Influencer marketing is a mainstay in brand campaigns these days. Savvy social media stars are cashing in big with one-off promotion of products and services on their channels – often times taking it on as a full-time job. But, are brands taking the easy route of paid influence and ignoring advocacy?

For the most part, influencer marketing is a highly effective tool: lower cost per engagement and all the reach you can buy. After all, the notion of paid product endorsements isn’t a new one and there’s a reason why celebrities make a killing on hawking everything from Parisian perfume to canned coffee in Japan. The only challenge is that influence is a short game, while in actuality, the world of true advocacy is a much longer, more arduous journey. And that is scary, time consuming and costly. But, it’s necessary.

Businesses can win over lifelong loyalty one customer at a time; one social engagement at a time; one recommendation at a time.  Whether it’s rallying your internal team members or connecting with your most active customers, here are three ways you can amp up your advocacy game:

Start With Your Team Members

By far, your team members are the most knowledgeable and passionate about your company. There’s a reason why they are working for you – and it’s time to harness that momentum and share it with the world.

Create an environment where team members are invited to share your social media posts, blogs and marketing campaigns. Make it easy by providing them with a mechanism for easy sharing. A simple all-team email, internal communication tools like Slack and Salesforce Chatter, or a more robust solution like Hootsuite Amplify, are great ways to notify team members that there’s new content to share with the world. Integrate prizing and incentives to make it fun and ensure the engagement is sustained.

Amp Up Community Management

If there’s one low hanging fruit that will give you a leg up on your competition, it’s social media response. Every reply to a Facebook comment or a Tweet (good or bad) goes a long way to showcasing your customer service and sales excellence. If you have to invest in one area of your business, it’s customer service – and social media community management is really on the front lines of this. If you can maintain a balanced relationship with your online audience during the good times, it will do wonders to help you rebound quickly from a crisis if something goes awry. A word to the wise: make sure brand guidelines and issues management plans are in place to ensure your community manager has everything thing they need.

Create Opportunities for Reviews and Testimonials

By now we all know that customers trust their peers more than companies. So, if you know your customers have had a good experience with your product or service, why not invite them to share their story with others? Sometimes all it takes is a gentle nudge to remind customers. Ensure that there is a prompt to provide a review in all point of sale or post-sale follow ups, such as on receipts, clothing hangtags, cash desk cards, and confirmation emails.  

Most importantly, find ways to highlight these reviews in the mediums customers use for researching your business. Some ideas to showcase testimonials include: adding a slider on your website, creating a case study, integrating a call-out box on your email newsletter or creating snackable social media content featuring the quotes.

Want to learn more about how to build an advocacy program? Get in touch for details!