Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

Chapter 16

Identifying

Identifying your Advocates is the first step of the advocacy process. I often refer to this step as building your Advocate Army. It's the prelude to unleashing your Advocates.

Identifying isn't a one-time deal. As I'll discuss, you should be identifying your Advocates continuously. The more recruits in your Advocate Army, the more impact it can have on your sales and marketing.

Three Ways to Identify Advocates

Here are three ways you can identify your Advocates:

1. Ask. The first way to find Advocates is to ask the Ultimate Question for customer loyalty: (On a scale of 0 to 10), “How likely are you to recommend us? Customers who answer 9 or 10 (highly likely to recommend) can be considered Advocates.

2. Listen. You can identify Advocates by monitoring Twitter and other social channels. Social media listening tools can also help you find Advocates. But these tools by themselves aren't always the best way to identify Advocates. (I'll explain more soon.)

3. Observe. You can find Advocates by observing customers' behavior. For example, if customers are bringing referrals to you or creating positive videos about your products and posting them on YouTube, they're already showing by their behavior that they're Advocates.

Asking the Ultimate Question

Frederick F. Reichheld, founder of the loyalty practice at management consultants Bain and Company, created the Ultimate Question along with customer experience management company Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

Reichheld, ...