Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

Chapter 5

Advocate Personas

One way to distinguish Brand Advocates is through the use of personas. A persona is a fictional character that represents different types of consumers who share similar behaviors, attitudes, and motivations. This chapter describes four Brand Advocate personas.

Sally Seller

Sally Seller is your best salesperson. Without payments or perks, she gets her family members, friends, and co-workers to buy the brands and products she enthusiastically recommends. “Oh my God, I really should be in sales. I'd make a ton of money,” says Sally, a 28-year-old events manager from New York City.

Outgoing, charismatic, and well connected, Sally has hundreds of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections. Sally's a passionate Advocate of Coach, the maker of luxury handbags and accessories. She has more than 50 Coach handbags and other Coach products including tennis shoes, wallets, and key chains. Her latest prized possession: the Coach Madison Graphic Op-Art Maggie handbag ($358).

But Sally is much more than a loyal Coach customer. She's a Coach salesperson. Sally has generated over $50,000 in sales for Coach via her advocacy, she estimates. “I recommend Coach because I absolutely love this brand. Their handbags are very high quality and fashionable. And I just love it when my friends get Coach products also,” says Sally.

One of her recent “Coach Converts” is JoAnne, a co-worker. Sally took JoAnne, (whom Sally describes as “really nice but not exactly ...