Deep Dive into Today’s Best Brand Advocacy Platforms
Harnessing the power of enthusiastic customers has never been more critical. Enter the brand advocacy platform—a transformative tool that’s revolutionizing how businesses amplify their message, build trust, and foster community engagement. In this blog, we’ll delve deep into the intricacies of such a platform, highlighting its pivotal role in reshaping modern marketing strategies. Join us as we unpack the potential of brand advocacy software and how it can elevate your brand’s narrative and visibility.
Overview
First, what is brand advocacy marketing? It’s a way to get current and potential customers to speak positively of your company and its offerings. Think word-of-mouth marketing. The term means these individuals are keen about your brand due to positive personal experiences. By nurturing this sentiment, the goal is to boost sales without excessive marketing expenses. The ultimate goal is to increase sales without putting out too many more marketing dollars.
A program encourages customers and brand ambassadors to post about your company on social media, share and review your products, and interact with your brand. These efforts will help expand your reach and customer base and can also help combat negative reviews or counteract any bad press.
The marketing strategy is powerful and efficient, but it can be complex. Yo successfully navigate this landscape, the best advocacy software is essential. You need a framework that helps identify and retain loyal customers, grow your sales, brand image, and customer base. Using brand advocacy software simplifies this intricate framework, making it more approachable. But, how do you choose the best tool for the task?
Spotting top customer advocacy platforms
In today’s saturated marketing arena, getting noticed is no small feat. How do you rise above the noise? Let others champion your brand! Whether you’re a budding enterprise or seeking to widen your influence, external endorsements can be a game-changer. And the cornerstone of this approach? The right customer advocacy software.
So, what’s at the heart of this approach?
The ultimate goal is to nurture passionate brand evangelists who resonate with and amplify your brand’s message to a wider audience. It’s about harnessing the power of genuine voices that advocate for your brand, further solidifying its presence in the market.
For optimal results, using the best customer advocacy software is essential. Keep reading, and we’ll guide you through the key considerations when selecting the perfect tool—one that excels in recruiting, engaging, recognizing, and measuring.
Foster a brand advocacy culture
A common misconception preventing the launch of a brand advocacy program is the belief that customers might feel they’re becoming pushy sales agents. Yet, this initiative isn’t about aggressive sales tactics. It’s about fostering genuine enthusiasts of your product or service who willingly share their positive experiences with friends, family, and their wider community.
Before diving into a full-scale campaign, it’s imperative to ensure everyone on your team understands the concept. Brand advocacy tools reviews often highlight the importance of organizational culture in the success of these initiatives. When everyone in the organization supports this vision, rallying the troops becomes more straightforward. This culture’s foundation is unity, ensuring alignment with the company’s core values and objectives. Regular discussions are essential to reinforce the importance of these ambassadorial roles.
Platform features
The best brand advocacy software seamlessly connects you with enthusiastic brand champions. They are designed to seamlessly connect you with brand champions who are enthusiastic about echoing the value of your brand. Must have features include: tools to engage, inspire, track, and reward these champions.
With organizational alignment in place, the next step is to identify the right individuals to amplify your brand. Premier platforms excel in spotlighting both existing and potential brand champions, streamlining the process of determining who to invite as strategic allies.
Identifying brand champions
The journey to uncover genuine brand enthusiasts is made effortless with the right software in your arsenal. These systems simplify the quest, offering insights into those primed for participation in your promotional activities. (For in-depth guidance on recruitment, consider these articles:: recruiting brand ambassadors on Instagram and how to find brand ambassadors.)
Leading systems highlight those individuals already endorsing your products or services. With this insight, you can galvanize your people. These platforms enable an efficient channel for direct engagement with such advocates.
Roster emerges as a standout tool in this domain. Its suite of innovative features ensures you’re connecting with the best, making it one of the best customer advocacy software options available.
It can be tempting to sign up anyone who wants to participate. But you must be careful about whose voices you let join your campaign and whose you don’t. First and foremost, you want to make sure that you’re signing up people who are actually interested in your products and services. You want people who are passionate about your brand and who want to share that passion with their friends, family, and other people in their social circles.
Moreover, it’s vital you’re accepting the right people for your preferred social channels. For instance, a brand with a visual essence would benefit more from champions active on visually-driven platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.
Empowering your team
You’ve found the right people for your program and gotten them signed up to share your brand with the world. Now what?
The next step is to energize and empower them.
Empowerment goes beyond mere identification. It’s about equipping them with the right resources, be it an engaging welcome campaign, actionable steps, or branded content. They need clear guidelines, talking points, and resources like graphics and links tailored for their social shares. A brand kit and instructions on correctly referencing and tagging your company in their posts further augment their efforts.
Additionally, you’ll want to provide advocates with content to share about your brand. This could be anything new product to promotions to referral links. The more you can share helpful and informative content, the better.
The best software includes features that help you do all this and more. The best brand advocacy platforms include:
- Social listening
- Recruitment form
- Product seeding
- Task-rewards and payments
- Social engagement tools
- Integrations
- Forums and community platform
- Shareable UGC
- Web app or portal
- Loyalty programs
Roster encapsulates these features and more, making it one of the best software suites for managing brand advocacy. (You knew this was coming.) Through Roster, you can seamlessly kick off expansive campaigns, engage with advocates, amplify your brand voice, and manage the entire advocacy journey within a singular portal.
Offer incentives for participation
While it’s always great when people want to participate in your program, you don’t want to force anyone to sign up. However, you can sweeten the deal a bit by offering incentives for participation. This could be anything from a special offer for products or services to unique gifts such as swag or free merchandisse.
You can also offer incentives for hitting certain milestones or achieving specific goals. For example, you could offer a special gift if someone reaches a certain number of followers on social media.
Measure the impact
As with any marketing campaign, tracking is vital. By utilizing the best customer advocacy software, it’s easier to glean insights from performance metrics, allowing for optimization.
Looking at the data, you will see the engagements of your advocates. You will also see how their efforts impact your brand. You will get a sense of the things that excite prospective customers, and that will help you formulate better plans as you continue your campaign.
The Roster platform keeps up-to-date data and presents it in a way that you can easily understand. You will get accurate insights from crucial performance metrics. What’s more, you will be able to see real-time data at any time of the day.
Track ROI and constantly refine
As with any marketing campaign, you want to track your ROI as closely as possible. Doing so will help you determine its effectiveness. By tracking the impact of your campaigns, it’s easier to learn from the performance metrics and optimize.
With this in mind, the top software should give you smart data with which you can measure the success and effectiveness of your advocacy campaigns. You can measure the return on investment in a number of ways, such as how many sales your advocates bring in, how often your brand is mentioned, or how many people see your brand.
Tracking ROI is essential, but making constant changes and improvements is even more critical. Depending on what you discover from your tracking, you’ll want to change your program to make it as effective as possible.
Maximizing the impact
Consider your customer advocacy software in the same way you would any other marketing initiative: as an investment. It’s vital to build a strong foundation of enablement and to support your advocates in every possible way. That starts by investing in a platform that allows you to recognize their potential, enable their success, track their results, and reward their efforts.
You can get a demo of Roster today. Also, check out our case studies to see how successful brands leverage advocates and Roster’s tools for growth.
Conclusion
Brand advocacy marketing is about getting people to talk about your brand. To do this, you have to foster the right culture and create a program that lets your customers know how and where they can share your brand with others. Once you’ve created your program, you’ll want to make sure you track your ROI and constantly refine your efforts to make sure your program is as successful as possible.