Move over influencers; advocates are more valuable to brands. It’s a fact that customer advocacy bring more life and longer term value for a brand. Here are some reasons why:
Influencers can be bought; but may not always deliver
Most influencers don’t really care about your brand. They may find your product useful; but they are too busy being influencers – tweeting, blogging, and recording webinars to really care. They love getting free trials and new products before they hit the market; and very rarely will they say no to you or other brands when they are offered that new shiny object.
But how many times have you seeded a product to an influencer without any result?
Most influencers get pitched several times a day and all it does is feed their egos; so the time commitment of reaching out to them won’t always reap any positive benefit much less any business value to a brand. The key point to remember is that influencers are great for generating buzz; not so great for driving purchase decisions
The reality is that with many influencer programs, brands are just renting the conversation; and unfortunately the conversation isn’t always authentic. Influencer outreach programs do have some validity to a brand’s marketing initiatives, especially high tech brands. They just need to be done smart and strategically and it shouldn’t be the core focus
Advocates love your brand and tell others too
“If you love your customers, they will love you back and tell others about it.”
Here is the great thing about advocates. They love you even if you don’t give them the time of day. They are vocal, passionate and are not afraid to give your brand praise (on and off line). And, while they may not have hundreds of Twitter followers or thousands of RSS subscribers, the conversation with them is always authentic. I would also argue that advocates outnumber influencers by a long shot. Can you imagine for a second what the impact would be if you paid just a little attention to your advocates? It’s not hard to do at all; and the great thing about it is that they don’t label themselves and are very easy to approach. While influencers consider themselves influencers; advocates don’t really care. And, that makes your job so much easier.
Tapping into the emotional equity
There is definitely an emotional connection between a brand and its advocates. It’s the reason why I only buy one kind of television. It’s not out of habit, convenience or price either because the brand I love is quite expensive. But I have an emotional connection to the brand, Sony. The connection can stem from just about anything – a previous brand experience, the value the product brings to someone’s life, its swagger or the product simply kicks ass. When a brand actually becomes human and spends time nurturing their advocates; the emotional equity will grow exponentially. And that’s a hard bond to break.
Advocates affect the sales funnel
Marketers spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out what messages resonate with customers; and which channels have the greatest conversion rates. We are talking about millions in media spend that aims to drive marketing messages in each of the key sales or marketing funnel phases. And smart marketers are also creating metrics models for each phase of the funnel to measure the effectiveness of these messages.
The sales funnel is evolving, especially as we think about advocacy. In this model, customer advocacy is at the centre. It’s meant to illustrate the power of social media and how advocates aid and influence their micro communities down the sales funnel through authentic messages (or everyday conversation) between brands and consumers.
It’s circular in nature because as a brand invests and drives customer advocacy; they will, in turn, influence others at various phases of the purchase funnel; thus creating a cycle of influence and advocacy that the brand is facilitating.
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