Nowadays, brand advocates offer one of the cheapest means of business marketing. They are brand ambassadors that are really good for PR and business promotion.
Yes, social media influencers are great too, but brand advocates are much more better and effective. In today’s digital business marketing, growing your audience through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is a standard business practice.
In fact, brands are now trying to do all they can to attract more followers. However, the question we should all be asking is how effective can a social media audience be in your business marketing?
Brand advocates or influencers?
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The fact is that almost all the small businesses and big brands on social media are there for marketing and promotion, and to keep in touch with customers.
However, having massive social media followers or fans alone may not necessarily help your business development as much as you think.
While your business’s social media fans or followers may ‘like’ your posts or even re-tweet your offers, your brand advocates are much more involved in your brand promotion than social media influencers.
The simple fact is that influencing people on social media can only have a short-term impact on your business marketing. It’s assuredly a whole lot less powerful than if that fan base were to actively promote your business on your behalf.
This is exactly what brand advocacy is all about, and it is one of the best ways to gain quality leads and sales from your social media marketing campaigns.
The simple fact is that advocates are loyal and truly passionate about your business. Unlike social media influencers, brand advocates will always want you to outperform your competitors.
Who are the brand advocates?
Brand advocates are the consumers who use in-person and online conversations to regularly share and endorse your products and services.
In short – brand advocates are the crucial difference between having average audience interaction and genuine influence.
These are small but extremely valuable groups of people whose support, endorsement, and recommendations can have an enormously significant impact on your business’s social campaigns.
Advocates not only increase awareness, but they can provide social proof to considerably boost your Google rankings. This, most importantly, engenders trust in your business amongst other consumers and drives them to action.
How to gain brand advocates
So how do you gain these indispensable brand advocates to help promote and market your business? The easiest way to get brand advocates is through relationship building.
It seems like some businesses don’t know the value of relationship building. A relationship is all about listening to your customers. This is why it’s important to know how businesses can keep customers happy for word-of-mouth marketing and brand reputation.
Small business owners have to understand that positive relationships between them and their customers will help the business to further strengthen customer loyalty.
Think about what makes people like or prefer your business rather than your competitors? Could it be a good product or great customer service?
Those are the things you should be focusing on to nurture relationships with your customer’s potential advocates. Learn how business get into customer minds and easily increase sales and revenue.
Making customers love brand
As mentioned above, the key to gaining indispensable brand advocates is relationship building. However, this requires an investment that you must be prepared to make.
Interact with customers if you want them to fall in love with your brand. The fact is that better customer interactions can help improve your business sales.
As the business owner, it is your responsibility to offer a worthy reason to get your back. Give your brand advocates something of value. Build an emotional connection and sustain it to give them an experience they will remember and actively want to share.
Get them engaged and gain rapport with personal interaction. Reply to their comments and share their content if they share yours. Regularly send them personalized emails to make sure they are keeping you in mind. Remember, always try to talk less and listen more.
What motivates brand advocates?
Being as appealing as possible by demonstrating a well-developed personality can help you motivate your brand advocates. Also, creating entertaining content, and being helpful by solving problems or giving useful tutorials and resources.
Encourage them to promote your business on your behalf – most times people just need a little nudge in the right direction. Give them the freedom to do so and make it known that their feedback is appreciated. Ask for specific comments and let them know how highly you value their insight by letting them know you wish to share it.
Reward your advocates the recognition and respect they deserve. Let your advocates know that you are starting a program that actually rewards THEM – the investment required is totally outweighed by the possible benefits.
And listen to them and trust their judgment because you can learn from them too – they could even be the inspiration for your next great innovation.
