I recently start looking for some educational software for my younger son but was not sure, which one to pick. As a responsible dad, I spent looking around web but one day I found review written by my friend in Yahoo! Blog, I noticed her recommendation as an advocate and being I trust her, so end-up ordering software 2 CD’s instead of one. Isn’t this is the way we make most of the purchasing decision?
We all know power of word of mouth but it takes new meaning when you mix it with social nature.Yahoo and comScore have been exploring the connection between social media and purchase behavior. In a joint study, “Engaging Advocates Through Search and Social Media,” Yahoo and comScore discovered brand advocates have tremendous influencing power and are heavy online users. Additional key findings included the following.
Who Are Brand Advocates?
Brand advocates are adventurous opinion leaders who are socially well connected (50 percent versus 12 percent of non-advocates), express their opinions and viewpoints (65 percent versus 33 percent), and continually discover new content online. They like to be heard in online or offline social network medium because of their passion and attachment with brand or product.
Advocates Talk about Brands Online
The study revealed that post-purchase, approximately half of all Brand Advocates speak to their friends, family and even strangers about their purchases through a variety of online channels. Sixty percent of Brand Advocates believe that good brands are worth talking about versus 26 percent of non-advocates. Brand Advocates spend their time promoting a brand far more often than negating it, with approximately 90 percent writing something positive about a purchase they made.
Now that we understand the power of advocates, so question is how does this impact marketers planning? To reach advocates, marketers must think beyond their traditional or conventional targeting to focus on the attributes and behaviors that motivate advocates:
* First to know. Advocates have a reputation of being the first to know about a specific category/topic. They are basically self- and peer-appointed specialists. For marketers, this means treating advocates differently by providing them with insider information, offers, having them participate product trials, or taking their help in evangelizing product.
* Ability to share. Once advocates know about something, it’s their unofficial job to disseminate this information. Earlier, this dissemination was limited to phone and mealtime discussions. These were the people you would call when you were in market for an item. Today, reviews, blogs and other content publishing methods have become the form of dissemination. Marketers need to empower advocates with tools, so that information can be reached fast within their social networking. I trusted my friend by reading her review on educational software, right?
Key Implications
Overall, the study found Brand Advocates are avid researchers that consider more brands, making them more open to dialogue with marketers. Post-purchase, they have higher levels of brand commitment, are more likely to recommend brands, and tend to talk about positive experiences. Additionally, Brand Advocates are opinion leaders that influence other people’s purchase decisions, telling at least twice as many people about their purchases than non-advocates, and more than twice as likely to persuade others to buy compared with non-advocates. Marketers should engage and influence Brand Advocates through search, social media and online communication tools if they wish to capture this extremely valuable audience and amplify the influence.
Comments on this entry are closed.