Bust out your formal wear and get ready to walk the red carpet: the biggest awards for outstanding advocacy marketing is back! This February 2016, the Best Advocate Marketing Awards (AKA the BAMMIES) will be given to B2B marketers who are harnessing the power of their biggest fans and happiest customers to fuel business growth.
If you’ve successfully leveraged your customer and employee advocates to help your company hit sales, marketing or engagement goals, there may be a Best Advocate Marketing Award with your name on it!
First time entering? We’ve rounded up some tips from past BAMMIES winners to help you out.
1. Focus on the win-win
“Focus on the win-win scenarios that advocate marketing creates in adding value for your clients and for your company.”
—Michael Beahm, Senior Marketing Manager at Blackbaud, Winner of the 2015 Best Referral Program Award
The best advocate marketing programs don’t just benefit the brands behind them—they have a lot to offer their advocates, too. When talking about the goal of your program or campaign, focus on the value created for both your business and your advocates. Share advocate success stories, or ask your advocates to give feedback on the value they feel they’ve gained from engaging in your program. (It will enhance your entry!)
2. Tell the whole story
“Tell a cohesive story from start to finish, rather than presenting only results. Without the right context, 100 reviews may not seem very impressive unless you explain how you got there and why it was a success for your team at that point in time.”
—Jackie Shydlowski, Advocate and Digital Marketing at InsightSquared, Winner of the 2015 Best Product Review Campaign Award
Explain the thought that went into your campaign and the process you took to get there. Share anything that will help demonstrate how you achieved your goals, including specific challenges and screenshots. It will make your entry more compelling.
3. Know your numbers
“Gather lots of metrics on how your hub has positively impacted your business. Write a case study on yourself!”
—Liz Pedro, Director of Customer Advocacy at Mitel; Winner of the 2015 Advocate Marketer of the Year Award
If you really want to impress our panel of experts, you’ll need to have some data to help tell your story. Be as specific as possible. If you ran a killer referral campaign, include how many referrals were generated within a certain time frame, how many were qualified, and how many progressed through your sales funnel. The more metrics you can provide, the better our judges can gauge the success of your program.
4. Dive deep on value
“We approach awards submissions the same way we approach making a case to our executive team: we look at surface results and then dive into what that means for the business.”
—Bo Bandy, Director of Marketing at ReadyTalk, Winner of the 2015 Best Content Creation Award
Show how your advocacy efforts attribute value to all areas of your business. Go beyond top level results (like challenge completions). For instance, did advocate-created content lead to more closed deals and pipeline? Did your customer engagement campaign increase NPS scores? Prove how an act of advocacy can impact multiple parts of your business and you’ll be clearing out space in your trophy case in no time.
Enter the 2016 BAMMIES!
Entering the BAMMIES is easy! There are ten categories B2B marketers can be recognized in—including customer referral programs, review campaigns, events, content creation, advocate engagement and more. The deadline is January 29, 2015. There is no limit to the number of categories you can enter—so choose your favorite, or try for them all!
