Creating engaging challenges for your advocate marketing program doesn’t have to take up a ton of your time.
I’m here to give you five challenge creation tips that will make planning and running your program easier.
1. Collaborate
There’s no i in team. Running an engaging advocacy program has to be a team effort. You can’t do it all on your own.
Set up challenge brainstorming sessions with teams in the company who interact with your customers the most. You can also coordinate with your marketing team to share their content with your customers. You should also encourage product managers to ask for feedback and answer questions in the community. Finding little ways others can help your hub thrive and make your advocate marketing program a huge success.
2. Be like the A-Team
I love it when a good plan comes together. Remember that phrase from the classic television show in the 80s? Think about the A-Team; they never fail. Every episode ends with them beating the bad guys. How do they do it? They always had a plan. Does your advocate marketing have a plan?
It could be as simple as a calendar spreadsheet. By mapping out your challenges ahead of time, you’ll never feel pressured to create new challenges on the fly. Just make sure you’re mixing the amount of fun, educational, and ask challenges.
The more regimented you are with the challenge creation, the easier and more creative you can be. Just like the A-Team.
3. Have fun
It’s so easy to get caught in the trap of constantly asking your advocates for favors. Eventually, your advocates are going to get burned out. Sometimes, advocates just want to have fun.
Fun challenges can be more than just break from work for your advocates. They can help strengthen your program’s sense of community, and re-engage inactive advocates, too.
Try creating recurring fun challenges, like:
- Photo caption Fridays
- Trivia Thursdays
- Recognize an advocate every month
For other amazing examples, check out Heather Pepe’s tips on challenge creation and program management.
4. Customize your challenges
If you use Influitive, you’ve likely taken advantage of the Challenge Template Library—a set of prepared challenges that can help make creating new challenges faster and easier. It’s also a great resource for challenge ideas. We source the templates from challenges that we work in real-life programs.
However, don’t fall into the trap of using a template and publishing it without customizing it for your own program. Use original images and wording that will appeal to advocates, or it won’t seem genuine.
5. Don’t forget about old challenges
As a best practice, we recommend making at least three new challenges a week. But after a while, they’re going to start to add up. That’s why it’s important to set an expiration date on all of your challenges so they never go bad. That way, your advocate marketing program is always fresh and delicious.
