Influencers vs. Brand Advocates: Where Should You Invest?

With the coming of the digital age, customers had more access to information than ever before. This began to sow more consumer distrust in brands as they were able to identify companies that were transparent vs. those that were not. This led to “word-of-mouth” as the most powerful form of advertising there is today.

The data is all there. In fact, 55% of U.S. consumers express brand loyalty by recommending the brands and companies they love to family and friends. That’s where the concept of influencers and brand advocates come in. In order to reach the most consumers, brands have to start thinking outside of the box. And that begins with courting the right people to help you get your message out there.

What is an Influencer?

An influencer is someone who proves to be a thought leader in their industry. They avidly network with consumers and typically have the power to affect purchase decisions over others. They prove to have authority through knowledge and a deeper connection to their audience.

Influencers will have a large social following, across multiple channels. They engage with their audience frequently and post on a fairly consistent basis. Influencers can be anything from a motivational speaker to a banker or doctor.

The idea is that they take interest in social media and can reach the consumers that your advertising cannot. That means, influencers generally come with a price and the bigger the following, the higher the cost can be. Yet, remember the facts. 49% of people rely on influencer recommendations. That’s almost half of all consumers online. Wow!

Identifying an Influencer

There are many ways to identify influencers in your industry. The first step is knowing your niche in and out, so you know exactly what to look for. Categorize keywords related to your business and use them to search for blogs written by key thought leaders. You can then use the comment section to engage, or the contact information to reach out.

Another means is simply looking for who in your industry has the top social following. Typing in “key influencer” and your industry name into a search engine can prove these results. Finding the people that already have a large audience and getting your brand on their page practically guarantees a jump in engagement. It can also lead to a positive ROI. According to a survey by Tomoson, businesses are making an average of $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

What is a Brand Advocate?

A brand advocate also works by word of mouth, but they differ in many ways. The more you build your brand, you’re bound to have a few customers that simply love you no matter what you do. You have hit it out of the park time and again. You may consider these people your “super satisfied customers.” And when people love a product that much, not only do they make repeat purchases, they talk about it.

Brand advocacy is about the promotion of your product by everyday people. Unlike an influencer, many of these people do not require a fee to promote your stuff. They generally start out doing it by themselves. However, you can harness the power further by offering discounts, specials, even free products to further motivate their advocacy.

Identifying a Brand Advocate

92% of consumers trust recommendations from brand advocates. That means, they are cheaper than influencers, but can have just the same effect. You can usually locate your advocate by starting on your own social pages. Anyone who has left a positive comment can be open to leaving a testimonial on your site. Searching the web for your brand mentions can also demonstrate where your most successful advocates lie.

Leveraging Industry Influencers

The limit to leveraging influencers is only bound by your creativity. The first step is to connect. Here are a few ways to do so:

Interview them on a podcast
Ask to exchange blogs
Have them guest blog
Co-author a blog
Interact on social media
Contact them through their site or social channels

The possibilities are endless but the key step here is that you need to reach out and talk about your brand before an influencer will promote it. They may also want to discuss rates at this time.

Tapping into Their Network

Once your brand promotion has begun, pay attention to your influencer’s pages. As people begin to engage and interact with your brand’s post, you can follow up with them as potential leads. After all, they’re already showing interest in your brand through your influencer’s networking.

When an influencer posts about your brand, you get exposure to their entire audience. This not only increases brand recognition, but also your reach in content. Especially when an influencer tags you on a post and consumers can then click it back to your neck of the woods.

Generating Brand Advocates

Establishing brand advocates can be a tad easier depending on the age of your company. Sometimes, paying an influencer can help give you a push.

However, once you have a handful of happy customers, moving onto brand advocacy is a natural progression. There are several ways to generate advocates. Here are a few:

Happy Employees

Consider your own people first. Especially if they are active on social media. The better you treat your employees, the more likely they are to recommend people to your brand. Employees can sometimes be your best brand advocates, particularly when you are just starting out and don’t have a ton of customers. There are many ways you can foster a happy environment that will encourage your employees to advocate, such as:

Run engagement programs with rewards.
Distribute surveys and make active changes based on the advice.
Create a healthy work environment through positive reinforcement.

The higher the morale, the more motivated your employees will be. The happier and more engaged your employees are, the more they will talk about how they love working there. Advocacy can be that simple.

Customer Satisfaction

Delivering a world-class customer experience is one of the prime ways to gather brand advocates. By the year 2020, customer experience will overtake product and price. Have you considered how you are engaging with your consumer base?

Creating customer satisfaction can be as easy as having a chatbot answer them immediately on social, rather than waiting for you. It can also include loyalty programs and rewards for your most loyal customers. The more you consider your consumer base every step of the way, the more likely they will become brand advocates.

Social Media Engagement

Another great way to locate your brand advocates is to keep up with all of your social channels. The more you stay engaged with people when they comment or like your posts, the more they will feel like you care about their opinion. Even addressing bad reviews had been shown to turn people around into brand advocates. Simply for holding yourself accountable.

Using social media monitoring and listening tools like Google Alerts can help you stay immediately aware of consumer mentions. These tools can shoot you a notification as soon as someone mentions your brand and you can engage from there. The key here is to never leave anyone hanging. People will turn on you when they feel ignored and you will lose brand loyalty.

Key Takeaways

When you ask yourself brand advocate or influencer? The answer is that you actually need both. They can both serve a role in helping elevate your brand to the next level. Influencers are easy when you’re first starting out because they already have an established audience related to your niche. However, the better the influencer, the costlier they can be.

Brand advocates are super powerful in the sense that you typically aren’t paying them to promote. That makes their message the most reliable of all. However, it can take a lot of time and effort to build consumer trust to the point where people take the time to freely advertise for you.

Ultimately, you may end up with only a handful of influencers, but if you play your cards right, you can have hundreds of brand advocates. The idea is to know which one is right for your brand at which time. If you learn to leverage both influencers and brand advocates you’re sure to see not only an increase in engagement and loyalty, but a real difference in your bottom line.