Dorothy Crenshaw
March 20, 2013 | 09:48:51
It was Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist at Apple and instinctive PR expert, who coined the phrase “evangelism marketing.” Since then, all types of companies have been trying to let loyal customers do their brand building for them. Social media makes that more accessible and easier than ever.
But true brand advocacy usually happens organically. The most ardent fans are responding to an authentically positive brand experience. Can a marketer accelerate the process? Here are a few principles that work for many companies.
Start Inside
The best programs work from the inside out. After all, if employees aren’t brand advocates, how can they help customers get there? Starbucks has an inspiring model. It recognizes that each store manager essentially runs a small business, so it has invested heavily in a “Leadership Lab,” an intensive training experience featured at a recent conference for about 9,600 Starbucks managers. Think pep rally on steroids.
Empower Staff
The most successful employers give their staff the license to make on-the-spot decisions, like waiving an airline penalty or approving a retail markdown. These moves can engender the kind of instant, but highly shareable, gratitude that is usually the first step towards evangelism. Don’t we always want to tell our friends when we scored a freebie or an upgrade?
Make it Social
Empowerment can extend to social media, too. Wanting to establish a “connected brand,” iCrossing created not only social media guidelines for its employees, but training on content creation. According to CMO David Deal within one year, the company tripled its volume of blog posts, boosted website visits by 74 percent, and was recognized as a social media role model. The guidelines are a win-win for the company and employees as they help each with its own brand development.
Remove Roadblocks
Stop targeting. Think in terms of engagement and conversation. and start engaging. Marketers are conditioned to look at customers and prospects as targets, but it’s more productive to plan for a long-term relationship, or at least a dialogue. The upfront time investment is more than worth it in the long run.
Drop the Marketing-speak
Customers aren’t engaged by jargon or marketing strategy. People buy from other people. Usually, it’s people they like and want to spend time with. The art of community management is to make the human side of the brand—and the manager—come through.
Use Incentives
But don’t assume cash is the best motivator, because, chances are, it’s not. More powerful lures for evangelists-in-the-making include exclusive or early trial of new products, insider access to information or announcements, trips to corporate headquarters, or other tangible but highly branded experiential rewards.
Create a Community
If they’re not already doing so, encourage your advocates to meet one another and share reviews, opinions, tips, and the like and give them the content and tools to do so. Like attracts like.
Use Humor
Nothing is more disarming for cynics or more attractive to would-be advocates. Recently P&G brand Crest was criticized on Twitter by comedian John Freiler. Rather than giving him the brush-off or responding in kind, its community manager engaged Freiler by offering him a three-year supply of “toothgoop” and negotiating a tongue-in-cheek truce to the feud. Today, Freiler is a Crest advocate, if not an outright evangelist. Nice.
A version of this appeared on MENGBlend.