Nowadays, brand advocates are marketing weapons businesses can use to boost their reputations. Brands can use brand advocacy to improve customer engagement.
They are personalities whose popularity can have positive effects on your brands. Brand advocates help draw or influence other potential customers through word-of-mouth marketing.
In other words, a brand advocate is a customer who speaks in favour of your business, products, or services.
But in some cases, brand ambassadors are not necessarily customers; some of them don’t even use the products they ‘supposedly’ advocate.
Nowadays, small businesses and top brands rely on brand advocates or brand ambassadors to further consolidate their brand visibility and popularity.
Getting the best out of advocates
Brand advocates are like marketing reps for your brand, they say good things about your products and services. Brand advocates also freely write about your brand and help you attract potential customers through their activities.
But are your brand advocates simply raising awareness of your brand, or are they actually helping you to convert awareness?
Types of brand advocates to get
Who are brand advocates and what motivates them? How do you effectively engage advocates for your business? How do you reach out to the best and high-performing advocates?
Not every type of advocate will advocate in the same way, and each type is suited to do different types of work and is motivated by different things.
Below are types of brand advocates that can easily help your business to improve customer engagement:
#1]. Masters – The Skilled Experts
These are the knowledgeable tradespeople that possess the depth of expertise and experience that others seek out when needing advice. This type of brand advocate loves using their knowledge to help others solve problems, and wants to be respected for it.
#2]. Loyalists – The Devoted Promoters
Advocates of this type are a brand’s biggest devotees. They are the evangelists, on a mission to spread the word. Loyalists are extremely good at helping people feel comfortable making purchases because their excitement and passion rub off.
#3]. Enthusiasts – The Committed Creators
Enthusiasts are customers who are lifestyle experts in the categories that a brand’s product offering covers. They live the lifestyle or exemplify the hobby that a brand encourages.
Also, they continuously seek products that allow them to maximize it. Each of these three advocate segments can handle different types of interactions and can be matched with specific customers at specific touchpoints.
Any company can carefully evaluate for the correct mix of advocates according to the product, shopper needs, category, and metrics they want to achieve.
For instance, if a customer is looking for help finding a gift for a friend on an apparel site, a Loyalist’s enthusiasm and eagerness to please will facilitate the best interaction for this type of customer.
If a customer is seeking the best automotive part to make their car faster, interacting with an Enthusiast who will dive into a creative and exploratory process with them will elevate the customer experience.
And if a customer has questions about how an eye cream ingredient works, a Master can provide detailed answers to help them get the right product and provide instructions on how to get the most from its use.
These engagements will happen in real-time during a chat, via email, on social networks, on product pages, in forums, or even standing in an aisle.
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