Brand Advocates: How to Identify Them and Turn Them Into Marketing Assets

Brand advocates can be an enormous marketing asset to your brand. But how do you find them and make the most of their advocacy? This guide walks you through the process.

Keep reading to learn:

What a brand advocate is, with relatable examples
The difference between a brand advocate, ambassador, and influencer
Why brand advocacy is important and should be encouraged
How to identify advocates and quantify their ROI to you

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. This usually occurs through word of mouth or social media sharing.

An example is a happy customer who has been a member of your fitness center for five years. They have referred friends and family to the facility, and they also became members.

Brand advocate definition

Think of a brand advocate as a cheerleader for your company. They recommend it to others in person or online. A brand advocate is usually a customer, but it might also be a vendor or an associate you deal with on a regular basis. It could also be an employee who thinks your business is a great one to work for.

A concrete example

Let’s look at another example. Say you own a wellness spa. You have a customer who comes often for treatments and yoga retreats.

This customer has become a brand advocate (aka customer advocate). They frequently share images from their trips to your spa on Instagram and Facebook. And they encourage their friends to visit by treating them to facials and buying them gift cards.

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, usually without prompting. However, it may follow an initial prompt to leave a review after the first time they buy your goods or services.

What’s the difference between a brand advocate vs. ambassador? A brand ambassador is someone you choose to promote your company. It usually involves a more formal agreement, and the ambassador is often paid a fee for their involvement.

Brand ambassadors may be:

Featured on your website
Present at launches or events
Used in advertising and marketing

There’s a lot of overlap between brand ambassadors and influencers. However, usually influencers have large social media followings.

Influencers may start off promoting 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

It’s ideal to have a mix of brand advocates, ambassadors, and influencers. They can all work together to promote your business. So, you want all of them in your stable of fans.

How do you best leverage your relationship with each of them? The goal is to look at their spheres of influence and your brand to see where they intersect.

As discussed above, you may want to feature a brand advocate on your business website or in a marketing campaign. You could also include customer advocates in focus groups or trial launches of new products or services.

Brand ambassadors are ideal for representing your business at events or in major advertisements. Sometimes ambassadors are public figures or even celebrities, which brings a lot of attention to your brand.

Brand ambassadors usually function in a more official capacity. You may even have a legal contract with them. So they’re perfect for situations where you want a very clear-cut definition 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 for social media. Launching a new product? Have one of your influencers unbox it on YouTube. Other people will want to buy it too. We’ll explore that phenomenon in the next section.

Want to attract more followers online? Enlist your influencers to request their followers to also follow your account. Then, when you share blog posts or announcements, you’ll have a much larger audience.

Why Brand Advocates Matter

Brand advocacy can have a huge positive impact on your business. Here are three key reasons why.

Imagine a prospective customer, vendor, or employee is thinking about doing business with or working for you. They can look at your website and advertisements. But how do they really know they can trust you? After all, it’s not like you’re going to say negative things about your own business.

But brand advocates provide a better level of honesty. They’re people just like your customers, colleagues, and job recruits. When folks see a heartfelt recommendation from a brand advocate, they’re more likely to believe 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? It’s probably a staggering amount.

And yet, what does brand advocacy cost? Little to nothing.

So, you may be able to acquire new customers via your brand advocates’ reviews and recommendations. All the while, you can maintain or even cut your marketing budget. Or you can reallocate your marketing spend to other areas. Those advocates are therefore worth their weight in gold for your brand.

Organic growth

The same factor that makes brand advocates so trustworthy pays off in other areas. Their advocacy is organic—it’s genuine, not fake or purchased.

So you get the same kind of growth when your business benefits from brand advocates. Inorganic growth can be difficult to keep up with and not necessarily stable. But natural scaling puts you in the driver’s seat and is more reliable.

How to Identify Your Brand Advocates

Exactly who are your brand advocates anyway? There are multiple ways to identify them.

Start with your NPS promoters

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.

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.

Someone with a high NPS score is already keen on your business. Net Promoter Score software helps you find them quickly and easily.

RELATED ARTICLE — How NPS Drives Customer Engagement

Behavioral signals

There are other ways to tell if someone is a brand advocate. One major one is looking at repeat business. If someone buys from your company over and over again, they’re likely happy with the product or service.

Another sign is referrals. Did a customer recommend your cleaning service to all their neighbors? They’re obviously pleased with the quality of your work.

Of course, online reviews from verified customers are another source. When they give you five stars and rave about their experience, a customer is clearly satisfied. And they’re willing to take the time to share that with others who might want to buy from you.

Do you have to invest a great deal of labor or increase your headcount to identify these advocates? No, fortunately, there are listening tools today that automate the process for you. You can use customer feedback software to streamline the process.

How to Turn Advocates Into Marketing Assets

Once you find your brand advocates, how do you use their power to help your business? Here are four top ways.

Reviews & testimonials

You can use reviews on your website and elsewhere to highlight customer satisfaction. And you don’t have to wait for customers to leave a review either.

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.

Your company can then use the best of those reviews as testimonials for your website or print materials. 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.

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.

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 child care. 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

Want more advocacy for your brand? Here are a few ways to encourage it.

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. So, make it easy for people to become advocates.

Ask outright for reviews, and direct customers to where they should leave them. Send surveys if you want information about the customer experience and the likelihood of giving you 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. Finally, 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? Another thing to look at is: over time, 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.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are quick answers to some of the most common questions about brand advocates. But for more useful information, be sure to take the time to look at the sections above with more detailed answers.

What is a brand advocate?

A brand advocate is anyone who promotes your company to other people, typically via social media or word of mouth. They’re usually a customer, but they may also be a colleague or an employee.

What’s the difference between a brand advocate and an ambassador?

An ambassador is also an advocate for your brand. But they take a more formal role, often with pay and a contract. Ambassadors are frequently used at events, during launches, and in major advertising campaigns. They may even be recognizable public figures.

How do you identify brand advocates?

There are multiple ways to discover your brand advocates. One is by identifying those customers with high NPS scores.

Another way is to look at behavioral signals like:

Referrals to other customers
Positive reviews for your company
Influencer user-generated content

Conclusion

After reading everything here, are you ready to increase advocacy for your brand? Here are some expert tips to get you started:

Begin by making the customer experience a stellar one. You can’t have brand advocates until you give them something to rave about.
To improve the customer experience, map vital touchpoints. 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.
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.