Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

Chapter 15

Advocate Marketing Playbook Overview

You're excited about turning your Advocates into a powerful marketing force.

Now the big question: How do you do this? How do you identify Advocates? How do you energize them to spread positive word of mouth and drive sales? And how do you track results from advocacy programs?

The Advocate Marketing Playbook provides an easy to follow, step-by-step approach to harnessing the power of advocacy in your business. The playbook details the four major steps of the Advocate marketing process (see Figure 15.1).

1. Identifying is the process of continually identifying Advocates by name and/or e-mail address or other contact method. As I'll discuss, a simple, yet highly effective way to identify Advocates is by asking the Ultimate Question for customer loyalty: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?” I strongly recommend asking the Ultimate Question often and across multiple customer touch points. This enables you to build and keep growing your Advocate army.

2. Energizing is the process of leveraging Advocates on an ongoing basis to spread positive word of mouth and boost sales. Energizing is the heart of what Advocate marketing is all about. I'll talk about encouraging Advocates to:

• Write and publish highly positive reviews of your products and services, boosting online ratings and sales.
• Create and share glowing stories about their experiences with your company and/or brand, increasing credibility and highlighting ...