Sport & Health, Washington D.C.’s largest family of health clubs with 24 locations in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., is turning its enthusiastic members into a Word of Mouth marketing force.

Powered by Zuberance, Sport & Health is enabling its Advocates to:

• Create and publish positive reviews of Sport & Health Clubs, boosting ratings on review sites
• Create and share their fitness success stories on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere on the social web
• Share promotional offers and content with their social networks, generating referral leads and boosting membership sales

Importantly, Sport & Health is not paying Advocates or giving them incentives for recommendations. Instead, the club is tapping into the authentic enthusiasm of its highly-satisfied members and making it easy for them to recommend Sport & Health to others.

“Word of Mouth is our best form of advertising,” said Nancy Terry, senior vice president of marketing at Sport & Health. “With Zuberance, we’re harnessing the power of Word of Mouth. This is a very cost-effective and measurable way to drive referral leads and sales,” she added.

“Sport & Health has done a fantastic of creating thousands of Advocates,” said Rob Fuggetta, founder and CEO of Zuberance. “Now, we’re turning these Advocates into a powerful marketing department for Sport & Health,” he stated.

A growing number of fitness companies are using Zuberance’s award-winning Brand Advocate solution to generate referral leads, sales, and positive Word of Mouth.

“Word of Mouth is the number one source of referrals and sales for clubs, studies show. Yet until now, clubs haven’t had an automated Word of Mouth marketing system that drives measurable increases in referrals and sales. Zuberance fills that gap for the fitness industry,” said Fuggetta.

Read full press release here.

Getting Advocates to write positive reviews is an effective way to leverage your enthusiastic customers. But reviews aren’t the only way to activate Advocates. In fact, getting Advocates to write reviews is just the tip of the advocacy iceberg.

Here are seven ways that companies are currently leveraging their Advocates in addition to Advocate reviews. They’re enabling Advocates to:

1. Create glowing stories. YouSendIt, a file transfer service generated 4,000 highly positive stories in three weeks. These stories increase engagement and build credibility. By attaching promotional offers to the stories, you can also generate sales and revenues.
2. Answer prospects’ questions. Advocates are eager to answer prospects’ questions. They’ll happily tell prospects about why your products and services are better. Ooma, a VoIP company, is getting a 25% sales conversion rate from its Advocate answers program. This approach is very effective for B2B’s and other companies that sells products and services where prospects ask others before buying.
3. Share promotional offers with their social networks. Parallels, which enables Apple users to run Windows software on Macs, is getting an eye-popping 21% sales conversion rate from Advocate-shared offers. This is about 10X to 20X higher than standard online sales conversions rates.
4. Boost sales for value-added services. 24 Hour Fitness is mobilizing its Advocates to build awareness and sales for revenue-generating services like personal training, group exercise classes, and more.
5. Launch new products. Jarden Home Brands is leveraging its Advocates to launch a new automatic jam maker. They’re giving Advocates the new jam maker and encouraging them to write stories and reviews about the new product. On the B2B front, NetApp mobilized its Advocates to build buzz for a new product.
6. Boost membership in customer clubs. Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill is finding that leveraging Advocates is the most effective way to get customers to join Rubio’s Beach Club. A stunning 51% of Advocates’ friends joined the club after getting invitations from Advocates.
7. Defend you from Detractors. Today, nearly all companies – including yours – can become social media roadkill. NetFlix, P&G, the Gap, Comcast, and Domino’s are just a few of the companies whose reputations and sales have suffered from social media ambushes. Your Advocates will rush to your defense and protect your cherished reputation. (Of course, this assumes you’ve created an Advocate Army.)

Advocate marketing isn’t only about reviews. It’s about creating a powerful and sustainable Advocate marketing force. This marketing force will support, promote, and defend your company, brand, and products in multiple ways and over many years.

“A review created by an Advocate is only one manifestation of advocacy,” says Lauren McCadney, head of social media at online IT retailer CDW.  “This is just the start of a relationship with Advocates, not the end,” says McCadney.

Read more Brand Advocacy success stories by downloading, “Turning Your Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force.”

-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance

Join us for this exciting upcoming webinar!

3 B2B Case Studies in 30 Minutes: How Three B2B Companies are Leveraging Customer Advocates to Drive Sales Now

REGISTER NOW!

Date: Wed, Feb 29, 2012
Time: 11:00 AM PST/ 2:00 PM EST
Twitter Hashtag: #zuberance

Word of Mouth is the “world’s most powerful sales tool,” according to Nielsen. Today, thanks to social media like blogs, social networks, Twitter and more, WOM is more influential than ever. Forward-thinking marketers are boosting positive Word of Mouth by finding and activating their enthusiastic customers (AKA “Brand Advocates.”) But how do marketers harness the power of social media and Word of Mouth in B2B environments?

Expert Speakers:

• Jen Grant, VP of Marketing, Box
• Jill Hunley, VP of Global Social Media and Online Engagement, AVG Technologies
• Kim Johnston, VP of Marketing, Parallels
• Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance

Key Takeaways:

• How to identify and energize your best customers (AKA Brand Advocates)
• How to generate referral leads and boost sales via Social Media
• How to lower customer acquisition costs and increase conversion rates and sales via your Brand Advocates
• How to measure the impact of mobilizing Brand Advocates

Please feel free to share the invitation with your social networks!

P.S. Do you have any burning questions about the best ways to energize your Brand Advocates? Enter them on the registration page and we’ll be sure to address them during the webinar.

REGISTER NOW!

Download: Word of Mouth Marketing for Restaurants

How to Harness the Power of Word of Mouth and Brand Advocates to Boost Sales and Ratings

Word of Mouth marketing has been called the most powerful form of restaurant marketing. Forward-thinking restaurant marketers are boosting positive Word of Mouth by finding and activating their enthusiastic customers (AKA “Brand Advocates.”) Take Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill: In only a few months, Rubio’s has identified 52,000+ Advocates and energized them to share 60,000 offers to their social networks, plus rate and review their local Rubio’s on Yelp. Download the whitepaper to learn how you can find and activate your Brand Advocates to recommend your restaurant, driving sales and boost ratings.

Download this white paper and learn:

• How to increase customer visits and drive sales
• How to boost online ratings and reviews on Yelp
• Ways to combat negative Word of Mouth
• Real world case study featuring Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill

Brands have been intensely focusing on racking up the “likes” on their Facebook page through various marketing tactics such as offering incentives, investing in Facebook ads, and more. But even with hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans, the road to kick ass Facebook engagement is a rather bumpy one.

Take a look at these stats working against you when it comes to Facebook marketing:

88% of Facebook users never return to a fan page once they “like” it (Brandglue.com.)

Due to EdgeRank, each time a brand posts to their Facebook page, only about 16-18% of fans actually see the post in their newsfeeds (source: comScore, Facebook.)

According to a recent Ehrenberg-Bass study, now you can add this stat: Only 1% of Facebook fans engage with brands.

So how do you overcome these obstacles and increase brand engagement? Focus not just on your fans, but on your fanatics (AKA your Brand Advocates) to share your content with their friends.

Why focus on your Brand Advocates?

• Brand Advocates are a different breed: They are 50% more likely to influence purchase decisions and 75% more likely to share great product experiences.
• By mobilizing your Advocates to share content on your behalf, you expand your reach beyond your current fan base to your Advocates’ networks.
• Brand Advocates will spread the love across channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, third party review sites, etc.), not just Facebook.
• Your customers don’t trust you anyway. 90% of consumers trust Word of Mouth; only 24% trust online ads (source: Nielsen.)

To learn more about leveraging your brand fanatics, download our whitepaper, Turning Fans and Followers into Brand Advocates.

You’re already sold on the power of Brand Advocates. You’re identifying and energizing your Advocates now to recommend your brand and products. What’s next? How can you get the greatest possible bang from your advocacy buck? How can you fully harness the power of Advocates to build your brand and business?

Watch the webinar below to learn about “Advanced Techniques for Energizing Your Brand Advocates.” (Click here to watch on Slideshare.)

10 Advanced Brand Advocacy Tips

1. Grow your Advocate Army. New customers, returning customers, and passives are three segments that brands can look to in order to identify and energize Advocates.

2. Leverage multiple touch points to identify and engage with Advocates: email, website, social channels, mobile, in-product, physical stores, customer service.

3. Use the full array of Advocate applications: reviews, stories, answers, offers.

4. Take Advantage of Advocate Apps. Various Advocacy apps can directly address marketing challenges and/or opportunities. For example, certain properties of a hotel chain are receiving poor online ratings and reviews. Using Advocate reviews, this hotel can focus their enthusiastic and highly satisfied Advocates on rating and reviewing these properties on third party review sites like TripAdvisor.

5. Energize Advocates by Segment. Not all Advocates are alike, so building a segment-driven Advocacy program is key to any brand advocacy strategy. Vary your messaging to target different Advocate segments and create distinct goals for approaching each segment.

6. Mobilize Advocates. Use Advocate applications to mobilize your Advocates around specific situations or opportunities. For example, Advocate stories can aid in brand repositioning, Advocate offers can drive lead generation, and Advocate reviews and stories can help to combat negative Word of Mouth.

7. Leverage Advocates for launches. Energize your most passionate customers pre-launch to build buzz and awareness about your new product.

8. Leverage Advocate content smartly. Advocate-generated content is digital gold. Place Advocate content on multiple pages on your website, on a dedicated tab on your Facebook page, in your paid search ads, etc.

9. Set it and forget it! Setup email marketing campaigns that ask new customers if they would recommend your product and write a review two weeks after the purchase.

10. Promote causes. Rally your Advocate Army to promote a charity and spread awareness to their social networks.

-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance

Word of Mouth recommendations are extremely influential when it comes to Healthcare. People turn to peers, patients, and others who have had similar experiences and procedures to seek information as a trustworthy source.

In this video, Social Media Specialist, Reed Smith, discusses how St. David’s HealthCare is identifying patient Advocates and connecting with them to share their St David’s story.

Click here to watch on YouTube.

Some key highlights from the St. David’s HealthCare Advocacy Program:

• 74% of patients identified as St David’s HealthCare Advocates.
• For every testimonial created, each Advocate is sharing it to their social networks twice.
• There is an average of .78 clicks through to each testimonial shared on an Advocate’s social network (Facebook, Twitter, and email.)

What’s Next?

St David’s HealthCare plans to leverage Advocate testimonial content using iframes on each individual hospital location website.

To learn more about the power of Word of Mouth, download the whitepaper, “Top 5 Reasons Why Brands Should Focus on Earned Media.”

Diane Beaudet, VP of Global Marketing Programs for Webroot, an online protection software company, discusses the power of Brand Advocates.

Some highlights from Webroot’s Advocacy Program:

• Webroot has created a brand army of 11,000 Webroot Advocates (and growing.)
• Webroot Advocates have written about 6,000 reviews.
• Over 500 positive reviews have been published to third party review sites such as Amazon, BestBuy, and CNET.
• Advocates give Webroot products an average rating of 4.5/5 stars.
• In one quarter, sales increased by 200% due to Advocate-generated reviews that were published on Amazon.

What’s next for Webroot’s Advocate Program?

Webroot plans to leverage their Advocates to drive sign-ups and participation in a new online community to be launched in 2012.

Read more about how Webroot is turning their enthusiastic customers into a powerful marketing force here.

Hubspot recently published a killer infographic on “How Word of Mouth, Customer Reviews are Changing the Marketing World.”

The infographic highlights the growing distrust of traditional advertising as consumers are turning to their friends, ratings, and reviews to gain insight on purchase decisions. Take a look at some of the key stats below.

Outbound is Out

• Only 8% of consumers prefer online ads as the best source of product information.
• 65% mute the TV, change the channel or skip ads.
• 75% of people don’t accept advertisements as the truth.

Inbound is In

• 63% of social media users feel consumer ratings are #1.
• 90% of consumers discuss specific bands casually 90 times per week.
• 90% of people trust brand recommendations from friends.
• 70% trust consumer opinions.
• Products that have received 50+ reviews create greater returns (which is 65% higher than products that have less than 5 reviews.)
• 61% of consumers use search engines to read about products before a purchase.
• 71% are more likely to purchase when referred by social media.

Success Story Stats

• American Eagle added the “Like” button to every product on their site, and Facebook shoppers spent 57% more money.
• Every Eventbrite link shared on Facebook generates $2.52 in ticket sales.
• Each Ticketmaster event post by customers on Facebook results in $5.30 in direct ticket sales.
• When Levi’s added the “Like” button, they saw a 40X increase in referral traffic.

Traditional marketing is so 90′s. Modern marketing is all about recommendations.

Read how companies in various industries are energizing their Brand Advocates to create online recommendations by downloading, “Turning Your Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force.”

-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance

The following is an excerpt from Rob Fuggetta’s forthcoming book about Brand Advocates.

One negative review can cost you 30 customers, a study by Convergys found. Using the Convergys research as the baseline, you can see how much one negative review costs a small resort hotel in Orlando, Fla.

If your average revenues per customer are higher, negative reviews cost you more. One negative review costs a high-end fitness club $72,000, as the chart below shows.

Social Media Whup-Ass

This is a conservative estimate of the amount of money you can lose from negative reviews. It only focuses on lost sales. It doesn’t take into consideration the lasting financial impact of negative reviews on your company or brand’s reputation.

Also, it doesn’t take into consideration other ways Detractors spread negative Word of Mouth, like email, social channels, and offline.

In the old days, PR people would tell their clients who wanted to battle newspaper editors, “Don’t pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”

Today that man is the social consumer, and he’s got a barrel of social media whup-ass for you.

Read more excerpts from Rob’s forthcoming book here.

-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance