Effective Social Media Marketing: How to Turn Satisfied Customers into Brand Advocates

Passionately satisfied customers spreading the word of your business for free are a dream come true. (They don’t even require perks or incentives. Say what!?!) The consumer advocate is a highly effective marketing weapon. Here is a how-to guide to creating an army of consumer advocates:

Find your advocates – The web (social media, blog, website, email, etc.) serves as the perfect platform to identify individuals with high customer loyalty. This can be achieved through surveys or questionnaires that ask questions such as: (On a scale of 0-10) “How likely are you to recommend us to your friends or colleagues?” Those who answer with 9 or 10 are your marketing advocates.
Turn advocates into content creating machines – The best way for these selected individuals to create positive content is by making all of the online tools easy and accessible. Most importantly, you must engage them and ask them to participate. Without a call to action, consumers are likely not to do anything.
Amplify advocates – This step can be achieved through engagement on social media and multimedia channels and allowing customers publish their reviews on third party sites such as Yelp, Amazon, or TripAdvisor.
Leverage content – Share and display the newly created content on your digital outlets and feature customer testimonials on each step of the process. The results of this simple action are the increase of conversion.
Track results – The wonderful thing about online marketing is the accurate tracking power. In order to use this data most effectively, pay attention to the profiles of individuals creating content, activities of the advocates, and results of their recommendations.

Throughout your consumer advocate campaign, always make sure that the advocacy is authentic. This means that no one receives incentives or perks because it takes away from the credibility of the source. Developing a genuine, positive brand reputation is a priceless attribute that will attract new customers by storm.

For more information, check out this Forbes article written by Rob Fugetta, the author of Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force.

Consumer advocates are advantageous for all industries and businesses. Isn’t it time to build an army of your own? Appleton Creative is an award-winning, full-service advertising agency located in Orlando, Florida. Appleton works with local, national and international clients to provide marketing strategies through print, web, social media and video production – all in house. At Appleton, we want to learn about your business, empower your marketing team and be your creative resource. Your marketing goals are worth a conversation: contact us at 407-246-0092 or info@appletoncreative.com.