What are the common challenges and pitfalls of customer advocacy and how do you overcome them?

2 What is word-of-mouth marketing?

Word-of-mouth marketing is when you encourage, facilitate, or amplify customer advocacy to reach a wider audience and influence their purchase decisions. You may do this by creating engaging and shareable content, launching campaigns or contests, partnering with influencers or advocates, or providing incentives or rewards for referrals. Word-of-mouth marketing is a form of owned media, meaning you control and manage it, but you leverage the trust and credibility of your customers.

3 Why do they matter?

Customer advocacy and word-of-mouth marketing are important for businesses as they can increase brand awareness and reputation, boost customer retention and loyalty, attract new customers and leads, reduce marketing costs and increase ROI, and enhance customer feedback and insights. By relying on organic and viral exposure, businesses can make their customers feel valued and appreciated, while also tapping into the networks and opinions of their existing customers to gain valuable insights.

4 How to implement them effectively?

To implement customer advocacy and word-of-mouth marketing effectively, you need to deliver exceptional customer service and support, create a customer-centric culture, build strong relationships with customers, ask for and act on customer feedback, recognize and reward customers, and provide tools and platforms for customers to share their stories. This includes pre-sale to post-sale communication, showing empathy, adding value, soliciting reviews, ratings, or testimonials, offering discounts, freebies, or other perks for referrals, loyalty, or advocacy, and creating user-generated content, social media hashtags, or online communities.

5 What are the common challenges and pitfalls?

Customer advocacy and word-of-mouth marketing can be difficult to manage, as it can be easy to lose control and trust by being too pushy or dishonest. Negative or fake reviews can be damaging if ignored or not responded to professionally. Additionally, opportunities and resources can be wasted if efforts are not tracked, measured, or optimized based on data and feedback. Finally, customers can be overlooked if not provided with ongoing value and support.

6 How to overcome them?

To successfully navigate the complexities of customer advocacy and word-of-mouth marketing, you need to implement certain strategies. This includes being authentic and transparent with customers and prospects, managing and responding to reviews, setting and tracking goals and metrics, and nurturing and engaging customers.

You should also be honest, consistent, and ethical, and admit and correct mistakes or shortcomings. Make sure you monitor and acknowledge reviews, address any negative or fake ones with empathy and professionalism, define and measure objectives, and use tools and analytics to evaluate and improve performance and results. Finally, provide customers with relevant and valuable content, offers, and experiences, and encourage and facilitate their participation and interaction.