Featuring
HOW TO MAKE BRAND ADVOCACY
REALLY WORK FOR YOUR COMPANY
Carter HostelleyCEO
Leadtail
Develop Social Media Strategies and Insights
Our reports have been featured in:
What are brand advocates and
why are they so important?
What are brand advocates?
“Brand Advocates are your most loyal,
passionate, and engaged customers, and your
best marketers. They don’t just buy your
products – they sell your products for you.”
Rob Fuggetta
Author:
Brand Advocates: Turning
enthusiastic customers into a
powerful marketing force
Founder & CEO: Zuberance
Are brand advocates the “lunatic” fringe?
… recommending stuff all the time!
Nope, they’re people like you and me…
And they’re sharing lots of content too!
“According to Forrester, 30% of US online adults
share content from companies on social network
sites at least weekly or monthly.”
Presentation: Content Marketing Trends of 2014
Why do brand advocates recommend…?
Source: Zuberance, “Three Surprising Findings About Brand Advocates” conducted by Loyalty Wins, 3/5/2012
Do you need to incent (pay) advocates?
Source: Zuberance, “Three Surprising Findings About Brand Advocates” conducted by Loyalty Wins, 3/5/2012
Why are brand advocates important?
Source: The Nielsen Company: 2013 Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages(Poll of over 29,000 people in 58 countries)
Why are brand advocates important?
How do I make brand advocacy
really work for my company?
3 Steps to Creating an Advocate Salesforce
13
1
Identify
2
Mobilize
3
Track
Brand Advocacy Campaigns
Your
Company
Ask them if they’ll recommend your brand
Use the Net Promoter “Ultimate Question” to find those highly likely
to recommend (9s and 10s) …
Email Web Social Community Call center Physical
Within 48 to 72 hours you can identify thousands of brand advocates!
Listen to them recommending on social
Use social monitoring tools to “listen” to who is talking
favorably about your brand…
Then engage advocates by following and connecting with them!
Capture who’s sending you fan mail
Your company gets emails and letters from customers
saying “thanks!” What do you do with them?
Prepare to identify brand advocates:
Update your CRM system so you can “flag” advocates as a separate
customer segment
Designate one person as the point of contact for “advocacy” emails, letters,
and phone calls, and communicate that to the rest of the organization
Make brand advocacy a priority for the social media team… and make sure
the social “playbook” details the process for engaging advocates
Bookmark social media advocacy posts so you can easily find them later
Schedule a Net Promoter survey (separate from other company surveys) and
resist the temptation to add more questions to the survey!
Many ways to mobilize advocates
• Write reviews and testimonials
• Recommend on social media
• Share branded content and offers
• Answer prospect questions
• Battle negative word of mouth
• Provide product feedback
• Contribute blog posts and curate content
• Buy more products and services
• Generate referrals
Make it easy for brand advocates to mobilize by providing them with
tools, blurbs, branded content, relevant links, special offers, etc.
Create dedicated marketing campaigns to mobilize your brand
advocates to take specific actions
Mobilize those advocates that are most likely to act when, where, and
how you’d like them to (e.g., offline vs. online)
Acknowledge and thank your brand advocates!
Prepare to mobilize brand advocates:
Track brand advocates to…
• Determine the ways your brand
advocates like to participate
• Understand how active your advocates
are, and how you can increase that
activity rate
• Discover which advocates like to
participate in which medium (online,
offline, social networks, etc.)
• Measure the performance of brand
advocacy campaigns
Activity
Shares
Mentions
Clicks
Visitors
Page views
Redemptions
Set up campaign specific tracking links and landing pages
Determine the specific advocacy goals of your campaign
Measure results against goals, and optimize!
Understand the campaign flow and decide what actions you’ll be
tracking and measuring
Prepare to track brand advocate activity:
How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?
1
Thanks for taking our survey!
To show our appreciation, feel free
to share this exclusive offer…
2
Easily identify hundreds or thousands of brand advocates
and mobilize to action…
CRM
3
Email Net Promoter survey to customers
Ask advocates to give review
Get lots of offers shared!
You’ll also discover
advocates on social media
and via inbound messages
B2C B2B
Email Database 100,000 10,000 Should survey quarterly
Email Open Rate 20% 20%
Take Net Promoter Survey 50% 50% Adding more questions can lower rate
Advocates 30% 30% Typically ranges from 25% to 50%
Advocates Identified 3,000 300
Advocate Actions 20% 20% Ranges from 10% to 30% dependent on
what you’re asking them to do
Advocates Mobilized 600 60 Example: share offers on social media
Some advocacy numbers to consider:
Brand advocates can be identified and mobilized within
48 to 72 hours!
Once you have brand advocates in CRM system, you
can create advocacy campaigns just for them!
CRM
• Recommend
• Share
• Promote
• Defend
• Refer
• Buy more
Track and measure performance
Advocacy GoalsBrand Advocates
Lessons from brand advocacy campaigns
• Brand advocacy campaigns are NOT the same as
referral programs… tread lightly on providing
incentives!
• Mobilizing brand advocates to write reviews after
taking Net Promoter survey can create lots of
positive reviews quickly but…
• You will wake up detractors as part of the process
of finding advocates… be ready!
• Make sure your advocacy campaigns are set up
and working correctly before launching
• Every company (even telcos) has brand advocates!
Some final thoughts to keep in mind…
• Not all brand advocates are the same in how active they’ll
be, what they’ll do, and where they’ll do it
• The reviews and feedback brand advocates give will not
always be 100% positive (as they sometimes deliver
tough love!)
• You won’t always be able to easily track or even be
aware of how they’re advocating you
• Treat them like VIPs, because they are!
How can a branded community
help with brand advocacy?
What does a branded, online community look like?
Branded online communities and brand advocacy
• Many of your brand advocates can be found in your branded, online community.
• Every time a member logs in is an opportunity to activate a brand advocate.
• Look for online community platforms that provide convenient tools to activate your brand advocates.
• Make sure you complete the full Identify->Mobilize->Track cycle with your online community’s brand advocates.
3 Steps to Creating an Advocate Salesforce
30
1
Identify
2
Mobilize
3
Track
Brand Advocacy Campaigns
Your Company
Evoq Social: Create a Challenge
Evoq Social: Participate in a Challenge
Ways to mobilize advocates
Within the online community
• Write reviews and testimonials
• Contribute blog posts
• Answer prospect questions
• Provide product feedback
Outside the online community
• Recommend on social media
• Share branded content and offers
Evoq Social: Track a Challenge
What We Just Accomplished
35
1
Identify2
Mobilize3
Track
Brand Advocacy Campaigns
Your Company
Publish a “Challenge” Advocates self-select by accepting
Data on acceptance, completion and derived benefit
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