Customer advocacy programs serve as primary tools for creating success for businesses around the world. Customers undergo several stages before deciding to buy a product: curiosity, contact, convincing, and purchase. 

Customer advocacy programs serve as primary tools for creating success for businesses around the world. Customers undergo several stages before deciding to buy a product: curiosity, contact, convincing, and purchase. 

The ability to take a client from the curiosity stage to the purchase stage is considerably dependent on marketers’ persuasion skills. It is an undeniable truth that without effective customer service, the sustainability of business seems challenging. 

Customer advocacy programs offer a flexible, more efficient channel that is not only focused on solving customer queries but also generates referrals for your business.  

Social media and technological advancements present better avenues for giving your offerings to a new market. With so many options to engage customer advocates, customer advocacy programs help you achieve a wider reach and higher sales. 

It may seem hard to find customer advocates that will boost your brand image, but with a competent customer advocacy solutions provider, developing good customer advocacy programs becomes an achievable task. We offer five tips that let you build customer engagement to increase your brand following and business growth: 

Recruit the right customer advocates for customer advocacy programs:

Anyone, including your followers or customers with a certain degree of influence or reach on social media, can be your customer advocate. Celebrity endorsements and pages work, but the buzz they create for your brand may not last long. It would be best if you aimed to pick individuals who will be willing to support your brand and discuss your advantages over others with their acquaintances. 

They will act as your brand ambassadors, increasing your products’ acceptance in the market daily. The efforts need to be repeated. Customer advocates should be motivated enough to influence their contacts or fan following on behalf of your business over and over again to make your brand more vocal.

Create a long term investment with customer advocacy programs for engagement that will last:

Create a long term relationship with your newly recruited customer advocates. The closer and more robust the connection, the more motivated your customer advocates will be.

Use our customer advocacy programs to invite your customer advocates to offer their suggestions on new products to make them feel valued. Encourage them to provide unique ideas and opinions on product development since they interact closely with your customers and critics.

Reward them when they develop considerable customer activity on your social pages or get you, customers through referrals. Offer to put your customer advocates under the assistance of a company official to create deeper bonds. A little motivation can work wonders in enhancing your customer advocates’ performance.

Here are some things to consider:

• Use our customer advocacy programs to invite your customer advocates to offer their suggestions on new products to make them feel valued.
• Please encourage them to provide unique ideas and opinions on product development. Since they interact closely with your customers and critics, it only makes sense they would have ideas to offer.
• Reward your customer advocates when they develop considerable customer activity on your social pages or get you, customers, through referrals.
• Offer to put your customer advocates under the assistance of a company official to develop deeper bonds. A little motivation can work wonders in enhancing your customer advocates’ performance.

Integrate an appropriate rewards system:

Your customer advocates will associate with your company and will deliver performances at different levels. Offer more significant rewards on better versions. Keep plenty of reward options to suit your customer advocacy programs at every stage.

For example, reasonably good customer advocates will receive electronic gift cards or cash rewards, or an opportunity to guide a newly hired advocate. This will serve to boost their reputation among peers. Similarly, offering a bonus or exclusive access to premium rewards to customer advocates will also motivate them to raise their daily performance. 

Provide an open platform to your customer advocates with flexible customer advocacy programs:

Your customer advocates will not e able to effectively advocate for your brand unless they have multiple platforms where they can interact with others. You must aim to develop online blogs, social pages r community platforms, where like-minded people express their opinion of particular brands or products and make decisions.

Through such media, offer your customer advocates an opportunity to share their own positive experiences with your brand. It serves to build trust in your brand and attract new customers. 

Offer exclusivity to enhance competition and raise performances: 

Your customer advocates will perform differently and deliver different results. There will be some who will drive greater engagement and contribute significantly to increase your reach and sale. It becomes necessary to retain such customer advocates to create lasting arrangements.

Besides, you would also want them to stay motivated and target more significant results every time. You can do so by enrolling such advocates in a premium club.

The premium club will offer your high-performing customer advocates access to bigger and better rewards, more incentives, and exclusive coupons. Also, leaderboards motivate customer advocates by displaying their ranks concerning others and encourage them to deliver better results the next time.

Smart customer advocacy programs developed for medium and large businesses offer a competitive edge and good brand following.

Of course, you need to keep improvising your customer advocacy programs. It delivers good results at every stage, but that’s only a small effort compared to the value it would add to your business.