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 business content collaboration 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

[UPDATED: VIEW WEBINAR RECORDING HERE]

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

“Most would probably agree that someone sharing a brand’s content with their friends is a high indicator of brand ambassadorship” says Doug Schumacher in a recent post from iMedia. The post highlighted last week’s top ten brands with the highest engagement rates on their Facebook Pages. Disney came in first place at .27% with an image of a smiling Chesire Cat.

This may be impressive in terms of Facebook Pages (especially when considering the implications of EdgeRank), but if you want to see some jaw-dropping, make-you-wanna-get up-and-dance sharing percentages, engage your Brand Advocates.

On average, across all our customers, about 15% to 20% of Brand Advocates share content they create or is provided to them by brands. For example, 23% of CDW Advocates shared reviews they created.

This shows yet again that Brand Advocates are, by far, a company’s most engaged customers.

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

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.

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

Brand Advocates – consumers and business buyers who frequently recommend brands and products without being paid – are highly trusted and influential. Their recommendations drive trillions of dollars of purchase decisions for everything from cars to computers, fish tacos to fitness memberships, software to smart phones. Now, a new study sponsored by Zuberance has revealed three surprising findings about Brand Advocates.

This study provides further evidence about the power and influence of Brand Advocates.The message in the data is clear for B2C and B2B marketers: find and activate your Advocates now to generate more recommendations, referrals, and revenues.

Download the full report here.

Don’t miss our March 21 webinar: Founder/CEO of Zuberance, Rob Fuggetta, will present the findings from “Three Surprising Facts About Brand Advocates” and share the implications for marketers. Click here to register.

(Click here to view the Infographic in your browser.)

AlwaysOn, the leading business media brand network in the Global Silicon Valley, announced this year’s OnMedia 100 Top Private Companies- and Zuberance was awarded in the “B2B: Technology Enablers” category!

Inclusion in the OnMedia 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. Zuberance was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Other companies recognized in this year’s OnMedia 100 include Pinterest, Shazam, Marketo, and Spiceworks.

This is the second year in a row that we’ve received recognition from AlwaysOn. Thanks to all who made it possible!

Cheers to the power of brand advocacy!

Read the full press release here.

50% of B2B customers are highly likely to recommend products/services to their networks.

30% of B2B Advocates recommend the first time they are given the opportunity.

70% of B2B Advocates’ contacts respond to recommendations (i.e. by reading recommendations, considering purchasing the product, or clicking through to purchase.)

Source: Zuberance customer advocacy data

Learn “How Box, Parallels, and AVG Technologies are Leveraging Customer Advocates to Drive Sales Now” during our webinar on February 29, 2012 at 11:00 AM PST/ 2:00 PM EST. Register here.

4 out of 5 consumers don’t buy after reading a negative review online. (source: Cone Online Influence Trend Tracker.)

That means just one Negative Nancy or Sour Sally can prevent prospects from purchasing your products.

Read more about the study here.

Find out how much negative reviews are costing your business now and what you can do to fight back!

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.