Our good friends at Social Chorus, an influencer marketing company, have issued a new study that says each positive post by a blogger is worth an average of $853 to brands.

But if a post by a blogger is worth $853, what’s the value of recommendation by an authentic customer like a highly positive product review or compelling testimonial?

Keep in mind:

• Advocates are highly trusted. Ninety-two percent of consumers trust Advocate recommendations  (source: Nielsen)
• Advocate reviews are placed directly in the purchase path. Advocate reviews show up on shopping sites like Amazon, TripAdvisor, and Yelp where they’re read by people ready to buy.
• Advocate reviews are proven to drive sales. Seventy-eight percent of consumers say reviews influence their purchase decisions (source: Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange)

So what do you think the value is of this recommendation to NetApp? In this story, a NetApp customer proclaims “I would pay for NetApp even if EMC was free.”

A real review from a Rubio’s guest on Zuberance’s Review App

What do you think the value of this recommendation to Rubio’s Restaurant’s? In this story, a Rubio’s Advocate say she loves Rubio’s so much she named her daughter Ruby!

Finally, what do you think the value is of this recommendation by an Advocate of Anytime Fitness Advocate, where she says “Anytime Fitness has truly changed my life!”

If a positive blog post is worth $853, then (like MasterCard used to say in their TV commercials) Advocate recommendations like these are truly priceless.

How valuable is customer advocacy, in your opinion?

Word of Mouth Pre-Social Media:

• A happy customer tells 5 people 
• An unhappy customer tells 20 people

Word of Mouth Today:

• A happy customer tells 5 people 
• An unhappy customer tells 20,000 people

Last night, I went to sushi with a friend who has a seaweed allergy. He has been to this place at least 15 times, and each time they accomodate him and make his rolls with soy paper instead of seaweed. Last night, he ordered as he usually does and 45 minutes later the waitress came to our table almost in tears. She said “I don’t know what to say right now, the owners said they cannot do this, it’s not possible.”

After calmly stating that he has had it done before, just had his corporate party there and that we’ve already waited 45 minutes, the owners wouldn’t budge. They never came to our table and the poor girl had to put out the fire. Little did the sushi place know, they had a well-known Chiropractor, a former employee of that establishment and a social media strategist sitting at that table. We calmly said, there is a lot of word of mouth power sitting at this table. We didn’t want it to come down to that, but when they realized what could happen, they were suddenly able to accomodate my friend’s seafood allergy. It wasn’t really about word of mouth, my friend just wanted to eat dinner!

Over an hour and 15 cold rolls later, my friend had his dinner. There were no apologies or food comps. While they accommodated us in the end, Yelp reviews will be shared and friends will be told. It’s one of two sushi restaurants in this town, and I guarantee it won’t be the most popular any more.

An unhappy customer tells 20,000 people, and I promise you, 20,000 people will know about our experience.

So, how important and valuable is it for you to amplify Advocates?

Driving customer advocacy is now the #1 digital priority for CMOs worldwide, a recent IBM study of global CMOs showed.  And eMarketer recently stated: “Brand advocacy has become a critical part of the social media marketing mix.”

Have you already read Brand Advocates? Please click to write a review!

The book, Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force (Wiley; ISBN: 978-1-1183-3603-8; July 2012; Hardcover & E-book) provides a step-by-step guide on how marketers, small business owners, and others can:

• Discover who their Brand Advocates are and what makes these influential customers tick
• Energize Advocates, generating thousands of positive recommendations on Amazon.com, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere without paying for or providing incentives to Advocates
• Reward Brand Advocates by giving them what they crave most (here’s a hint: it isn’t money)
• Measure results and ROI from advocacy programs

Who Should Read Brand Advocates?

• Brand Advocates is valuable for a wide range of audiences:
• B2C and B2B marketers in a variety of roles: branding, online/digital, social media, demand generation, eCommerce, corporate communications, market research, and more
• Sales executives and managers
• Customer experience and loyalty program professionals
• Executives and managers in ad agencies, digital agencies, public relations firms, and other marketing services providers
• Small business owners and entrepreneurs
• Professionals in non-profit organizations, government agencies, and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) plus in political campaigns
• College students in business and marketing programs

In addition, any company or organization that is measuring customer satisfaction, loyalty, or advocacy via Net Promoter® can also benefit from Brand Advocates. The book describes how to turn Promoters into a powerful marketing force.

About the Author

Rob Fuggetta is the world’s foremost authority on brand advocacy. Fuggetta is the founder and CEO of Zuberance, a leading social media marketing company that powers award-winning advocacy programs for consumer and business brands. A twenty-year veteran of Silicon Valley, Fuggetta has played a leadership role in three start-ups including Genuity, a Verizon spinout. He was formerly a partner at Regis McKenna, Inc., the legendary Silicon Valley marketing and communications firm that helped put Apple on the map.

 Brand Advocates is Available Now

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Brand Advocates is available now at leading book sellers including Amazon.com (print and Kindle edition); Barnes & Noble; 800 CEO Read; and BAM (Books-a-Million). In addition, the book is available directly from Wiley atwww.wiley.com in both print and e-book editions from Wiley.com.

Have you already read Brand Advocates? Please click to write a review!

Zuberance is the leading Brand Advocate marketing company. Zuberance manages and powers ongoing Brand Advocate programs for leading consumer and business brands. Zuberance combines its award-winning Brand Advocate platform with advocacy expertise and services to drive advocacy and sales. For more information, visit http://www.zuberance.com or follow Zuberance on Twitter @zuberance.

Online ratings on Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor plus other sites can make or break your business. Rob Fuggetta, Zuberance Founder & CEO, as well as author of Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force, showcased real-world examples and case studies on how to boost online ratings.

Key Takeaways: 

• 90% of consumers read user reviews, 80% trust the reviews, 78% are influenced by reviews
• Bad reviews are killing your business
• Positive reviews boost sales & profits
• Identify, energize & mobilize brand advocates
• Keep it real & make it easy for Advocates to recommend

Please comment below with any questions, or tweet us @Zuberance & @RobFuggetta.

Interested in learning more about Brand Advocates? Download Chapter 1 of: Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

“How do we measure the value and ROI of Advocate Marketing programs?” Marketers ask me this question often.

Three key metrics for Advocate Marketing programs:

1. Total Number of Recommendations: A recommendation can be a positive review, testimonial, answer to a prospect’s question, tweet, post, or share. Most marketers inherently know that getting more recommendations is highly valuable. Recommendations drive sales, study after study shows.
2. Advocate Reach: This metric estimates how many people have seen your Advocates’ recommendations on shopping sites, review sites, social networks, your website, and elsewhere. We use Forrester’s Peer Influence Analysis study to estimate Advocate Reach. According to Forrester, each time someone posts something on the social web, it’s seen by 150 people. Forrester considers this a conservative estimate because of the inherently viral nature of social media (retweets, re-Pins, etc.)
3. Impact on Sales: You can track this by giving Advocates unique promotional offers and coupons and track redemption rates from among their friends. The Zuberance Advocate Platform also enables you to track the number of referral clicks and referral leads as a result of Advocates sharing content and/or offers with their social networks.

Each Energized Advocate Positively Influences Three Prospects

Of course, tracking codes don’t allow you to measure the full sales impact of Advocate marketing. This is because people often buy products or services as a result of friends’ recommendation but don’t use promotional offers and coupons. And you may buy something weeks or months after your friends recommend it to you. Cars and vacations are good examples.

We’ve created an attribution model for Advocate Marketing that takes this into account. In our model, each energized Advocate (an Advocate who recommends in one or more of the ways listed above) positively influences the purchase decision of three people. Here’s the formula we use:

Total # Energized Advocates x Average Customer Lifetime Value = Total Advocacy Value

I’ve shared this approach with many CMOs and senior marketers. They’ve told me they consider this a reasonable way of estimating the value of Advocate Marketing programs.

Download: The Business Case for Advocacy Whitepaper

Your Turn: What metrics do you think are relevant for Advocate Marketing programs? I’d love to hear your ideas.

How to Boost Online Ratings & Rankings

 Sponsored by Red Door Interactive

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 | 11 PST•2 EST

Online ratings on Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor plus other sites can make or break your business.

Did you know?:

• 70% consumers trust online reviews (Nielsen)
• Increasing Yelp ratings by one star can boost revenues by 5% to 9% (Harvard  Business Review)
• 67% prospects change their mind after reading only one to three negative reviews (Lightspeed)

[Tweet] How to Boost Online Ratings & Rankings [Webinar] w/@Zuberance on 5/15 

In this informative webinar, you’ll learn how to:

• Boost online ratings on shopping and review sites
• Increase rankings (you’ll see how one hotel jumped 50 rungs on the TripAdvisor rankings ladder)
• Leverage user-generated content to boost SEO, engagement, and sales

Bonus! Ten webinar attendees will receive a complimentary autographed copy of the hot-selling book, “Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force,” by Rob Fuggetta, Zuberance founder/CEO.

Click ‘attend’ to register for the webinar below:

Rob Fuggetta is the world’s leading expert on brand advocacy. Fuggetta is the author of the ground-breaking new book, Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force. Published by John H. Wiley & Sons, Inc., a major business publisher, Brand Advocates shows how companies are leveraging Brand Advocates to build their brands and businesses – and how you can too! Fuggetta is the Founder & CEO of Zuberance, a social media marketing company that powers Brand Advocate programs for top consumer and business brands. Prior to founding Zuberance in 2008, Fuggetta was the Chief Marketing Officer at Genuity, a Verizon spin-out. He also was formerly a partner at Regis McKenna, Inc., the legendary high tech marketing and communications firm in Palo Alto, where he co-led the global Apple account.

Red Door is a strategic partner dedicated to helping businesses continuously evolve by offering a broad array of services that connect clients seamlessly with customers across all touch points.

I’m delighted to share with you some exciting news about my book Brand Advocates. Brand Advocates is going to be published in Japan next year in both print and online versions.

I predict that Advocate Marketing is going to be very important to Japanese marketers.

I’m especially convinced that mobile advocacy — using mobile devices to recommend brands and products — will be big in Japan.

Here’s why:

First, Japanese consumers are very brand-conscious. High-end luxury brands are hugely popular among Japanese consumers, especially Millennials.

Second, Japanese consumers rely heavily on Word of Mouth recommendations in making purchase decisions. Word of Mouth — positive or negative — spreads like wildfire in Japan.

Third, Japanese consumers have the means to share their recommendations with friends via mobile devices and social networks. They also can broadcast their recommendations on sites like Amazon Japan, Chiebukuro from Yahoo, plus on Twitter (which is very popular in Japan.)

Domo arigato to my publisher John H. Wiley & Sons, Inc. for arranging the Japanese distribution deal. I’m looking forward to spreading the gospel of advocacy in Japan!

Visit BrandAdvocateBook.com to learn more about Brand Advocates.

Ten Helpful Hints for Using Advocate Stories in your Content Marketing Strategy

1. Make it Easy

Give Advocates attractive, simple, and easy-to use landing pages for creating their stories. Make sure the user experience is smooth and effortless. Help Advocates by showing them samples of other Advocates’ stories.

2. Showcase Advocate Stories

Put them on your Facebook and website. Get more marketing value by showcasing them in ads, email marketing campaigns, and in other marketing vehicles. Encourage Advocates to share their stories on Facebook and Twitter.

3. Use Video

Video stories can be very powerful, especially when you’d like Advocates to demonstrate your product.

4. Encourage Sharing

Make it easy for Advocates and their friends to share stories on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social and digital channels by using sharing buttons in the story experience.

5. Promote Stories

Fat Tire, the beer brand, ran full-page ads in print magazines and elsewhere to boost awareness of the Fat Tire stories contest. Other ways to encourage stories including putting well-placed banners on your website; sending emails to Advocates; and creating special URLs and putting them into your paid media.

6. Turn Stories into Sales

Provide coupons that Advocates can send out with their stories when they share them with their friends and colleagues.

7. Ask a Leading Question

Prompt the type of stories you want. For example, if you want to highlight your customer service, ask your Advocates to share a memorable story about that topic. Norton, the security software brand, asked its Advocates “How has Norton saved your bacon?” The company’s agency created a web banner that features the sizzling sound of bacon. See photo above from tip 1. 

8. Encourage Creativity

Enable Advocates to include photos, videos, and other visual elements to theirs tories.  This makes stories more interesting and compelling.

9. Empower Story Readers

Make it easy for people who read stories to like it, vote on it, share it, comment on the story, or create their own.

10. Organize Stories

Make it easy for audiences to view stories using drop-down menus and tabs that organize stories by things like customer segment, author’s job title, responsibility  vertical, industry, newest story, oldest, favorites, stories with photos, video stories, stories by solution, product or other factors.

How do you use content created by your Advocates?

Top 10 list originally published in Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force by Rob Fuggetta, Published by Wiley

Brand Advocates play a huge roll in brands’ content marketing strategy. Through reviews, recommendations and shared stories, Advocates are creating content brands dream of. Advocates’ stories are powerful because they’re real. They help brands build credibility, generate referral leads, and accelerate sales.

We often talk about how to get more positive online reviews, but are focusing on Advocates’ stories today.

Advocates’ stories differ from reviews in three ways:

1.  Advocate stories are typically about Advocates’ experiences with your company or brand versus with a particular product.
2.  Since Advocate stories focus on company or brand rather than specific products or services, they typically do not include star ratings as reviews do.
3. Advocates stories are often more personal and emotional than reviews. They often focus on Advocates’ feelings rather than product features and benefits.

(as highlighted in Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force by Rob Fuggetta, published by Wiley 2012) 

Advocates Write the Content Brands Dream of

Marketers are always looking for the next great way or wording to promote their product or service. Content marketing strategy thrives when brands make it easy for Advocates to tell their stories.

 ”My Dream” story by Brian, an Advocate of Qatar Airlines

In my dream I am flying to Qatar to visit the parents of a young man who has become one of our ‘adopted’ sons. He’s from Qatar and is studying to earn a degree from a university in the United States. He is such a fine young mans and in my dream we are greeted at the airport in Doha by his parents. We excitedly embrace and then over coffee, sweets, and much food we share our affection and our love for this young man we both call our son. I know from mid ream as well as from my adopted own that to fly on Qatar Airline is greater than any dream because of the quality of the service and the tremendous friendliness of all who work for the airline. 

Sure, you could write a scenario like that or preach how great your brand is, but nothing says authentic advocacy and marketing than hearing it from the Advocate’s mouth (or fingers).

Advocates are honest, and funny

Cured My Grandma’s Worms! 

I installed Norton 360 on my Grandma’s computer, and her worms went away! Now if only they could do something about the toast smell in her house. 

Advocate stories can be used in social media, print advertising, and in meetings to think of the next great marketing campaign.

Rubio’s, known for their Original Fish Taco®, is no stranger to Advocates talking about them. Before their partnership with Zuberance, they knew Advocates were talking about them and the first time they had an Original Fish Taco® (it’s a thing).

When Rubio’s partnered with Zuberance to identify and energize their Brand Advocates, they received a lot awesome stories about people reminiscing about their first fish taco. From first dates to newborn babies, Rubio’s holds a special place in a lot of peoples’ hearts.

Rubio’s highlights an Original Fish Taco® story every Tuesday on their Facebook page. This makes for great social media content.

3 Strategic Uses for Advocates’ Stories 

Support Brand Messages

Advocates’ stories can help communicate and add credibility to your brand message. CDW, the online retailer’s brand message is that CDW “gets IT” (IT, as in Information Technology). CDW can get its Advocates to create stories about who their experiences show that CDW deeply understand the needs IT managers.

Rebranding and Repositioning 

Advocates’ stories can add credibility to your claims if you’re trying to change perceptions about what your brand or company stands for. Jamba Juice wants to transform its brand from a made-to-order smoothie company to a healthy, active, lifestyle brand. Zuberance recommended that Jamba get its Advocates to create stories that support its new positioning.

Rejuvenating

Advocates’ stories can help reinvigorate your brand’s image. Ball Corporation, makers of iconic glass jars used for canning vegetables, needs to find a way to be relevant to today’s women. So they’re inviting Advocates who are a younger demographic than Ball’s traditional customers to create stories about how easy it is to make delicious, healthy food at home.

Now that your wheels are turning about how the power of Brand Advocates’ stories can fuel your brand’s content strategy, share with us how you think your could benefit from Advocates’ stories.

 Subscribe & tweet with us @Zuberance, we’ll be back tomorrow with 10 Helpful Hints for Advocate Stories, as seen in Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force.

It’s no secret that word of mouth recommendations and reviews are a powerful marketing force. 83% of consumers say online customer reviews influence their purchase decisions. Intended to highlight and quantify the value of Yelp for small businesses, Yelp’s Revenue Estimator  launched  on March 25.

The free tool generates estimated revenue from Yelp by calculating customer leads x average spend on a first customer visit, as reported by business owners in a survey by Boston Consulting Group, according to Matt Halprin, VP of Revenue and Analytics at Yelp.

The business owner can edit the average spend on first customer visit variable.

source: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/03/new-revenue-estimation-tool-for-local-businesses-.html

Customer leads include things like mapping directions to the business, placing a phone call from the Yelp app, purchasing a Yelp deal, bookmarking a business listing and making an OpenTable reservation.

“It’s useful for any business owner, advertiser or not, as it makes it easier to see what revenue opportunity the businesses owner is seeing from Yelp already,” said Halprin.

Star rating and number of reviews are not used in generating the estimated revenue, though the amount of reviews a business has affects the customer’s purchase decision.

While it’s frowned upon for businesses to beg for reviews, there are ways to prompt customers to write a review, as mentioned in How to get more positive online reviews for businesses with a conscience. 

Give Brand Advocates the online tools to rate and review your business and direct them to Yelp to publish their review. Do not provide Advocates/reviewers with incentives or rewards, and let the reviews be authentic.  Do not alter or edit reviews in any way, and published reviews on Yelp should come from the Advocates’ accounts, not from someone within the company.

It’s up to your customers to write about and review your business, and Zuberance makes it easy to provide your Advocates with the tools to do so.

Have you used Yelp’s new Revenue Estimator? What was your first impression and do you have a plan to move the needle?