A customer advocacy strategy is an excellent approach that requires significant information and insight into what converts customers to advocate and promote your business after purchasing. It varies depending on the industry.
Implementing a customer advocacy program will help you engage the most loyal customers and existing customers who love your business and your product enough to recommend you to their friends, family, and coworkers.
Without a doubt, customer advocacy should be an essential part of your marketing strategies. Therefore, we’ll discuss how to develop a customer advocacy strategy that helps you achieve the success you’re looking for.
What is Customer Advocacy Strategy?
A customer advocacy strategy is a marketing approach that seeks to transform customers into brand ambassadors. For example, A structured customer promotion program can offer customers incentives.
A customer advocacy program focuses on encouraging customer satisfaction, loyalty, and positive word-of-mouth promotion. The goal is to convert customers into brand advocates who actively suggest the company’s products or services to others.
Why do you need a customer advocacy program?
Customers have more power than ever before; they are on social media, and their recommendations affect their friends and family.
You should keep in mind that many customers wish to help. They love the brand. And they want to spread the word by referring you to their family and friends. It’s just that they sometimes need a little push, which is where customer advocacy initiatives come in.
Consider your customers as an opportunity to grow and improve rather than a threat. You can organize your audience better and make the most of it with the help of a client advocacy strategy.
What Makes a Customer an Advocate?
Customers that create a deeply emotional connection with a brand are considered advocates. A brand ambassador will continue to spend money on your company. If you can turn someone who just made their first purchase into a brand advocate, you’ll have the advantage that they’ll do the marketing for you at no additional cost.
Customer advocates not only provide a company with the comfort of knowing they have a guaranteed sales opportunity, but they also have the capacity to spread the word about a brand. While many customers are pleased with their purchases, not all become customer advocates for the company. So, what sets an advocate from a regular customer?
Here are some traits that identify a customer as an advocate:
- Passionate Loyalty: Advocates are fiercely loyal, actively engage with the brand, and make repeat purchases.
- Positive Experience: An advocate’s journey begins with positive and memorable brand experiences.
- Emotional Attachment: Advocates have an emotional connection to the brand because they share its values and culture.
- Proactive Engagement: Advocates proactively engage on various platforms, post positive reviews, and recommend the brand to others.
- Willingness to Defend: Advocates are willing to defend the brand against criticism or negative feedback and act as brand ambassadors.
- Word-of-Mouth Promotion: Advocates promote the brand organically through word-of-mouth.
- Continuous Support: Advocates provide continuous, long-term support, which contributes to the brand’s long-term success.
Key Elements of a Customer Advocacy Strategy
A successful customer advocacy strategy is based on key components that establish strong customer connections and convert satisfied customers into passionate advocates. Here are the important components that make up strong customer advocacy strategies:
Customer-Centric Approach
An effective advocacy strategy is built upon a customer-centric approach. Understanding and prioritizing customers’ requirements, preferences, and pain points is essential to deliver personalized services and display a genuine concern for their satisfaction.
High-Quality Products and Services
The quality of a company’s products and services is an essential consideration in converting customers into customer advocates. Establishing trust and exceeding expectations helps customers recommend a brand’s products and encourages them to do so.
Consistent and Exceptional Customer Service
Consistently delivering outstanding customer service is essential for the success of advocacy programs. Customers are more likely to recommend a business when their demands are promptly met, problems are quickly fixed, and extra effort is made to meet their needs.
Identifying Brand Advocates
Any advocacy strategy must start by identifying brand advocates. Businesses may identify customers who are already passionate about the brand by regularly monitoring customer feedback, interactions, and engagement. These customer advocates can be influential allies in building favorable word-of-mouth.
Types of Customer Advocacy Program
Customer advocacy program comes in a variety of kinds, each suitable for the individual needs and goals of organizations. Understanding the many types of customer advocacy programs can assist companies in selecting the best strategy to encourage brand advocacy and build a community of dedicated customer advocates.
Here are some examples of common customer advocacy programs:
- Referral Programs: A referral is when a customer advocate directly promotes your product or service to a peer.
- Loyalty Programs: Loyalty programs are designed to reward and recognize loyal customers for their repeat purchases and continued support.
- Customer Reviews and Testimonials: Customer reviews and testimonials are essential to any client advocacy program. Companies can showcase these testimonials on their website, social media platforms, and marketing materials to amplify their customer advocacy efforts.
- Customer Communities and User Groups: Online platforms enable advocates to communicate with one another, share experiences, and provide direct feedback to the brand. Customer communities build a sense of belonging, allowing advocates to support and promote the brand naturally.
- Influencer Partnerships: Influencers can help brands reach a larger audience and add credibility to their followers, encouraging them also to become advocates.
- Exclusive Events and VIP Experiences: Inviting advocates to product launches, special events, or behind-the-scenes tours promote a sense of exclusivity and respect in them, prompting them to continue advocating for the company.
- Employee Advocacy Programs: Businesses may expand their reach and develop customer trust by empowering their employees to be advocates.
- Advocate Recognition Programs: Advocate recognition programs recognize and reward top advocates, promoting their accomplishments and inspiring others to do the same.
- Advocacy Contests and Challenges: Hosting advocacy contests or challenges may create excitement among customers and encourage them to become active customer advocates.
Creating a Customer Advocacy Strategy
Now that you understand what a customer advocate program is and why you could consider implementing one, the next step is to figure out how to create a customer advocacy strategy. The easiest thing to do is start with these easy steps:
Step 1: Prepare
One of the most common mistakes people make with customer defense programs is jumping right in without taking any time to prepare. For example, assign an employee to manage your customer acquisition program.
In addition, you’ll need a solid strategy that outlines exactly how it will work, including how you’ll communicate news about your recruitment program to people who will be interested in participating.
You will also have to do the same internally. In fact, you will have to choose an employee and assign the responsibility of managing the program and ensuring it is carried out.
Ideally, the marketing and customer service teams are in charge of carrying out your program. Give them the time and resources they need to test the client advocacy program and plan it properly before going live.
Step 2: Setting Objectives and Goals
Setting specific objectives and goals is a vital step in developing an effective customer advocacy strategy. These goals serve as a road map for the advocacy program. It directs companies’ efforts to convert satisfied customers into dedicated brand advocates.
Begin by defining the goal of the customer advocacy program. What do you expect to achieve with this program? Common goals include:
- Increasing brand visibility.
- Building a loyal customer base.
- Increasing word-of-mouth referrals.
- Improving brand reputation through favorable testimonials.
Make sure your goals are clear and measurable. Instead of setting a broad goal like “increase brand advocacy,” identify a specific target like “increase customer referrals by 20% in the next quarter.”
Step 3: Identifying Potential Advocates
Are you ready to create and reward customer advocates? You will need to make sure that it is directed to the right people. Not all customers will be good customer advocates; some will be more active than others.
Working with those already committed to your industry is usually a good idea. For this, you will have to find the people where they are spending their time. It may be on social media or industry blogs, and they may even feel more comfortable participating in face-to-face events. The important thing is to reach them at the right place and time with the right message.
The best customer advocates already have a reputation within the community. They’ll have an established history of engagement long before you contact them, and they should also have a social media following – even if it’s just a small one.
Step 4: Develop Strong Customer Relationships
Now that you have your infrastructure and a list of potential promoters to target, the next step in creating a customer advocacy strategy is to contact them and develop a relationship.
Don’t make the mistake of considering this as purely transactional. Think of this as a friendship, and don’t be afraid to take the time and listen to what your promoters have to say.
One way to develop a relationship is to show people that you trust them. Let them test the products before they go on the market. All you want in return is their opinion.
Another common mistake is to think that, somehow, relationships have already finished developing. Building trust between your company and defenders requires a continuous and permanent effort.
Step 5: Facilitate communication
A client advocacy program is based on communication. And that conversation can flow in different directions. Listen carefully to what they say. You will be able to take their feedback and pass it on to your research and development team. In this way, the program will also allow your customer advocates to help you improve your products.
Your job as a client advocate program manager is to make sure your advocates have access to a platform that allows them to have their voices heard. This platform can be an online community.
In this type of platform, you can have your clients ask their opinion through surveys, discussion forums, polls, and online focus groups, and even offer them incentives for their participation. Customer feedback and Net promoter score (NPS) survey is popular for measuring customer advocacy.
Remember that negative comments are still comments. They are an excellent opportunity for improvement. You will want to take steps to fix any problems and prevent the situation from happening again.
Step 6: Make your customer advocacy program a standard
Once you’ve got your advocacy program up and running and starting to see results, the last step is to fully integrate it into the way you work, making it part of your protocols and workflows and offering full recognition to advocates. That changes the way your business works for the better.
You can invite your customer advocates to pitch new product ideas and even bring them into the company to work with a development team. Once customer advocacy becomes the new norm, it will change the way you do business.
Remember to dedicate time to the relationship with the client; thus, they will continue to help promote your company. After all, if you give someone a positive customer experience, they’ll tell their friends about it. A well-designed customer advocacy strategy latches onto that concept and takes it to the next level.
Tips for Implementing a Successful Customer Advocacy Program
An effective customer advocacy strategy involves careful design and implementation. Here are some helpful tips to make sure your advocacy program meets its goals and builds brand loyalty:
- Recognize your best customers, for example, on social networks.
- Offer early access to new products and ask for feedback.
- Give them a promotional item that showcases your brand.
- Invite them to an exclusive event to meet your team.
- Create unique graphic badges that promoters can use on their blog or social media.
- Encourage advocates to promote your business or product by asking them to post a photo on social media.
- Involve advocates in developing new product ideas and give them credit when you use their approach.
- Ask for help to improve the way you do business. You may discover problems that you were not aware of and that are harming your brand.
- Say thank you and show appreciation for every effort your advocates make.
- Respond professionally and courteously to every comment, both negative and positive.
Conclusion
Customer advocacy is more than a marketing strategy; it is a powerful method that may impact a company’s success and reputation. Businesses can benefit from real word-of-mouth promotion, increased customer retention, and increased reputation by developing close connections with customers and converting them into committed brand advocates.
Customer advocacy programs can be an exciting way to elevate your marketing and build a network of brand advocates to do the marketing for you. You will need a balance.
A customer advocacy program is best when combined with marketing automation and proper customer journey management. If used correctly, it can be integrated with content marketing campaigns, SEO, social media marketing, and all kinds of online and offline marketing channels.
Today the voice of the customer continues to gain importance. You have to give them a reason to talk about you, and your product will sell itself.
