Move Over Buyer Types, Make Way for Brand Advocates

All customers are not created equal. New data from Sprinklr demonstrates the importance of cultivating brand advocates when it comes to growing your business.

Customers Come and Go, Brand Advocates May Love Your Brand Forever

The idea of turning customers into brand advocates is not a new one, but perhaps it’s time to adopt a new approach. Find out why it is worth the work it takes to turn followers into fanatic friends of your business.

Do your customers really “love” your business — and can you prove it?

It is more important than ever for brick and mortar retailers and small business owners to give local shoppers a reason to shop and buy from them that goes beyond the transaction and turns casual customers into a loyal brand advocates. Why?

• Although many business owners will readily say, “Our customers love us!” it is not a claim they can always back up when it comes to growth and retention rates.
• Study after study points to price and value as the two drivers for both purchasing decisions and a consumer’s decision to subscribe to email or follow their favorite brands online.
• Today’s consumer has the ability to have nearly anything they want to buy on-hand within a day (or even sooner, thanks to Amazon, Google and other e-retailers who are working to make same-day delivery a reality).

We often think of the benefits of loyalty programs in terms of bringing brand advocates back more often or providing a business with a competitive advantage when it comes to that particular shopper’s spending habits. However, that may not be the most persuasive reason that a business should invest in loyalty marketing; the impact that vocal brand advocates can have in triggering referral business can make that brand advocate exponentially more valuable.

Making the Case for a Marketing Plan that Creates Brand Advocates

A new Customer Advocacy white paper from the customer engagement experts at Sprinklr highlights some of the compelling reasons why a business owner or brand marketer may want to rethink their marketing priorities, and divert more resources toward loyalty and customer relationship improvement strategies.

In a word, brand advocates RULE.

• 90% of consumers worldwide say they trust recommendations from friends and families above any type of advertising
• 70% of consumers trust reviews and ratings from unknown strangers over other types of advertising
• Fewer than half (47%) of the world’s consumers say they trust TV, magazine or newspaper ads (down 25% from 2009); in the U.S., that number could be as low as 25%

The white paper aptly concludes: “Today’s consumers clearly don’t care what you think about yourself as a brand. They only care about what others think of you.”

Why Should You Care if Customers Care About Your Brand?

At the heart of every brand advocate is a reason – or reasons – that they identify themselves as connected with the brand. While these reasons may be expressed in logical terms, make no mistake that the decision to advocate for a brand has emotional roots.

As Zig Ziglar so aptly put it, “People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” The idea that consumers buy for emotional reasons and use logical reasons to justify their decisions, or that the balance is 80% emotional and 20% logical when it comes to purchasing decisions are all extensions of that idea.

While one could argue that the purchase of commodities, especially those that are necessities, such as grocery staple items are made because they are, in fact, “needed,” that does not explain why the consumer does not logically choose to buy those items at the grocery store offering the lowest prices. Even when it comes to items that are fairly low cost and consumed quickly, people still have preferences about where they will shop that defies the logical reasons of price or convenience, such as how close the store is to an individual’s job or house.

Retailers that provide reasons for customers to care about their business have the ability to become their business of choice, regardless of price, convenience or other benefits provided by competitors. And once a customer feels that emotional connection with your business, it will be much more difficult for a competitor to dislodge the affection they feel toward your organization.

And best of all, once a customer feels personally connected to the success of your business, they will also advocate for your business and provide the coveted 5-star ratings and rave reviews that every business owner loves to see on Yelp, CitySearch, Google, Facebook and other sites that customers trust for product and service reviews.