Why You Need a Customer Advocacy Program for Your Brand

Customer advocacy programs are popping up within CPG brands all around the globe, and for good reason. Customer advocacy prioritizes customer relationships over traditional marketing techniques, which can be seen as out of touch with customer values. Gone are the days when a brand could rely exclusively on traditional customer satisfaction research, as customers now expect a much more tailored, personal, and human approach to engaging with brands.

Here are some of the ways you can leverage a strong customer advocacy program to grow your brand and engage influential advocates.

Characteristics of a CAP

Most customer advocacy programs utilize NPS (Net Promoter Score) as a way to gauge customer loyalty and the likelihood they will recommend your brand to friends and family. These programs cut across departments at a company and develop a unified approach to engaging with customers on a more personal level.

When done right, they create a climate that will amplify your content by getting customers to share it on your behalf. Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign displayed photos taken on iPhone across different media and encouraged users to submit their own. This created a surge of participation, generating more than 5.5 million submissions on Instagram alone. Not all brands can leverage that kind of crowdsourcing, but the potential is clear.

Engaging with the Biggest Advocates

Lifestyle brands often get the most press for customer advocacy, but their products are usually considered non-essential goods. CPG brands have the unique position of being considered household staples for many customers. This position can be leveraged to find brand advocates and influencers who are happy to create user-generated content based on your brand.

Be careful, though: customers are much more likely to take a recommendation from someone they think shares their values than a mega-influencer with lots of followers. Consider this: 82% of survey respondents said they would follow a micro influencer’s recommendation, according to a survey by Keller Fay Group. Take the time to decide the best type of advocate marketing for your brand.

Create Relevant, Personalized Content

User-generated content is great, but CPG brands can also create their own content and get immediate feedback from their most loyal customers. By keeping social media channels open and well-attended, brands can keep an ear to the ground and pivot quickly when they do something customers don’t appreciate. According to a survey by Clutch, 83% of customers expect brands to respond to social media comments within a day or less, and 72% are likely to recommend a company to others if they have a positive social media experience with that company.

Reaching out to customers to actively seek out their opinion using tools like pools and surveys makes them feel heard and allows CPG brands to get ahead of what their customers are looking for in a brand. A points system, exclusive content, or even just recipes tailored to their tastes can go a long way toward building trust and maintaining loyalty.

Having a CAP is essential for any customer-facing business in the 21st century. A study by Tomoson showed that brands make $6.50 for every $1 spent on advocacy marketing. And according to Forrester, 92% of customers trust brand advocates, while less than 20% trust influencers. Customer expectation is changing, and it is vital for any customer-facing brand to respond to this expectation.

At the end of the day, customer advocacy programs are merely a way to remove the friction between customers and brands. They are the new face of how customers wish to be treated and how they wish to interact. At their core, CAPs reward loyalty and allow your brand’s biggest advocates to easily communicate what they love about your products to their peers. Find ways to track customer advocacy, like NPS, and define the story around your brand. When customers feel like they are part of the journey, everyone wins.