Not all forms of marketing are created equal.
Cultivating brand advocates requires an investment of time and effort, but the results can lead to long-lasting success for an organization.
What is a brand advocate?
A brand advocate is “someone who enjoys [a] product or service so much that they’re eager to tell others about it,” according to Tracy Foster, founder of camera-bag manufacturer ONA.
In the digital age, “word of mouth” has been surpassed by “word of mouse” as happy and unhappy consumers alike flock to the Web to share their experiences. Brand advocates often use social media to make recommendations to friends and others in their networks, and the results of their online opinion-sharing are compelling:
- Nielsen’s 2013 Trust in Advertising report showed that 84 percent of consumers trust brand advocates, compared with 48 percent of consumers trust online ads.
- McKinsey & Co. found that brand advocates help generate more than twice the sales volume of paid advertisements.
Zuberance, a leading advocate marketing company, sums up the power of brand advocates in social media in this video:
Who is benefiting from brand advocacy?
Walmart is just one example Rob Petersen of BarnRaisers gives of a company benefiting from brand advocacy. Walmart has made engagement with its customers an integral part of its online marketing strategy. On Black Friday in 2012, 62,000 social-media posts from Walmart customers resulted in an online reach that was equivalent to 10 times the return on investment of the company’s spending on traditional advertising types.
Numerous case studies support the ROI of investing in brand advocates, and a quick hashtag search on a social-media platform like Twitter can provide countless examples of it. A search of #starbuckslover on Twitter yields hundreds of enthusiastic tweets from loyal customers enjoying — even celebrating — their daily coffees.
While the exact ROI in dollars and cents for a company’s investment in a brand advocacy strategy is not always easily calculable (as is the case with many marketing strategies), researchers and marketing experts have made a strong case for its need. A well-designed online marketing plan for any organization should include a strategy to engage with brand advocates and to grow their numbers.
A good place to start: “8 Essentials of Creating a Sustainable Advocacy Program” by Ekaterina Walter, contributor to Forbes.com, is a helpful guide for organizations seeking to establish a strategy to engage brand advocates.