Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

Introduction

You have a powerful yet underutilized marketing weapon.

This weapon is far more trusted and influential than banners or billboards, search-engine marketing or sales promotions, rebates or retargeting. In fact, it's 10 times more effective than any weapon in your marketing arsenal.

This weapon is your enthusiastic customers—your Brand Advocates. These customers are ready to sell your products, give you referral leads, tell your brand story, and defend you from Detractors. They'll create content more compelling and credible than your most skilled wordsmith. And they'll share this content and more with their social networks, serving as a highly efficient distribution channel. (Some of your Advocates are doing all these things right now.)

Your Advocates will evangelize you without payments or points, coupons or cash. You can't buy authentic Advocates. Their advocacy is not for sale.

Turning Advocates into Marketers

In the social media age, power has shifted from advertising's Mad Men to millions of online consumers including Brand Advocates. Advocacy—not ads—is what drives purchase decisions and perceptions in nearly every product category.

Smart marketers aren't fighting this customer uprising. They're harnessing it. They're systematically finding their Advocates and turning them into powerful marketing forces.

Here are a few companies you'll read about getting groundbreaking results by unleashing their Advocates:

• Norton, the consumer brand of Symantec, doubled product ...