Your customers have a lot more in common with each other than they do with any businesses that they buy from. They have a natural affinity to other customers and will trust each other’s views and opinions. In fact, your customers want to be able to connect with each other and hear about the experiences that others have had.
The loyalty and trust that your customers place in each other can be more powerful than any loyalty card. In fact, a study by McKinsey uncovered that word of mouth is the main influencing factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. This is backed-up by an article in HBR, which states that ‘the most important person selling what you’re offering is your customer’.
For brands, customer advocacy offers both a challenge and an opportunity.
It’s very difficult for brands to influence this peer-to-peer conversation directly. In fact, brands seeking to control or dictate these conversations often find that it backfires.
Qantas Airlines learnt this the hard way. The company launched a Twitter promotion, encouraging people to tweet about their dream in-flight experience with the hashtag #qantasluxury. Unfortunately for the company, the hashtag was used by dissatisfied customers to rant about the poor experiences they had with the company.
Customers don’t want companies to try and dictate the conversation. Looking again at the Qantas example, it’s clear that the airline’s biggest mistake was thinking that they could control what was being said about them on social media.
How can brands encourage customer advocacy?
So, if trying to control the conversation backfires, how can brands encourage customer advocacy? What can they do to not only create happy customers, but also people who truly want to promote your company? Here are a couple of ideas to help you encourage your customer advocates:
1. Share your customer’s achievements
Make your customers the hero of your story. It could be in a short video, a case study or even a feature on social media. This approach has two benefits. First, it makes your customer feel proud of their achievements and more likely to promote you to their peers. Second, it helps you to create the type of content that your other customers and prospects want to see.
2. Actively promote your promoters
When your customers promote you, look for ways to amplify what they have to say. For example, if a customer shares a positive experience on social media, share their comment and thank them for their contribution.
As well, if your customer’s story is genuine, there are opportunities to promote them in the media, get them to attend company events or even come in and speak to employees about their experience.
You can’t shortcut customer advocacy. It’s something that has to be earned. It requires investment through continually earning your customer’s trust and respect. But, by getting it right, you’ll find your customer advocates can help you grow and develop as a business in amazing ways.
A big part of building trust between you and your customers is to offer them a great end to end customer experience. Sign up to our event to find out how to build a great customer experience, which will make sure your customers are Raving about you!
