand ambassador is someone you choose to promote your company, usually involving a more formal agreement with a fee for their involvement. Sometimes public figures or even celebrities, brand ambassadors are ideal for representing your business at events or in major advertisements.
Brand ambassadors may be:
- Featured on your website
- Present at launches or events
- Used in advertising and marketing
Influencers with large social media followings may start off as either brand advocates or ambassadors. They could promote your brand on their own and then receive merchandise or services as a thank you. Or you might see them online and ask if they want to partner with you on social media channels.
Which you want, and when
As discussed above, you may want to feature a brand advocate or influencer on your business website or in a marketing campaign. You could also include advocates in focus groups or trial launches of new products or services. Nothing beats authentic loyalty.
Brand ambassadors usually function in a more official capacity that may include legal contracts, making them more suited for situations where you have very clear-cut expectations of what they’ll say about your brand. They may use scripted promotions rather than off-the-cuff comments.
Naturally, influencers are terrific to harness social media. Launching a new product? Have one of your influencers unbox it on YouTube. Other people will want to buy it too. Enlist your influencers to request their followers to also follow your account to increase your own audience.
It’s ideal to have a mix of brand advocates, ambassadors, and influencers. They can all work together to promote your business. The goal is to look at their spheres of influence and your brand to see where they intersect.
Why Brand Advocates Matter
Trust & social proof
When someone is deciding whether to do business with you, your website and ads will only get you so far. Prospects know you’re not going to say anything negative about yourself; they look for validation from people who have no reason to spin it.
That’s where brand advocates come in. They’re real customers sharing real experiences, and that authenticity carries a kind of credibility that no marketing campaign can replicate. When a prospect sees a genuine recommendation from someone like them, they’re far more likely to trust it.
Consider these statistics:
- Over 99% of consumers in the US check reviews before making a purchase.
- Trust in a brand is influenced by reviews for over 93% of American shoppers.
- 63% of consumers want reviews close to the experience they’re seeking.
- Online reviews count as much as personal recommendations for 18- to 34-year-olds.
- Displaying reviews on your website increases conversion rates by as much as 270%.
Lower acquisition cost
How much does your company spend on marketing and advertising?
And yet, what does brand advocacy cost?
You may be able to acquire new customers via your brand advocates’ reviews and recommendations without spending a dime, making those advocates worth their weight in gold for your brand. When enough customers are advocating on your behalf, you may find you can maintain or even reallocate your marketing budget without sacrificing reach.
Organic growth
The same factor that makes brand advocates so trustworthy pays off in other areas. Their advocacy is organic — genuine, not fake or purchased, — so you get the same kind of growth when your business benefits from brand advocates.
Put simply: growth that’s forced is hard to sustain and invest in. Growth that’s earned scales naturally and tends to stick.
How to Identify Your Brand Advocates
Start with your NPS promoters
As a review, NPS scores are derived by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your brand. The replies fall on a scale of zero to 10.
To begin, take a look at your NPS (Net Promoter Score) high performers. These are people in the 9-10 NPS range who are loyal to your brand and enthusiastic about your offerings.
Net Promoter Score software helps you find them quickly and easily.
RELATED ARTICLE — How NPS Drives Customer Engagement
Behavioral signals
Look at repeat business, referrals, and reviews. Is someone buying from your company over and over again? Did a customer recommend your cleaning service to all their neighbors, or buy gift cards? Who was willing to take the time to share a 5-star online review about their positive experience?
You don’t have to invest a great deal of labor or increase your headcount to identify these advocates. Listening tools today automate the process for you. You can use customer feedback software to streamline the process.
How to Turn Advocates into Marketing Assets
Reviews & testimonials
Make it a standard practice to request a review whenever a customer makes a purchase from your brand. Email and/or message the link to the review site to make it super simple and convenient for them. You can even go as far as to ask a customer to expand on their review to get the kind of curated endorsement you desire.
Your company can then use the best of those reviews as highlighted testimonials for your website or print materials.
Referrals
Once you find a brand advocate, put them to work for you! Ask them to refer friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers to your business, as appropriate.
Some customer advocates will do this voluntarily, but you can sweeten the deal by offering a discount or similar incentive for referrals. However, it’s vital to not be pushy when making any of these asks — aggressive behaviors, especially in person, create more negative encounters than positive ones.
Social proof & UGC
Above, we discussed the advantages of influencers and social media. Social proof with user-generated content (UGC) is like free advertising. What counts as UGC? Think unboxings, blogs, vlogs, and similar content.
As with reviews, you don’t have to wait for a customer to create social proof. You can ask them to share it, especially if they have a large online following.
Case studies
Customers love it when a business can solve a problem for them. One example might be creating an innovative after-school program at your childcare business. Another could be developing in-home fitness programs for special populations like new moms or seniors.
Once you get positive feedback on those solutions, you can develop them into case studies. These are detailed accounts of how you solved the problem and how the customer’s life was changed as a result. Readers will like seeing how you could do the same for them.
How to Nurture & Grow Advocacy
Recognition & loyalty
Be sure to recognize people who advocate for your brand, especially customers. Respond to highly positive reviews, for instance, with a personalized thank you.
You can also create loyalty clubs and memberships for your most treasured advocates. These can offer freebies, discounts, and priority service. Reward influencers with gratis merchandise or services.
Making advocacy easy
If it’s too hard for people to leave a review or share your social media posts, they won’t do it.
Make it easy for people to become advocates. Ask outright for reviews, and direct customers to where they should leave them. Make sure all digital portals sent from your business are stable, user-friendly, and accessible. Send surveys if you want information about customer experience and the likelihood of repeat business. Reach out to influencers and ask if they want to share information about your brand.
Measuring Advocacy
How do you know if your brand advocacy is sufficient? How do you know if a plan to increase advocacy is working? It helps to have quantifiable metrics rather than vague goals.
NPS & referral metrics
As discussed above, NPS results provide an objective rating for whether a customer would recommend your brand. You can look at individual NPS scores, but you can also agglomerate them for your entire business or by company location.
First, divide NPS responses into three categories based on customer replies:
- Promoters: Scores of 9-10
- Passives: Scores of 7-8
- Detractors: Scores of 0-6
Then calculate the percentage of each category and figure out what the average is for your entire customer base.
According to one large survey, the average NPS score is 32, while the median is 44. Companies in the top quarter tier have an NPS score of 72 or higher. But most businesses would find anything over 60 exceptional.
Another way to quantify advocacy is to calculate your referral rate. How many of your new customers were referred to you by an existing customer? How many customers have been referred by a single advocate?
Advocacy ROI
In addition to referrals, you can also look at the financial long-term return on investment (ROI) for advocates. For customers in this category, it’s helpful to start with the formula for customer lifetime value (CLV):
Average Purchase Value x Purchase Frequency x Customer Lifespan
But that only calculates that advocate as a customer. What about all the other customers you’ve gained from them? It may be impossible to quantify accurately, but you can at least add the CLV of referrals from the advocate to get a better picture of how valuable they are.
Next Steps
Here are some expert tips to get you started:
- Begin by making each customer experience a stellar one. You can’t have brand advocates until you give them something to rave about.
- To improve customer experiences, map vital touchpoints on the customer journey and pinpoint where you may be lagging. Solve problems quickly to close the loop on feedback and improve satisfaction.
- Figure out the best way to make advocacy easy for your unique customer base. That might mean launching referral programs or membership tiers. Remember, it’s okay to ask for advocacy. Just ask politely and make it as easy as possible for the customer.
- You can make all of the above efficient and effective without increasing your headcount. Use customer feedback listening software like Listen360. To see how these automated tools would work for your brand, book a demo today.
RELATED ARTICLE — Voice of the Customer
