how to make brand advocacy really work for your company

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

For Further Information

http://www.dnnsoftware.com

http://www.leadtail.com