​Why you need to know how brand advocates develop

Posted by Nick Venturella

What’s the quickest way for you to have affinity to a brand you use?
​
​By having a positive experience with that brand, it’s products or services.

What’s involved with having a good experience?

Getting your problem solved? Sure.

Getting value for the price you paid? Sure.

More importantly, it’s having an experience that evokes a positive emotion, one that evokes trust -- meaning your experience met or exceeded your expectations so you trust the brand that provided the experience, and you felt more closely connected to that brand as a result of your positive experience.

As a customer, this kind of brand affinity is further extended when you can share your experience with others, especially others who have also engaged with that same brand, and who have had a similar experience. When that happens, you’re immediately connected to another individual by association with the brand. This is how the network effect in a community surrounding a brand can start, and advocates are born.

Smart companies set up opportunities to help their customers not only accelerate their successes with their products/services but to capitalize on meeting and exceeding their customers’ expectations with the added value of inviting them to meet, network, and educate their peers (other customers) who have shared a similar experience with the brand.

This is how social media groups around a topic, or product thrive. It's how musicians build dedicated fan bases, and it's how your company can also build a loyal following.

This advocacy effect can be leveraged to the mutual benefit of both the customer and the company. However that only takes place if you why and how advocacy happens. Then reverse engineer that journey that advocating customers take to make sure your organization is appealing to the kinds of experiences your customers are consciously, or subconsciously, looking for that will lead to their affinity of your brand and them becoming advocates in time.

So what are some of those customer journey milestones that lead a current customer to become an advocate?

(Side note:  Read David Meerman Scott and Reiko Scott's book, Fanocracy for some additional in-depth thoughts and case studies around these ideas)

1. Exceed expectations beyond the transaction as you onboard new customers
   Make a big deal when a customer chooses to partner with you. The idea is to make them feel, to the extent you can, that they are the most important customer you have (by the way, each individual customer IS the most important customer you have). That being said, think through your new customer onboarding process and how it can make people feel welcomed, valued, and positioned for success with your product or service.
   ​
2. Accelerate early successes with your product/service/brand
   Customers will likely have a better experience if they can win early and often as they climb the learning curve of your product or service. You might think about having current customer videos that speak directly to new customers about their initial experiences with your product or service. This provides your brand credibility as it's customers share their experiences rather than your brand suggesting why your product or service is great. New customers will start to see their future successful selves in the current customers sharing their stories. 
   ​
3. Provide access to community
   Part of accelerating the success of your customers is giving them access to your company's experts, and more importantly, other customers who are in the midst of a similar journey with your products or services. The big benefit to you and your customers is that each of your customers are at different milestones on their journey with your products or services and can provide practical application and insight into how to best use your products or services in all sorts of use-cases that your customers are encountering. The ability to ask and answer questions among a group of customers having a somewhat similar shared experience allows for crowd-sourcing of information within the group. Customers often get very relevant answers more quickly than simply asking Support in such a community, and your organization lessens it's Support burden while gaining better insight into customers' concerns and needs to make future improvements.  
   
   
4. Recognize your customers' successes
   Continue to help your customer feel special by providing them opportunities to be recognized for their successes as individual practitioners in their industry and as experts with your products or services. Provide positive comments on their posts in your community or on social media. Create awards for your highly engaged customers who are pushing the boundaries of how to best use your products or services to their organization's benefit. Find small and large ways to validate and recognize your customers at every point in their customer journey with you.
   ​​
5. Listen to your customers' feedback and execute their suggestions
   Making your customers feel welcomed, appreciated, and valued only goes so far if you aren't giving them access to you and influence over the future of your products or services. Be sure you're providing plenty of opportunities for your customers to share their experiences, thoughts and suggestions about your products or services. Then actually listen to them and decide which suggestions make the most sense to improve your products or services to better meet the demands of your customers. Be sure to share with your customers that those new features are theirs -- they came directly from their feedback. This helps your customers have some level of ownership over the future direction of your products or services. Your customers, just like you or me, will likely feel more connected to your brand because you took their feedback and actually made the improvements they suggested.
   ​

Why is all of the above important?

When you create a string of positive experiences that have an emotional appeal to your customers, you continue to build trust with them over time, and you continue to partner with them -- partnering with your customers goes well beyond a monetary transaction.

That partnership leads to your customers' affinity for you, your products or services, and your brand overall. That's how customer advocates are cultivated over time. The result is successful, happy customers that will defend your brand and help you sell to new customers, as well as extend the mutual lifetime value of their own relationship with you.

And it's just good business.