The Most Valuable Marketing Strategy Today

Brand is a powerful thing for driving more marketing and sales results. But that should be no surprise to anyone, as powerful branding has always mattered. 

But think about how you have learned about a company. Many times it is through word of mouth, general recommendations from friends and family, or you saw it in your social media feeds from connections sharing insights. 

The last point is exactly where the concept of brand advocacy grew and became a must-have strategy for most organizations today. 

But maybe you have not heard of this term before or you aren’t sure where to begin. That’s quite alright! 

Even though this strategy has been around for a bit, it’s still a concept that is catching on with companies today. Let’s explore more about brand advocacy and how you can implement a successful strategy this year.  

Brand Advocacy: The Most Valuable Marketing Strategy Today:

Brand Advocacy Defined

Although you might be formulating an idea about brand advocacy just from my introduction, it’s better to put a complete definition together so we are all on the same page.

Brand Advocacy simply means that the people who are closest to your brand and love the product or services, will continue to show support for your brand by promoting the organization organically to new audiences.

And the people promoting and supporting your product or services are more commonly referred to as brand advocates. These are people who play a major role in word of mouth marketing and driving new business by being enthusiastic fans of what your company does. 

Who are your best brand advocates?

For most organizations, your best brand advocates will fall into one of these categories of people:

• Executive leadership (think C-Suite, board members)
• Company partners
• Employees of your organization
• Customers that use your product or services

All of these groups of people can make a valuable contributor to your company reputation, brand reach, and drive more sales. And the best brand advocates are highly active online, will have a great social reach, and represent your company in the best way possible. 

By utilizing a brand advocacy strategy, you’ll then focus on harnessing the power of your advocates to reach more people online and in-person. 

This can be done via: 

• Social media sharing 
• User-generated content (UGC)
• Customer referrals
• Online reviews

Why Brand Advocacy Matters

One of the most important reasons why brand advocacy matters is that it’s much more authentic and organic, which audiences gravitate towards more in today’s noisey digital society. 

Your brand advocates are people who believe in your brand, mission, product, and services and endorse it without being paid directly to do so. 

To potential customers who see that, it is way more genuine and there is less suspiciousness about the intentions — knowing that these advocates are not being paid to promote. 

But beyond that, there are numerous benefits to building brand advocates and harnessing their enthusiasm for your company. 

Grows the brand visibility organically

Nothing beats authentic content and conversations when people are discovering or looking for resolutions to their challenges. Think about the number of employee advocates, customers, or partners all organically talking about the company online and the impact that will have on your brand. 

Humanizes your brand further

Although technology is accelerating to make life easier and automated, people still crave genuine human interaction. Beyond brand accounts, chatbots, or advertising — these are real people using their authentic voices to talk about your brand. This creates empathy, personality, and more trust. 

Brand Advocates have a broader reach

Remember in the first point when I said to think back about all employees, customers, and partners that might be talking about your brand? If you choose to harness employees for example using employee advocacy software, you can extend your social reach from 3x to 10x! 

Although Adobe might have great brand reach, they still saw value in brand advocacy. The innovative software company activated over 900 Adobe employee advocates to create and share content. This extended their social media reach alone by an additional 3,000,000!

Media and publications take notice

When more people are talking about your brand online, you’ll find more media publications and news companies taking notice. This could be journalists talking about your products or services, interview opportunities about the company, and overall more awareness. 

A great example of this is Drift, who in the early days captivated attentioned via employees and customers. For a period of time during their meteoric rise, they were in the news quite often. 

Educates more people on your company

Many people who may discover your company through brand advocacy are not even close to the buying stage. But, this is a great way to educate people on what your company does, the values, and how it may address challenges they might not have thought about. More awareness and education now will equal to more sales later. 

Engaging content that isn’t from marketing

What’s cool about brand advocacy content and user-generated content is it doesn’t all read like a marketing person wrote it. People can read through marketing jargon and tight copywriting. Not to say that there is not a place for that, but the content feels more authentic and personable when it’s from a wider variety of people. 

Less time and money spent on marketing 

Although your initial brand advocacy efforts may require some time and money at first, in the long-run your company will save quite a bit. First, there can be less promotional efforts on your part when you have an army of advocates willingly doing the heavy lifting for you. Additionally, a brand advocacy platform is relatively inexpensive for the results you’ll achieve and the money you save on paid advertising. 

Stats related to the power of brand advocacy

I’m sure the above sounds good, but let’s back up the power of brand advocacy with some data points. Many of these have been done through various research and studies over the years, but take a look.