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Who doesn’t feel better when their decisions in life are endorsed by a trusted advisor?
We are all familiar with those fleeting moments of panic when called upon to decide, or act over something we are not 100% certain about. Whether it’s a small but expensive purchase, or a big life-changing outcome rests upon it, you often find yourself looking for reassurance from someone you can trust.
That can be a family member, friend or mentor, professional advisor or even a retailer assistant, waiter, or bartender. Everybody, some people more frequently than others, looks for advice and makes the decision to seek others’ opinions at some time, its human nature.
Of course, in today’s world the internet influencer is a common source of advice, and many make buying decisions based on what they say. However, while millennials are the most enthusiastic followers, they, and other age groups, still put trust in opinion and experience delivered face to face.
In noisy distribution channels, the face-to-face personality of your brand needs to closely reflect the promoted values, and in fast moving markets like retail, IT, automotive, jewellery and many others, achieving that is a fulltime task.
Let’s look at the facts about brand advocacy:
Brand advocates are 50% more likely to influence a purchase, through sharing by word of mouth or using digital media. Source: Marketing Charts
70% of customer brand perception is determined by experiences with people. Source: McKinsey
92% Of Individuals Trust Word-Of-Mouth Recommendations. Source: Social Toaster
76% Of Individuals Surveyed Say That They’re More Likely to Trust Content Shared By “Normal” People Than Content Shared By Brands. Source: Social Toaster
54%. Word-Of-Mouth (Advocacy)Has Been Shown to Increase Marketing Effectiveness Source: Social Toaster
42% of people distrust messages coming directly from brands. Source: Forbes
74% of people find posts from personal accounts more persuasive than posts from brand accounts. Source: Marketing Advisory Network
To get there, you need the many representing your brand to customers to become advocates for it. No doubt, in a lot of cases, they will be tasked to discuss other competitor brands, and you need to form a more familiar relationship with them than others.
In such channels, we help client brands to find and target suitable advocates, through a mix of communication, learning modules and incentives and recognition. By first establishing one product enthusiast in a store team, it’s possible to leverage higher engagement across teams.
Employees should naturally be advocates for your brand, but it is not necessarily the case that, because you work for a brand you become an automatic advocate for its product. However, if asked in the right way, many will, and it is an effective manner of acquiring additional customers.
Neon Agency have experience of this with a client providing a unique new device to smokers which offers a no-smoke alternative. Still working under extremely strict guidelines, we devised an advocacy approach for their employees to approach family and friends who smoke, with an alternative experience. The referral campaign for employees provides learning, feedback and winning opportunities for product advocacy.
Similarly, in the jewellery market we helped a famous global watch brand, develop key advocates in major retailers like Beaverbrook’s, and they became the go to expert for all brand knowledge and products features and benefits. In turn they recruited and trained other staff as experts and monitored and maintained product display and positioning in store.
If you are seeking to implement a brand advocacy programme then contact us to see how we can help.
