Customers believe in word-of-mouth. Most of their shopping experiences are based on what they hear about the brand. Businesses that focus on building good relations with their clients are at the top of their game. This strategy is called customer advocacy.
In this article:
- What does customer advocacy stand for in the workplace?
- How to embrace customer advocacy
- Benefits of customer advocacy
- How leading brands embrace customer advocacy
- Leaders in customer advoacy
What does customer advocacy stand for in the workplace?
Customer advocacy is the act of prioritizing the customer’s needs and attempting to provide solutions via your goods and services. Organizations that embrace a customer advocacy approach are always looking for new methods to help their consumers and guarantee that their requirements are addressed. Client advocacy is critical for increasing client satisfaction with your business. A study reveals that a mere 12% increase in advocacy results in 2x times revenue growth.
Advocacy marketing is a strong word-of-mouth technique that enlists the help of your company’s brand followers to spread the name of a product or service. Your brand can promote a more enjoyable, real, and customer-focused approach if you have an effective assessment advocacy marketing approach.
What is an advocate?
A consumer who strives for your business is referred to as an advocate. They trust not just in your item or brand but in your corporation’s principles and culture, which are most likely similar to their own. According to 74% of respondents of the Ogilvy Cannes Study, word-of-mouth is the most significant factor in purchasing decisions. This enthusiasm transforms into a more organic sort of word-of-mouth advertising, in which a loyal consumer becomes an ambassador for your company with or without monetary compensation.
The two perspectives
Customer advocates are the “promoters” on your NPS scale. Delving further, customer advocacy, or rather the term, has gained popularity in the past decade. Almost every explanation and definition of customer advocacy falls under two criteria.
- Inner perspective – Focus the company on what is beneficial for consumers, generating outstanding customer experiences, advocating for them, and assisting them in resolving issues. This is the prevailing viewpoint in the client service and management sectors.
- Outer perspective – Consumers who support us by raising awareness regarding our goods, resources, and business are referred to as customer advocacy. It is a prevalent viewpoint across sales & marketing professionals.
How to embrace customer advocacy?
Customer advocacy should not be considered a separate project. Instead, consider how it may become a natural and integral part of your product innovation, advertising, customer care, and other ongoing operations. 70% of purchasing decisions are influenced by how the client believes they are being regarded. Therefore, efforts must be made to give customers the best experience through customer advocacy.
Advocacy marketing is the crucial element for focusing on what is ideal for consumers, earning their devotion, and then reaping the advantages of their support for your company.
Researchers released the findings of a groundbreaking study that looked at the impact of “consumer word of mouth” in six different categories, discovering that on average, online and offline customer interactions and suggestions account for 13% of sales volume, or $6 trillion in annual spending. In higher-priced sectors, word of mouth accounts for about 20% of purchases.
Recommendation programs
Encourage consumers to recommend others by offering recommendation schemes that reward both the referee and referral. To optimize your outreach and use your business advocate’s relationships, provide many referral paths.
Loyalty gifts
Allow clients to earn rewards by writing reviews, commenting about new products, or sharing material on Instagram. Then, for individuals who have achieved a particular number of points, offer exceptional products or items.
E.g. Here’s an image for the Starbucks loyalty program.
Gather user-generated content (UGC)
Concentrate on the most popular social media platform. Then, convince users to share about actual interactions with your company for an opportunity to be reposted, used on your website, or even used as a resource for new marketing strategies.
Damian Grabarczyk, the co-founder and growth marketer of PetLab Co., says, “One of our biggest challenges has been building genuine trust with our audience, especially when it comes to pet health. We realized that the most credible endorsements didn’t come from us—they came from our customers. By encouraging pet owners to share their real experiences on Instagram and TikTok, we’ve created a space where our customers can become advocates. When someone posts about their dog thriving on our joint supplements or enjoying our dental chews, it resonates far more than any ad we could create. This user-generated content not only drives engagement but also builds a community of pet owners who trust our brand, reinforcing loyalty in a way that feels natural and lasting.”
Ambassador identities
Inviting your supporters to join a unique global brand network will provide them with a more robust set of rewards and objectives to push them to more accurately describe and support your brand. By giving champions a place to call home, you can reinforce their bond with your business, direct word-of-mouth marketing from within, and win potential users via a low-cost acquisition route.
Benefits to the business
Customers will talk!
Like it or not, your customers will talk! So why not influence the narrative and give them something good to say! They can be effective catalyst for boosting a company’s image and spreading brand awareness by purchasing and using the label’s offerings. Advocates are 2-3 times more effective in convincing others to buy than non-advocates. As such, businesses must work towards getting more brand advocates.
Path to diverse retailing ways
Customers that participate in advocacy marketing initiatives provide data on a range of channels, including social media, gateways for conversation and networking, e-Commerce web pages, and email and online chats.
Word-of-mouth
Nothing beats the buying impact caused by a prominent blogger who has used your items and is expressing their good opinions and experiences on their legitimate channels. Celebrity endorsement is part of a new generation of digital marketing that is revolutionizing the industry.
Partnering with bloggers is a solid system to enhance your advocacy marketing and exposure, not only by adding additional credibility and authority to your brand but also by broadening your social exposure to a larger market.
Build trust
Consumers trust suggestions from people they know 92% of the time. Convincing a colleague, admirer, or close relative is far more likely than believing a nameless trademark. It is one of the reasons why organizations seek out well-known personalities to serve as endorsers and evangelists. However, as evidenced by the high buyers, artist or celebrity-based advertising (endorsements) has a restricted buying impact.
How the leading brands embrace customer advocacy
Personalize customer experience
Establish more individual points of contact for your business followers to engage with, and make sure your content is positive and welcoming. Personalize any messages depending on your clients’ shopping habits and geographic area to give them a more special attachment to your company. You may interact with your consumers via email, SMS, social media, or by establishing stronger multimedia interactions.
Utilize Social Media
To resolve any user concerns, consider your social media platforms as expansions of your client service and research. It’s critical to be open and honest. Addressing client complaints in a public platform with a desire to learn and grow enhances productivity for both you and your consumers while also increasing loyalty.
Feedback is the key
To get user input, go out to your company’s brand followers and most loyal customers. There are a few mothods of doing this, from conducting robust customer interviews, asking the right customer interview questions, to promote responding to online posts and perform post-contact questionnaires to measure consumer ideas and opinions by incentivizing and showing interest in the evaluations your group publishes regarding your items.
In his study for his book “Hug Your Haters,” (above) Edison Research’s Jay Baer uncovered an unusual trend— just responding to a customer complaint on social media may improve consumer advocacy by up to 25%. When you don’t respond to such concerns, your customer advocacy drops by as much as 50%. Convinced to employ customer advocacy, yet?
Propose inducements
Pose a challenge that your consumers may take part in consideration for a prize. This might be a special discount, free products, or any other incentive that builds their bond with your company. Customers may easily participate in these contests via social media.
Aid at the correct time
During the first five minutes, engage with your consumers! This is a core principle that will support you in increasing the number of brilliant stars in your rankings. Within the first five minutes of purchasing, the majority of customers require assistance. Now, as a component of your customer advocacy development effort, you must discover that consumer inside this limited time.
Accept criticism
Be courageous and accept the unfavorable comments as well, even if most of your customers are praising you. Deal with the issues; try to appease the client by giving incentives, goods, or other compensation benefits in exchange for any type of discomfort or loss, and wait for the response. Negative feedback may be beneficial in a variety of ways.
Which leading brands do customer advocacy best?
Businesses that adopt a user experience strategy effectively see improved customer happiness, lower turnover, and improved profitability.
Airbnb’s intimate approach
Locals were motivated by the collaborative consumption trend to offer their houses to guests seeking a more intimate approach to explore new places. Airbnb, which grew from a $100 million enterprise to $31 billion in just six years, found an intuitive connection with clients thanks to its building cooperation and tolerance values that helped in advocacy marketing.
Starbucks and staff advocacy
Trailing Amazon and Alphabet Inc., Starbucks Corporation sits close to the top at #3 in Forbes 50 Most Engaged Companies. Starbucks is ranked so well as they provide excellent customer service. By prioritizing their employees, they encourage staff advocacy, which promotes consumer purchase advocacy. As a result, Starbucks had an average growth rate of over 11% in 2017 and a market value of over $84 billion.
Southwest Airlines and customer service
As per a CX Solutions Customer Engagement Benchmark Study, 51% of Southwest Airlines passengers were actively involved as opposed to 26% of United Airlines users. Furthermore, compared to 16% for United, 46% of consumers highly thought that Southwest Airlines cared about its guests. It’s the emphasis they place on outstanding customer service as well as the manner in which they encourage their staff to do it.
Patagonia
By sponsoring issues that are important to them, Patagonia engages with like-minded consumers. One infamous example is Patagonia’s “Don’t buy this jacket” campaign, supporting the ‘anti-Black Friday’ movement, which resonated with their customer base. By aligning on issues that (may appear to) benefit their customers and not their business, Patagonia shows truly how to win at customer advocacy and earn their customer’s diehard loyalty. Every facet of the company, from supply-chain operations to reasonable compensation, reflects its ethical attitude. Patagonia distinguishes itself in the typically unsustainable garment industry with its commitment to social action. Customers, however, respond most positively to the company’s dedication to openness.
Final thoughts on customer advocacy
Customers are looking for collaborators, and companys must begin to think of themselves as such. By concentrating on providing answers for your clients, you may turn them into brand ambassadors. You must carefully deploy customer advocacy in several methods in order to spread it throughout your company.
Collect consumer input to fully comprehend their issues and how you can assist them. Create a social strategy to guarantee that advocacy marketing ideals are embraced throughout your company. Improve your customer support offering to guarantee that you are providing exceptional service.
