Trend: Brand Advocates

Having a brand advocate works like having a sales team promoting your brand for free. That simple? Actually, yes. A brand advocate (someone that speaks on behalf a brand - a free brand promoter) will share brand experiences and generate positive content related to that trademark. They will influence positively other users opinions, working as possible leads generators. It’s all about engaging others through a credible & free source.

What does motivate a brand advocate? Well, first of all these users spend a huge amount of their time in social media websites and they find this method also useful to expand their social circles. Secondly, it’s all about the fact that they’ve tried a product or service, enjoyed it and want others to know about the experience. Last, sense of belonging. If you follow, comment and promote a brand, you feel part of it, evidently involving responsibility for what it’s written online. 

It’s an excellent strategy for companies to turn customers with bad brand experiences into brand fans. That’s why managing social media takes time and full awareness of what your brand is being mentioned for. Answering time is the key. To answer a negative but relevant comment in the web is a given and timing is crucial to be at the customer expectation level.

Although brand advocating might seem all about getting free social media positive feedback, it’s wrong to assume that it doesn’t involve monitoring. Ultimately, what you want as a marketeer is that your brand advocate mentions your brand for specific and relevant subjects, rather than irrelevant “I love this brand” type of comments. It’s crucial to identify who is part of your brand army and how can you engage them even more. Nowadays, there are tools to help a marketeer do this job: zuberance.com is an example.

Marketing has changed and social media word-of-mouth is the trend. 

5 Reasons to Engage Brand Advocates

source: smallbiztrends.com