How to Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates

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With customers turned influencers, your business’s marketing plan can turn full circle if you play it right. Savvy marketers employ marketing to gain customers, and satisfied customers can turn into excellent marketing. The best way to gain more recognition for your brand is to employ influencers who love your product.

Influencers are those with an exceptionally large following who are willing to share their love for your brand, products, and services with others. It’s an excellent way to increase your customer base, since more than 80 percent of customers are likely to use word of mouth to positively influence purchasing decisions.

Influencers are definitely useful, but they aren’t always easy to find. Begin by recognizing your most loyal and satisfied customers. This can easily be achieved through a simply survey that asks the question, “On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our company to others?” Anyone who answers below a nine probably won’t do you much good, but you can reach out to those who rate you higher than that to offer incentives or perks to spread your brand.

Other great ways to turn customers over to your side is to show them that you’re a company worth advocating. Begin by using these tips to become a more backable company.

Offer Relevant and High Quality Content

Your content is easily one of the most important aspects of your company according to customers, and for that reason, it has to be good. Focus on producing only the most high-quality and relevant content.

To do this, look closely at the relevant content that’s trending on the news. Also, look at articles that have been shared over and over on social media. Try to mimic their style of content and the sharing strategy that accompanies it. High quality, easily shared content is extremely important for building brand loyalty.

Give Customers What They Want

It’s also very important to continually give customers the products and services they want, not just the products and services you have. Mark Organ, CEO of Influitive, told OurCrowd, an online investment platform for startups, that brand advocacy is 10 times more effective than leads from organic search.

“But our initiatives to increase advocacy were not effective in generating a step increase in referrals, references and customer stories,” he continues. “Until one day when we created an awards ceremony and then we got a ton of advocacy without even asking for it. That is when the light bulb went off – give customers the experience they are seeking as advocates and you will get a lot more advocacy!”

Making the customer experience worthwhile is truly the best way to bring brand advocates to you.

Ask for User Generated Content

User-generated content is quickly becoming an important and successful marketing tool for businesses. This kind of content includes:

  • Customer reviews

  • Video footage featuring a customer’s experience with a product

  • Uplifting stories and testimonials for brand reputation

  • Social media posts

  • Other multimedia that boosts engagement

Give your customers the online tools they need so that it’s easy for them to provide this feedback on your products. If you play your cards right and make it both easy and appealing to generate content, no perks or incentives will be necessary.

Look for Feedback

If you want to know what’s working to draw customers towards your brand, ask for customer feedback. You’ll be surprised at how many people are interested in taking a survey to assess the performance of your company, and you can use the results to turn your company towards something that consumers will be interested in supporting.

Offer Excellent Customer Service

In case you aren’t already aware of the importance of customer service in drawing consumers to you, here are some facts according to Help Scout: 78 percent of customers will bail on a transaction if they have a poor service experience. What’s more, it takes 12 positive service experiences to replace one negative experience.

The same is said for your brand advocates. It takes a significant amount of customer advocacy to make up for one bad customer review. That’s why it’s so important to make a great customer experience every time.

As you continue to improve your business and the overall customer experience, you’ll find more and more advocates flocking to you, creating user generated content and unknowingly growing your brand.

Larry Alton
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Larry Alton is an independent business consultant specializing in social media trends, business, and entrepreneurship. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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