Brand Advocacy: What is It and Why is it Important?

Brand advocacy often generates far more brand credibility and authenticity than you would get from a traditional marketing campaign. An effective brand advocate can raise  brand awareness, increase consumer trust, and help you convert more customers.

Let’s explore what brand advocacy is and how you can measure the impact of your brand advocacy programs.

What Will You Learn?

• What Is Brand Advocacy?
• Why is Brand Advocacy Important for Companies?
• How to Build an Effective Brand Advocacy Program
• How To Measure the Impact of Your Brand Advocacy Programs
• Tips For Enhancing Your Brand Advocacy Program

What Is Brand Advocacy?

Brand advocacy is a popular marketing strategy that companies and individuals use to target, convince, and convert prospective customers. A brand advocate, also known as a brand ambassador, supports your business through positive word of mouth. This might be in the form of reviews, recommendations, or the sharing of unique content that endorses your brand.

But wait. Isn’t that what an influencer does? What’s the difference between influencer marketing vs. brand ambassadors?

Brand advocacy is similar to influencer marketing to the extent that someone is publicly endorsing and promoting your brand, often as a Key Opinion Leader (KOL). However, with influencer marketing, you pay someone to share a campaign that promotes your brand, either in the form of a negotiated fee or in exchange for free products or commissions. A brand ambassador, in contrast, is someone who supports your company’s growth because they have first-hand experience with your brand, and they believe in it. 

A brand advocate might be one of your customers, a member of your workforce, or a business partner. Because they are a stakeholder in your business in one form or another, they have inside knowledge and first-hand experience. This makes their support far more authentic and believable. 

For instance, Starbucks harnesses the advocacy of its employees, known as partners, by providing extensive training and resources. Partners actively engage in discussions, offer product recommendations, and participate in community initiatives, building trust and loyalty among customers. Beyond traditional marketing efforts, Starbucks reinforces its core values of quality, sustainability, and social responsibility, inspiring customer loyalty and positive word of mouth.

Influencers can also act as brand advocates, provided you have developed a long-term relationship with them, and they have a genuine understanding of your brand and the products or services that you offer.

Why is Brand Advocacy Important for Companies?

Brand advocacy is critical for companies for several reasons, each contributing to sustained business growth and enhanced brand reputation. Here are some of the key benefits:

• Enhanced credibility. Much like personal recommendations between friends, brand advocacy boosts your company’s credibility. Advocates spread the good word based on real, positive experiences, making their endorsements feel more genuine and trustworthy than standard advertisements. This authentic advocacy helps cultivate a deeper level of trust with potential customers.
• Cost efficiency. Brand advocacy often requires a much lower investment than other marketing strategies. Advocates naturally share their enthusiasm for your products without the direct costs associated with paid advertising. This organic form of promotion can significantly reduce marketing expenses while maintaining effective outreach.
• Wider reach. Every time a brand advocate shares their experience, whether through social media, blogs, or simple word of mouth, they expand the reach of your brand. They introduce your products to new audiences, naturally extending your visibility beyond traditional customer bases. This can be particularly powerful in tapping into new demographics and markets.
• Insightful feedback. Brand advocacy provides critical insights from a consumer’s perspective, offering honest feedback that can guide product development and improvement. This direct line to customers’ thoughts and experiences is invaluable for adapting and refining your offerings to better meet market demands.
• Deepened customer loyalty. Brand advocacy reinforces customer loyalty. Advocates are likely to continue their patronage and are less inclined to switch to competitors, ensuring a stable base of repeat customers. This loyalty is less expensive to maintain than the cost of acquiring new customers and is more likely to generate consistent revenue.
• Sustainable business growth. Ultimately, brand advocacy fosters a sustainable growth trajectory. It encourages a supportive community of users who are engaged and willing to speak on your behalf, attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. This stable growth environment is essential for long-term business success.

How to Build an Effective Brand Advocacy Program

Building an effective brand advocacy program involves strategic planning and sustained efforts to cultivate genuine relationships with your most enthusiastic supporters. Here are the key steps to developing a successful brand advocacy program:

• Identify potential advocates: Start by pinpointing your most enthusiastic supporters. This includes loyal customers, dedicated employees, and partners who frequently share positive experiences about your brand. Analyze data from customer interactions and social media engagement to identify these key individuals. For example, fashion retailer Everlane identifies customers who regularly share their sustainable fashion choices on social media, leveraging their influence to attract like-minded consumers.
• Engage and equip: Once you have identified potential advocates, engage with them by offering exclusive insights, previews, or special events. Provide them with essential tools and resources such as shareable content and brand messaging guidelines to help them communicate effectively about your brand.
• Recognize and reward: Acknowledge and reward your advocates for their efforts. Bumble, the dating app, is a great example of this. By highlighting user success stories and relationships formed through their platform, and showcasing real-life examples of positive experiences to inspire new users. This could be done through public recognition, exclusive offers, or access to products. Rewards motivate further advocacy and demonstrate the value you place on their support.
• Measure and adapt: Finally, set key performance indicators to evaluate the impact of your advocacy program. Monitor metrics like engagement rates and conversion improvements, akin to practices observed at Slack company to foster a supportive user community. . Be prepared to adapt your strategy based on feedback and performance data to ensure ongoing effectiveness.

How To Measure the Impact of Your Brand Advocacy Programs

As with all forms of marketing, it’s important to monitor the progress of your efforts.

Here are a couple of ways that you can measure the impact of your brand advocacy programs.

Measure Your Social Media Engagement Metrics

The best way to see how your brand advocacy program is impacting your marketing efforts is to measure your social media engagement metrics. This will help you determine how much of a buzz your advocates are generating around your brand.

Is your content being shared more? Are people commenting on posts or liking your brand pages?  What are people saying about you?

It’s also important to make sure that the influencers who endorse your brand have the right profile. Do their interests align with your brand? Is their audience likely to be interested in what they say about you? This is important because the more an advocate’s followers align with your brand, the more impact their endorsement will have.

A good way to check this is by using Influencity’s influencer marketing platform to search for suitable candidates for your brand advocacy program. For example, you can use the healthy lifestyle interest filter on the platform to search for influencers who are targeting this particular market niche. Or you can use different tools to calculate brand affinity to make sure an influencer hasn’t previously liked or promoted brands that might contradict your own brand’s key message.

With the right demographics and interests, you should be able to generate enough engagement to boost your sales and conversions.

Monitor Customer Feedback

It’s also important to monitor customer reviews and feedback to find out what your customers think of you and how your brand advocacy program is impacting the customer experience.

The best way to do this is to conduct an audit of all the feedback you’ve received so far. What feedback has your customer service team collected? Are there any new reviews on your social media pages? Are reviews positive or negative? Has anything changed since launching your brand advocacy program?

It’s also important to be proactive here. Ask your customers to share a review or testimonial once they’ve made a purchase. Share surveys to collect valuable feedback. You can then use this feedback to identify what people like about your brand and what areas of your business you need to improve. You can also calculate how much of an impact your brand advocacy program has had on customer satisfaction and whether your advocates are helping you build a database of loyal customers.

Analyze Sales and Conversion Metrics

Evaluating the direct financial impact of your brand advocacy program is crucial. Monitor key sales and conversion metrics to determine if the content shared by your brand advocates is translating into tangible business results. Specific metrics to track include referral traffic from advocate links, conversion rates from campaigns involving advocates, and overall sales growth during the brand advocacy campaign period.

For example, if you've implemented a referral program where advocates share a unique promo code, track how many sales each code generates. This shows which advocates are most effective and also gives you insight into the overall success of the brand advocacy program. Additionally, compare the average order value and customer lifetime value before and after engaging with brand advocates. This comparison can reveal if advocates are attracting higher-value customers.

Tips For Enhancing Your Brand Advocacy Program

Here are a few tips to help you amplify the positive effects of your brand advocacy program:

• Identify people with a strong affinity to your brand and invite them to join your brand advocacy program. Review sites can be a great place to start with this. 
• Leverage social media to improve the customer journey, increase customer satisfaction, and boost loyalty.
• Transmit your brand’s values, identity, and culture in all communications. For example, you could share employee spotlights on social media to help customers get to know the human side of your brand and build consumer trust.
• Highlight customer success stories. If a customer leaves you a positive testimonial on a review site, ask them if you can share it on social media or add it to your website.
• Ask your customers for suggestions for your targeted marketing campaigns. This will help them feel valued and heard. It will also make it easier to create content that resonates with your audience so that you can expand the reach of your brand advocacy program. To the same effect, when a customer comments or mentions you online, respond as soon as possible. 
• Don’t forget that every customer is a potential advocate. Make sure you connect with them on a personal level and offer them a positive customer journey.
• Develop initiatives that show your workforce that you value and appreciate them. Your employees can be some of your best advocates so make sure you don't neglect them. 
• Use an influencer relationship management tool to develop your brand advocacy partnerships.

Above all, don’t forget that brand advocacy is a long-term strategy. It takes time to develop loyal ambassadors. Focus on improving your customer and employee experiences and your brand advocacy program will build on itself.