We asked our customers and advocates to submit videos explaining why they’re invested in advocate marketing.
Boy, did they deliver! We received more than 50 videos. You can check them all out here.
Read on to discover the top seven reasons why savvy B2B marketers are investing in customer advocacy.
1. Fuel growth
Advocate marketing is the secret weapon of fast-growing companies. Research has shown that brand advocates help companies grow two and a half times faster than their competition.
“Customer advocacy is a core part of a company’s growth strategy. It’s the most effective way to grow your pipeline, get new leads and accelerate your deals,” says Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. “It also makes your customers more successful, as companies that advocate on your behalf are more invested in your product or service.”
2. Drive word-of-mouth referrals
Today’s buyers don’t trust corporate marketing. Instead, they turn to their peers to learn about new products and services. Mobilizing your advocates can boost your word-of-mouth referrals and bring you more high-quality leads.
“Despite being in the B2B space, we’re still marketing to people,” says Angela Higgins, Customer Engagement Manager at Code42. “[Prospective clients] hearing about Code42 through their peers is infinitely more valuable than any other prospect marketing that we do.”
Find out how else Code42 is benefiting from advocacy:
Taylor Moore, Marketing Communications Specialist at TouchBistro, adds, “Our team is invested in advocate marketing because we love harnessing the passion and excitement of our customers to help spread the word about our company. Word of mouth is such a powerful influence, and by empowering our customers to share their experience with their networks, we are in a win-win situation.”
3. Boost sales
“Your best salespeople are not on your payroll,” says Jill Rowley, Social Selling Evangelist. “Your best, most trustworthy salespeople are your customers who are generating so much value from your solution that they’re willing to advocate on your behalf.”
Here’s what Jill has to say about mobilizing your advocates to drive sales:
4. Turbocharge your marketing
“The days of ‘spray and pray’ marketing are well behind us,” says Steve Bernstein, President of Waypoint Group. “To accelerate deal flow, you need real customer advocates out in the marketplace creating buzz, validating the hype and talking about the ways that they’ve achieved success with your company’s products and services.”
Liz Pedro, Director of Customer Success Marketing at Mitel, adds, “Advocate marketing is a game changer for marketing. Whether you’re looking to grow demand generation, your number of online reviews, social sharing or any other marketing initiative, chances are that advocate marketing can help.”
Here how Erik Charles, Senior Director of Marketing at Cake, is using advocate marketing to get his message to new customers in new channels:
5. Improve your customer experience
“It’s never been more important than right now to delight your customers and put them first,” says Michael Beahm, Advocate Marketing Manager at Blackbaud.
Creating an advocacy program helps you put your customers first.
“Through fun and educational advocacy challenges, we can make our customers feel special and at the same time give them a voice,” says Denise Taylor, Marketing Manager at Netfactor.
Learn more about how Denise is succeeding with advocate marketing:
6. Build and deepen customer relationships
“Marketing is all about the relationships,” says Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing. Advocate marketing offers brands a way to build and foster relationships in scalable a way that hasn’t been possible before.
Learn more about how Matt is using advocate marketing to engage customers:
7. Improve your products and services
“I love advocate marketing, because it helps us listen to our customers and know what they want,” says Abdallah Al-Hakim, Marketing Operations Manager at Bluejeans.
Your advocates can provide you with valuable feedback that will help you improve your products and services.
“Listening to our customers’ feedback helps us create the best products that we can,” says Alyssa Azevedo, Client Marketing Specialist at Virgin Pulse.
As you can see, a variety of companies have experienced the power of advocacy. You likely have an army of customers, fans and evangelists who are willing to help you achieve similar results. Now you just need to find and mobilize them.
