Who Do Your Buyers Trust? The Intersection of Influencers and Advocates
While B2B buyers have long looked to trusted sources to learn about new solutions, social media has made it much easier for buyers to connect directly with their peers and colleagues with prior knowledge of your solution. Through this, an entirely new type of influencer has emerged: the advocate.
If you’ve ever acquired a new customer through a positive referral, you know the power that an advocate wields. They reach smaller audiences than an advertising campaign, but with far more trust and authenticity. But even if marketers were able to harness this positive sentiment – which can be challenging – what does that mean for category influencers including analysts, bloggers and pundits? Which channel can deliver the right message to the right audience to help them discover your solutions?
For answers to these questions and more, please join Zachary Reiss-Davis, Forrester analyst and expert in influencer and community marketing, and Mark Organ, CEO of Influitive. They’ll dig into groundbreaking new research that demystifies life at the intersection of influencer and advocate marketing and detail the tradeoffs of each approach.
3. • For audio choose “Use Mic &
Speakers” or “Use
Telephone” in your Audio
window
• Submit your text question
using the Questions pane
• Or via #advocatemarketing
• Note: A recording will be
made available
How to participateHOUSEKEEPING
#advocatemarketing
17. 17
Advocates are customers, partners, fans and evangelists -
any individual - that invest in your company in non-financial
ways
Advocates are Ektronauts
#advocatemarketing
18. 18
Here‟s where you find them
Beta
tester
Sales
reference
NPS
promoter
Just finished
deploying!
partner
Blog
commenter
Avid
tweeter
Advisory board
member
Media
hound
Tech support
turnaround
User
group host
19. 19
Here‟s how they think
fulfillment
reciprocity
loyalty
validation
recognition
#advocatemarketing
33. 33
• Always focus on the relationship. Advocacy is not
„transactional.‟
• Build the advocate‟s reputation:
‒ Reference calls = connections.
‒ Referrals = trust.
‒ Analyst calls = reputation.
• Start small and work towards big asks
• Use psychological principles of motivation
(ie., exclusivity, reciprocity)
• Make it fun!
5 tips for building an engaging advocate program
#advocatemarketing
34. 34
Q&A . . . before we head backstage
#advocatemarketing
@influitive
@ZacharyRD
Source: Forrester’s November 13, 2012, “2013 Planning Brief: Listen To Customers, Engage With Influencers” report
*Source: Salesforce Marketing Cloud listening solution (formerly Radian6).Problem with listening tools is amplify channels that aren’t that influential.
So what is advocate marketing and why are we talking about it’s impact on Lead to revenue management? I’ll give you the definition, but as you know, a picture is worth a thousand words. And this picture, submitted to us by our customer Ektron, really shows it off. You can see that there are four gentlemen here proudly posing for a picture under their hand-carved sign which says “The Ektronauts” They are clearly power users of Ektrons web content management system. They love the product. But more than that, they are proudly declaring it to the world with a hand carved sign. Now as crazy as that may sound – every company has Ektronauts, people that believe passionately in their vendor’s mission, vision and products. They just need to be found and given a platform. Advocate marketing captures this enthusiasm of fans, evangelists and promoters – increasingly grouped together as "advocates" - and turns it into a powerful force for igniting business. For the B2B companies that we focus on at Influitive, advocate marketing not only generates more leads directly through referrals, but accelerates revenue generation through every other marketing and sales channel. It's this force-multiplier effect that makes advocate marketing so exciting, being embraced by forward-thinking marketing leaders. And now over to Lori Wizdo from Forrester, who is one of those forward-thinking marketing leaders, to provide her insights on Advocate Marketing.
We know that word-of-mouth has far more reach potential than any marketing campaign. But while many people may “like” or follow a brand on social media platforms, it’s a much smaller group of true advocates that goes he extra mile by finding and heavily promoting their favorite content, services and products.Why do advocates advocate? It’s amazing to many people that customers will actually take the time out of their busy day to share their positive experiences with a vendor – and do that without being asked. But here’s the thing about advocacy: it’s buttressed by innate behaviors. People become advocates because they’re hardwired to connect and build relationships, and one way to achieve that is through unsolicited support.
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