Three things that every business owner wants in a marketing plan are simplicity, affordability and effectiveness. The strategy that ensures all of the three is advocacy marketing.
It is a marketing type that focuses on customers talking about a specific brand through various testimonials, reviews and social mentions. Over 80% of consumers researches online before using a product.
Hence, existing consumers influence other potential customers into buying a specific product of a brand. This is what brand advocates ensure, a positive outlook! Potential customers get affirmative feedback on that particular product brand and go ahead with it.
Why is marketing through brand advocacy effective?
According to studies and research, it has shown that 83% of customers place their faith in family and friends before using a product. However, it shows that 66% of consumers trust the reviews of customers online.
This is why advocacy marketing works on the notion that people tend to trust their peers over a company advertisement. Besides, everyone wants to boast about the good experiences they had making brand advocacy awfully compelling to others.
Moreover, the cost of brand advocacy is exceptionally affordable, as it is built through the investment of previous consumers than additional funding.
How to cultivate successful advocacy marketing?
- The key is consistency:
Ensuring consistency of the company dealings is crucial. Consumer questions and queries must be dealt with haste. Packages ought to be sent promptly and service ought to be given quickly. When consumers know that a brand is worth trusting, they will then advocate for it.
- Offer things of value:
When customers buy a product, they expect it to be worth the money spent on it. They want their money to give something of value from the business. Hence, brands should always try to offer more than consumer expectation. This helps in providing better experiences and forging healthy relationships with the customer. Companies should try to keep their current consumers happy. It will not only assist in keeping hold of existing customers but also ensure that they advocate for the brand.
- Have a strong brand description:
An enhanced brand narrative is a critical variable to ensure that consumers remember the brands. This assist customer’s by recalling what the company is and how has it impacted them. Providing that consumers are a part of this description persuades them to stay loyal to a specific brand.
Advocacy marketing focuses on being better on a daily basis attracting other advocates until a business has a small group of loyal consumers.
Thus, let’s look at some brand advocacy marketing which were successful!
Starbucks
Starbucks famous twitter campaign ‘@Tweetacoffee’ was responsible for $180,000 in direct sales within a month. Users had to tweet the hashtag with the Twitter handle of someone they want to “tweet a coffee” to. Receivers could then transfer the free coffee to their Starbucks account to be enjoyed later.
Primary takeaway: Enabling people to do something good for somebody.
IKEA
IKEA via their #JoyOfStorage campaign enabled Facebook users to click pictures of IKEA products in their houses and post them online for the chance of winning a reward. This resulted in a user-generated content through various pictures of products becoming a small advertising campaign for the company.
Primary takeaway: Making things easy and enjoyable for people to show thing they take pride in.
Hence, all it requires is dedication towards excellence and brand advocacy does the rest!
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