Who would you believe more? A friend who says she went to a great restaurant where the food was to die for and the service top-notch, or a glossy webpage of that restaurant saying the same thing. It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?
This basically sums up advocacy marketing. It can drive word-of-mouth around your campaign, products or brand, spreading the message in a way that traditional marketing can’t. If done well, it can reach far and wide, even finding a whole new audience you hadn’t thought of before. What’s more, that audience is more likely to believe the message and eat in your restaurant, buy your product, pay for your service.
The power of ‘normal people’
Advocacy marketing takes the positive sentiments of normal people – the ones you believe – for the purpose of promotion. But making use of those who like or even love your brand (your “advocates”) can also produce a number of valuable results.
First, if there is a critical mass of voices saying similar things about a particular product, you may want to feed those comments to the R&D team or make improvements to your goods as a result. Second, you can share reviews and testimonials to attract even more customers. Third, you can engage directly with your current buyers by offering advice or ideas. This enables you to be seen as an industry expert at the same time as offering improved customer service.
The proof in numbers
It’s easy to see why customer-generated can be up to 50% more trusted than any other form of media. Various studies have been carried out to identify just how influential it is.
- One study found that more than three-quarters (77%) of consumers are influenced more by recommendations from friends and family than any other advertising.
- Nearly half (43%) of all social media users have bought a product after sharing or pressing the “favourite” or “like” button on Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter.
- 87% of consumers say that good reviews confirm their decision to buy.
How to find advocates
Social media is a good starting point in finding your advocates. It’s an easy way to engage one-to-one with current customers as well as potential new ones. Make sure that you pose questions and make full use of the responses to plan out your strategy.
One company that harnessed the power of social media to find advocates is personal care brand Dove, which used fan content to form the basis of a whole campaign. In 2004 the company decided its products shouldn’t be marketed with airbrushed women with unrealistic body shapes and sizes. The result was a marketing concept showcasing “real” women and their relationships with their bodies. One element of the campaign – “Real Beauty Should be Shared” – asked fans to share photos of themselves with a friend on Facebook. They included a snippet on why their friend showcased “real beauty” and the winners became the next faces of Dove.
Is it worth the effort?
Yes, because people talk to their friends, give feedback and write reviews; they post social media updates and sometimes even send messages further afield to other media organisations, political figures or community and industry leaders.
There is more opportunity than ever for consumers to really let brands (and others) know what they really think. In this context, brands must capitalise on customers who are already advocates, understand the value of their support, and create a way of using this to appeal to a wider customer base.
Advocacy marketing provides brands with a fantastic opportunity to be able to leverage the content created by others – essentially fans of their brand – in order to attract a wider audience and, more importantly, convert them into customers.
Jessica Gow is social media manager at Headstream
This advertisement feature is brought to you by the Marketing Agencies Association, sponsors of the Guardian Media & Tech Network’s Agencies hub.
