Why Organizations Prefer Advocacy Marketing in Today’s Digital World?

Advocacy Marketing has been on the rise for several years now, however experts in the field are betting that “2016 will be the year advocate marketing breaks through as a top priority for marketers.” Team SOCXO have put together the following list for why is there so much need for advocacy marketing in today’s digital world:

1. Top Referrals = Best Leads:

A referral by an existing advocate is way more likely to become a new customer rather than a cold lead added by a traditional marketer. Advocacy marketing leverages the power of word of mouth marketing from someone who potential leads have a lot of trust in.

2. Increased Product Awareness:

Existing advocates will love to talk about your product, giving it great reviews and testimonials. Why is this important for you? Because customer testimonials are the most powerful, searchable and loudest forms of marketing your product will ever get. The result? Nielsen reports that “77% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company when they hear about it from someone they trust.” Therefore, advocacy marketing gets your product straight into the limelight.

3. Organic Promotion of Content:

Great content will catch the eyes of new customers. However, if you promote your own content it can cause your audience to doubt its real value as they’re weary of brands talking about their own product. However, with advocacy marketing, your advocates are the ones who’ll be sharing the content for you, so you don’t have to. Why is this good for you? Social Media Today reports that “Content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels.”

4. Instant Product Feedback:

Monitor what your advocates are saying about you and you’ll get an instant idea of what the current word is about your brand and your products. They say that those closest to you are your best critics, so you can be sure that what your advocates are saying can be taken seriously. This will ease the effort required to do expensive market research and product testing, because your advocates will already be doing that for you in the hope of you addressing their concerns. Just make sure that you do listen though!

5. You’re using the Power within:

The great part of advocacy marketing is that you are using the existing army that you already have, your advocates. These can be your engaged employees or loyal customers, or both. Remember, that as an individual brand, your social reach is quite limited. Whereas, your employees and customers have a far greater aggregate reach. As they already have that reach, your advocacy marketing program is basically harnessing that power for your brand’s benefit.

So you’ve seen the relevance of advocacy marketing in today’s digital world. Are you ready to embrace advocacy marketing for your organization? Get in touch with us at SOCXO now to give your advocacy marketing program a kick-start!