Customer Advocacy rising!

The ROI of Customer Advocacy? How does it enable exponential sustainable growth?

What is it, and why is it so critical for revenue, retention and results?

Disclaimer: Warnings at the very bottom of this post

Keywords: Customer advocacy, influencer marketing, customer success, nurturing, retention, peer-to-peer community empowering, customer journey mapping, reviews, references, word-of-mouth, personalization, ROI, ROMI, sustainable growth.

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Firstly, to start with, this concept itself is nothing new. Customer advocacy empowered with emerging software tools is bit new. Just as with CRM and CX earlier, these business book concepts rapidly evolved to software tools by techies. Customer advocacy is not an exception. Influitive, Ambassify, Referenza, Refersion, Referrizer, Mention.me and similar Customer advocacy enabling software vendors are not fully comparable, but riding this very same rising phenomena of Customer Advocacy in action.

This blog is not about tech, it is about money, so let’s start with the revenue. A customer advocacy team is not just another nice-to-have yet impossible-to-monetize cost center. Genuine customer advocacy is intrinsically linked to sales. Want proof? Keep on reading.

One day I found an old yet original piece of Sales literature,” How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling” written by Frank Bettger actually far before 2nd World war. Book had a prologue of legendary Dale Carnegie. While most serious academics and reasonable people stand conservative against guides and self-help books, this one, due to historical perspective and advocacy connect, far before term Customer advocacy, really caught my attention. Try to find it online if you can, two chapters are of particular interest.

WHERE CUSTOMER ADVOCACY COMES FROM? ICE AGE ANYONE?

Chapter 18, page 93. “..Way to gain a Man’s Confidence” addressing pre- and post purchase stages, for example how to overcome “Buyers remorse”. And Chapter 30. Page 155. “How I Find New Customers and Make Old Ones Enthusiastic Boosters”. Without even going to detail, you should be able to understand from the titles already how Advocacy creates and impacts both old and brand new sales.

What is customer advocacy? Is it same today as it used to be? Wikipedia define sit as:

“Customer advocacy is a specialized form of customer service in which companies focus on what is deemed to be best for the customer . It is a change in a company's culture that is supported by customer-focused customer service and marketing techniques.”

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_advocacy

Not much has changed after Frank Bettgers 1947 published wise words. 2017, Chris Lake was at the same track. Chris is a Founder & digital consultant at https://Orangeclaw.co.uk and his blog text covers a snappy collection of different companies advocacy experiments. His view is that Customer advocacy is one of the best indicators of loyalty and repeat purchase intent. Chris sees that best for of marketing is to get happy customers, who are more likely to speak favorably about your brand.

If you do not have such actively referring happy customers today, how do you achieve that? By Googling internet about Customer Advocacy, one of the first to “pop up” is the Joey Coleman interview by Michael Stelzners “How to Get People to Talk About Your Company” He highlights that Customer advocacy is the answer, but that will not happen with cool design logos, gorgeous graphic visuals, or marketing collateral itself. It is the combined total perceived Experience itself that connects everything before, during and after interaction during the customer journey that enables customer advocacy to flourish.

Regarding that impact and ROI of marketing, yet another Customer Advocacy blog author Ekaterina Walters (2013 blog) underlines how the best advocacy programs enlarge traditional one-way marketing channel into multiple promotional conversations. This may cause fear for marketers who want total control, as Advocacy is much more viral and far reaching - as the Word-of-mouth always has been.

WHAT CUSTOMER ADVOCACY IS NOT? ( FANS & REFERENCES?)

Customer advocacy cannot be just getting more positive written reviews by customers, it must be the whole holistic Customer experience that matters. And if it goes wrong, Customer advocacy related customer experience can even stop your sales all together! People take low prices and/or high quality for granted. But if your customer service leaves bad after taste, then no discount, reviews, marketing tactics or product enhancement can save your firm anymore. You lost your credibility already. Beware of the fake advocacy!

Linking to that warning, do not confuse References with Advocacy either! While they are close siblings, references tend to be formal and static, whereas advocates are supposed to be always-on 24/7. Different companies have their own views of this of course, but for me reference has been collected and published on request, for example customer visits, a YouTube video testimonial or a Pres release. Customer advocacy on another hand is mostly out-of-control of the company and happy advocates may speak at unknown forums, whenever they so prefer, without object being aware of it at all.

Regarding Fans vs. Advocates, Coleman has a good synopsis. Why is that not the same thing? Why confusing Fans to advocates is dangerous? Simply because fan is not necessarily the same as a paying customer. Just that your social media posting (or this one) gets loads of likes, does not mean they will ever buy a single product from your company. If those fans, however, do buy your products/services and you thereafter nurture them right, then you get authentic real solid Customer advocacy.

Now, that links again to the old sales book teachings cited in the beginning. True fan means customer will tell, without any pushing from you, to everyone in their circle of influence, about their experience to share how incredible product or service you have. Even better (worse?), Joey Coleman claims that super advocates do their outmost to get as many new people as possible to also use your offering.

COMPANIES THAT WIN MOST WITH CUSTOMER ADVOCACY

Interestingly, again the same Technology companies seem to be the first runners avant-garde adopting these Customer advocacy roles, responsibilities, units budgets and tools as happened with Demand generation I wrote earlier about (Link here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/demand-generation-what-kari-syrja/)

 Indeed, early adopters as if you look with Customer Advocacy title in LinkedIn, come mostly from major and challenger international IT companies, such as Oracle, Microsoft, F-Secure, IBM, Infor, SAP, Salesforce, Adobe and so on…which leaves us the question who else should catch up?

Depends how you chose to define Customer advocacy at B2B or B2C settings? Even in Consumer settings, TripAdvisor and other holiday review sites are linked to this phenomena. Naturally, B2B Software industry has also similar sites such as Trusradius, G2Crowd, etc..

Which companies can benefit most of Customer Advocacy? Lucy Wimmer , from EQT ventures authored a blog: “How do you build an army of customer advocates? “. She seems that especially in industries or profession where expertise is respected, Customer advocacy can move the needle and get fast results.

Is it fair to say that Customer advocacy is not likely to work with traditional industries then? Why would it not? All humans trust and value their peer comments, especially if those peers are individuals who they respect and consider with high esteem. That links Customer advocacy to importance of Social capital which is psychologically a major driver. And free, if designed right into your Customer advocacy program!

Another public Customer advocacy aficionado, Adweek.com columnist Larry Alton, writes that certain industries such as Entertainment are natural to social media word of mouth creation, whereas for example Law firm can find it more difficult as matter there can be too sensitive or ruled to be undisclosed by the law itself.

Nevertheless, some things are universal. Mark Organ and Deena Zenyk from Customer advocacy software platform Influitive.com write in their book “The Messenger is The Message, that people seek to improve their lives and acquiring “Social capital” is most powerful asset they can have. What does that mean? Social capital, or in this Customer advocacy context, beneficial information sharing inside their chosen community, improves that individuals standing as person to be trusted. This increase social capital and may strengthen their relative position and perceived value to others.

In other words, any industry can benefit of Customer advocacy. But especially the ones with frequent fast forward development push. That may also partially explain why the technology industry, who publish all the time new features and functions, have also emerged with Customer advocacy functions first.

HEY! WHERE IS MY MONEY? 

Let’s start with leads. If you design, build and co-create with your advocacy program and activities right, you shall get both upsell/cross-sell opportunities from existing happy customers as well from their peer group who they have invited into your advocacy network.

This is no rocket science, think about yourself, would you want to renew a bad contract with bad service yourself if your peer would recommend you a better one that they can prove to be great and feel even greater about? Or if you hate the company and your experience, how likely is that you or they, your customers, will continue?

Do not just take my words, earlier blogger Ekaterina Walter (link) found even older studies to prove this with fact-based evidence to take Customer advocacy seriously. At her blog you can find her comments regarding McKinsey Quarterly, April 2010 finding that “Marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than 2X the sales of paid advertising” and a Deloitte study where “Customers referred by other customers have a 37% higher retention rate”.

Finally, Customer advocacy can convert your most satisfied customers into indirect external FREE sales force, who are more authentic, more impactfull (Think Return-on-marketing-invest) and more cost efficient (maybe even cheaper?) than your own sales and marketing efforts.

CALL TO ACTION! STRONGEST INFLUENCE AVAILABLE:

When quality is all-time high, prices at all-time low, everything is accessible to everyone, anywhere, all the times, what is the only competitive advantage left? As Coleman sees it, the customers’ experience as the last great differentiator. Customer advocacy is your way to scale it fast and monetize the viral word of mouth that you merit (?) without cost of traditional sales and marketing.

High level that might be clear by now, but how to do it? Consider Lucy Wimmers blog , where she emphasizes that Customer advocacy design can assist precise persons inside customer companies to demonstrate their skills, thought leadership, knowledge and experience. Bit more tangible, is it not? Why would you do that?

If Your customers are not yet experts of their domain - or your product / service that should help them to gain that leading edge, then as part of the customer advocacy your company can provide preview behind closed doors to your development roadmap. As Your Customer advocates can adapt faster to coming changes and benefit of latest features, it translates to efficiency and competitive advantage before their peer group catches up. Both at company level and individual level. Can you see the satisfaction, loyalty and stickiness aspects of that?

Companies can empower, enhance and enable these individuals “Personal branding” to prove they lead their industry with latest innovations. Think; What could be a long term vs. short term psychological impact of that? Organ & Zenyk book writes practical examples of Reciprocity in action. You must give first to trigger the desire to give back to you.

Customer advocacy regards

Kari

P.s. Was this useful? Wanted more practical insights? Precise actions? Please comment below. I am planning to write series of these about Advocacy, separate texts about How to identify potential Customer advocates, how to engage potential customer advocates, elevate them and start delivering leads, deals, reviews, references, key note speakers, retention. Briefly: Accelerated growth. Interested? Send me a message or comment below

P.s.s. Disclaimer: These are my own views. Text above is not, and will not be, intentional representation of any copyright, trademark, legal unit, person, firm, nor corporation. These are my own personal reflections, observations & historical facts based on open publicly available data.

Sources:

All pics from Pexels.com

BOOKS

Bettger, Frank. How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling. 1947. Fireside, Prentice hall press. USA.

Organ,Mark & Zenyk, Deena. The Messenger is the Message. 2017. Lioncrest publishing. USA

ONLINE

https://www.adweek.com/digital/how-to-encourage-customer-advocacy-on-social-media/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2013/09/17/8-essentials-of-creating-a-sustainable-advocacy-program/#

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/demand-generation-what-kari-syrja/

https://medium.com/eqtventures/how-do-you-build-an-army-of-customer-advocates-c49124eb7871

https://medium.com/@lakey/66-inspiring-examples-of-customer-advocacy-2244b225fb35

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/customer-advocacy-how-to-get-people-to-talk-about-your-company-joey-coleman/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_advocacy