Introduction
Once you've built a strong foundation of customer advocates through advisory boards and NPS promoters, it's time to leverage their enthusiasm to amplify your brand. Advocates can play a pivotal role in sharing success stories, posting reviews on external platforms, and participating in speaking opportunities. These activities significantly enhance your brand’s visibility and credibility. In this article, we'll explore how to effectively utilize your advocates for these purposes, setting the stage for our next discussion on connecting advocates for sales references and customer requests.
Why does this matter?
Leveraging advocates for success stories, reviews, and speaking opportunities is crucial for several reasons:
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Enhanced brand credibility: Success stories, reviews, and testimonials from real customers lend authenticity and trust to your brand.
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Increased visibility: Speaking opportunities and reviews on external platforms allow your advocates to share their positive experiences, increasing your brand’s exposure.
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Customer engagement: Actively involving advocates in these activities strengthens their connection to your brand and encourages ongoing loyalty.
How to get started
Step 1: Identify and engage advocates
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Deploy listening posts: Set up mechanisms to identify potential advocates, such as surveys and feedback forms.
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Initiate relationships: Reach out to likely advocates with personalized surveys to gather details about their experiences and willingness to participate.
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Build rapport: Foster strong relationships with your advocates by acknowledging their contributions and keeping them engaged with regular updates.
Step 2: Collect and publish success stories
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Create a survey process: Develop a streamlined process for capturing detailed success stories from your advocates.
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Categorize responses: Organize the collected stories based on themes, industries, or use cases to make them more impactful.
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Publish and share: Use various channels, such as your website, social media, and marketing materials, to publish these success stories and share them widely.
Step 3: Encourage advocates to post reviews
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Identify review platforms: Compile a list of relevant review platforms such as G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra.
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Personalize requests: Send personalized requests to advocates, encouraging them to share their positive experiences on these platforms.
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Provide guidance and support: Offer templates, tips, and support to help advocates write impactful reviews.
Step 4: Notify advocates of Speaking Opportunities
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Identify relevant events: Compile a list of upcoming conferences, webinars, and other events where your advocates can share their stories.
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Personalize invitations: Send personalized invitations to your advocates, highlighting the importance of their participation and the benefits they will receive.
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Prepare and support: Provide your advocates with the necessary resources and support, such as presentation materials and speaking tips, to ensure their success.
Gainsight features you'll need
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Journey Orchestrator: To automate the process of identifying and engaging advocates through surveys and email campaigns.
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Surveys: For collecting detailed success stories from your advocates.
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Timeline: To track interactions and maintain records of advocate engagement.
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Email Assist: To send personalized invitations and follow-ups to advocates for speaking opportunities.
What’s next?
Having successfully leveraged your advocates for success stories, reviews, and speaking opportunities, the next step is to connect these advocates for more personalized engagements, such as sales references and customer requests. Our upcoming article will delve into strategies for effectively managing these one-on-one advocacy activities to drive tangible business outcomes.
Further reading and inspiration