Searching for the most useful tool in your marketing kit?
Put down your binoculars, because it’s right in front of you: your customers.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, but if you look closely you’ll see that your loyal customers are your greatest asset. If you nurture your relationship with them, they’ll help you:
- Increase your brand’s reputation and reach
- Help you generate revenue and pipeline
- Become lifelong, loyal advocates
But how can you uncover these useful brand advocates? We’re bringing some of the most successful advocate marketers to your neck of the woods so you can learn how.
Join us in San Francisco on July 26th and Austin on July 28th to hear how you can harness the power of your advocates to grow your business. (Hint: it’s all about making the experience better for you and your existing customers.)
Here’s a sneak peek at the stories you’ll be hearing around our campfires from some of our presenters.
1. Extend your brand reach to the stars by making customers happier
Just like marshmallows alone aren’t as good as s’mores, relying only on one strategy to reach out to customers and prospects isn’t as effective as using several. In order to engage their loyal fans, Clarizen re-examined their marketing strategy to reach out offline as well as online.
“We really like to put our customers in the spotlight. We want to make sure that they’re the true heroes that shine for our company,” says Genevieve Guerette, Clarizen’s Director of Customer Marketing.
To do this, Clarizen began focusing on what customers wanted to get out of their annual conference. They created an online community for their fans, called Champions League, where they shared timely activities and learned what customers really wanted from their offline conference.
During their conference, advocates had the chance to participate in a scavenger hunt and engage with employees in a VIP lounge. This led to a 93% satisfaction rate with the conference. Engaging customers online before, during and after their live event also paid off for Clarizen—when they asked advocates to write reviews on 3rd party websites, the brand increased its number of genuine reviews by 100%.
2. Accelerate revenue generation faster than an ATV with personal connections
Blackbaud’s customers loved them, but Blackbaud didn’t have a way to build 1:1 connections and show them love back. They were relying on spreadsheets and a LinkedIn group to communicate with customers. They wanted a scalable way to create strong customer relationships.
Amy Bills, Blackbaud’s Marketing Director, knew their customers would love being part of a community. She helped build the foundation for their successful advocate program, called Blackbaud Champions, by getting Blackbaud’s employees a to recruit passionate customers for the program.
Once employees and customers started interacting in one centralized community, it was easy for Blackbaud to engage its advocates and show them how much they were appreciated. This inspired Blackbaud’s influence millions of dollars in revenue by actings as references across 125 sales opportunities in 2015 and increase Blackbaud’s referral pipeline 40X between 2013 and 2015.