What is Advocacy Marketing? Let your customers speak for you

Customers expect a personalized and seamless experience.

Changing consumer behavior has led to a new marketing trend focused on building personal relationships between brands and their customers, known as “brand advocacy marketing” or simply “advocacy marketing” .

Advocacy marketing is about turning customers into brand advocates. It's the best way to turn word of mouth into a positive force that drives your business forward.

An advocacy marketing strategy helps build mutually beneficial relationships with customers, promote your brand, and reach your target audience more effectively. It is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy.

What is Advocacy Marketing?

Advocacy marketing involves partnering with customers to provide social proof for a brand through a variety of channels, including email, social media posts, blog posts, and video content.

It's about letting customers do the talking for you. Advocacy marketing helps create a brand experience that leaves a lasting impression on customers. When they connect with your mission, vision, products and services, they feel empowered to share about you.

Advocacy marketing is a great way to extend the reach of your marketing efforts, increase customer retention, generate referrals, and acquire new customers. This allows you to create a more engaged customer base.

Example of a branding campaign in action

“Turn left when your competitors turn right”. A strategy - made popular by Harley Davidson's Clyde Fessler - that caught on in the business and marketing world may not be so famous anymore. But it's still one of the best case studies to check out if you want to build your brand and use advocacy marketing as one of the key strategies.

When the business world focused its advertising budget on audience and impression research, Fessler spent 80% of Harley's budget on advertising, public relations (PR), and promotions for existing customers . The magic that followed was nothing less than a legendary branding reversal.

Harley has undergone a complete overhaul. They let their employees wear jeans to work, ride bikes, and represent the brand as it appealed to their customers. Their dealerships have also become a part of this makeover. It made the brand more personal and easier for customers to interact with.

Harley's example shows how advocacy marketing takes you from okay to awesome. But, like all good things, it takes time and effort.

Why is advocacy marketing important?

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Getting people to speak positively about your brand and your products is a challenge. Advocacy marketing can help you do this effectively.

Customers want to identify with the brand in which they invest. These brands reflect their values, habits and preferences. But they don't suddenly become free endorsers just because you gave them a 10% discount. About 70% of consumers leave a review for a business when asked, so it's crucial to focus on creating a strategic initiative that gets people talking.

How to do advocacy marketing

Being in front of a large audience is intimidating. Advocacy marketing is not a one-way street. To get the best results, you need to know where and how to start.

1. Understand what drives brand promotion

Before creating a branding campaign, get rid of the basics. What are your goals? Who is your audience? What problems are you looking to solve? Why do you think about advocacy at all?

Understanding what drives advocacy and what works for your target audience can help you establish ground rules and give you a head start.

2. Focus on loyalty

When it comes to adoption, emotions drive people more than features or technicalities. As a brand, if you don't strike an emotional chord with your key stakeholders, you'll have a marketing mix with a nice slide and a few point-based ads, and that's about it. So focus on retention.