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.

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.

Rob Fuggetta, founder & CEO of Zuberance, will be the guest speaker at the upcoming Northern California chapter meeting of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG.)

Date: Thurs, Jan 19, 2012

Time: 6:30pm

Location: Parc 55 Wyndham Hotel, San Francisco

REGISTER NOW

Customer advocacy is the #1 priority for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) worldwide, according to a recent IBM study. Fuggetta’s presentation, which is entitled “Turning Advocates into a Powerful Marketing Force,” will feature real-world case studies about how companies like Intuit, CDW, Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill and many others are leveraging their most enthusiastic customers to spread positive Word of Mouth and drive sales.

About the Speaker

Rob Fuggetta is the leading expert on brand advocacy and has more than 20 years of marketing leadership experience.  He is a former partner at Regis McKenna, the legendary Silicon Valley technology marketing and communications firm, where he co-led the global Apple account.  He later became the CMO at Genuity, a Verizon spin-out which went public in June 2000.  Fuggetta is the author of “Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force” to be published by John Wiley & Sons in 2012.

The Marketing Power of Brand Advocates

A rock star collection of mind-blowing stats about your most enthusiastic customers (AKA Brand Advocates.)

Use Your Advocates’ Reviews as Marketing Copy

CDW’s Senior Segment Marketing Manager, Lauren McCadney, on Advocate reviews: You can hire the best copywriter, but they’ll never beat an Advocate when it comes to authenticity. (Clip taken at the Chicago Brand Advocacy Series.)

How JetBlue Built Long Lasting Relationships on Their 10^th Birthday

If you want to make an impact on someone, and create Brand Advocates, do something unexpected and delightful.  For example, what if you were to give away gifts on your birthday? 

That’s exactly what JetBlue did on its 10th anniversary, as Morgan Johnston, Corporate Communication Manager, explains in this clip taken at the New York Brand Advocacy Series.

How Do You Energize Brand Advocates?

At the New York Brand Advocacy Series, attendees and panelists were asked, “How do you energize Word of Mouth?” Here are their answers.

The Adventures of Brand Advocate Man

It’s a bird..it’s a plane..no, it’s BRAND ADVOCATE MAN! Watch the story of how Brand Advocate Man helped a struggling marketer energize her Advocates and become a social marketing Superhero!

-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance

The recording below is from our recent webinar, “3 Case Studies in 30 Minutes: How Three Travel and Hospitality Companies are Increasing Sales and Ratings by Leveraging Their Brand Advocates” featuring social marketing success stories from Rubio’s, Tryp by Wyndham, and Qatar Airways. The speaker was Founder/CEO of Zuberance, Rob Fuggetta (@robfuggetta).

Key Takeaways:

• Brand Advocate definition: Highly-satisfied customers and others who pro-actively recommend brands or products without being paid.
• Brand Advocates are a different breed- They are 2X more active content creators and 4X more likely to share great product experiences.
• On average, 50% of a company’s customers are Brand Advocates.
• Identify your brand’s Advocates by asking The Ultimate Question: On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our brand or products to your friends? (9′s and 10′s are Advocates.)
• Advocate marketing has a sales conversion rate of 5% or higher compared to traditional marketing at less than 1%.
• Rubio’s Advocates have created over 3,800 Yelp reviews and shared 60,000 offers with their social networks.
• 41% of Tryp’s Advocates recommended the hotel by creating reviews. The average start rating was 4.7 stars out of 5.
• 43% of Qatar Airway’s Advocates actively recommend the airline. Qatar Airways is seeing an 80% click-through rate on Advocate stories that were shared with their social networks.

-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance

The recording below is from our recent webinar, “3 Case Studies in 30 Minutes: How Three Health and Fitness Companies are Increasing Sales and Positive Word of Mouth by Leveraging Their Brand Advocates” featuring social marketing success stories from 24 Hour Fitness, Club One, and Anytime Fitness. The speaker was Founder/CEO of Zuberance, Rob Fuggetta (@robfuggetta).

Key Takeaways:

• Brand Advocate definition: Highly-satisfied customers and others who pro-actively recommend brands or products without being paid.
• Brand Advocates are a different breed- They are 2X more active content creators and 4X more likely to share great product experiences.
• On average, 50% of a company’s customers are Brand Advocates.
• Identify your brand’s Advocates by asking The Ultimate Question: On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our brand or products to your friends? (9′s and 10′s are Advocates.)
• Advocate marketing campaigns yield an 86% click-through rate vs. 5% for traditional marketing.
• Club One has identified 8,800 Advocates who have shared over 16,000 Club One offers with their social networks.
• Anytime Fitness has energized their brand army to share over 1,000 offers driving trials and memberships.
• 24 Hour Fitness has mobilized their 90,000 Advocates to publish over 2,600 reviews to Yelp.

To learn more about how Fitness companies are turning their Brand Advocates into a marketing force, download our whitepaper, “Club One Gets 9X ROI by Energizing Brand Advocates.”

-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance

3 Case Studies in 30 Minutes: How Three Hotels are Increasing Sales and Ratings by Leveraging Their Brand Advocates

Date: Thursday, December 15, 2011

Time: 11:00 AM PST/2:00 PM EST

Join the conversation on Twitter: #zuberance

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

Hotels and resorts spend billions on marketing and sales promotions trying to lure travelers to their properties and keep them coming back through loyalty reward programs. However, an influential and powerful segment that is often overlooked is Brand Advocates. The value of energizing Brand Advocates goes beyond loyalty. Brand Advocates are highly satisfied customers that pro-actively recommend your properties to their social networks online and offline. Mobilizing Brand Advocates turns your enthusiastic guests into a cost-effective marketing force, boosting ratings and reviews and driving sales.

Register now to attend this free webinar featuring real-world success stories from:

• Motel 6
• Tryp by Wyndham
• Atlantis

Participants will learn how to:

• Identify and energize your best customers (AKA Brand Advocates)
• Boost ratings and increase positive reviews on TripAdvisor and other review sites
• Generate leads and drive sales via social media
• Measure the impact of mobilizing Brand Advocates

All participants will receive a free whitepaper, “How Hotels Can Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales.”

Expert Speaker: Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance (@robfuggetta)

Rob Fuggetta, the founder and CEO of Zuberance, has more than 20 years of experience in Word of Mouth marketing, His WOM strategies have created marketing success for Apple, Intuit, Norton, and many others. Fuggetta is a frequent speaker and author of an upcoming book, “Energize! How to Turn Social Media & Word of Mouth into Sales by Energizing Brand Advocates.”

REGISTER NOW

5 Case Studies in 30 Minutes: How Five Software Companies are Increasing Sales and positive Word of Mouth by Mobilizing their Brand Advocates

Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Time: 11:00 AM PST/2:00 PM EST

Join the conversation on Twitter: #zuberance

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

Word of Mouth is the “world’s most powerful sales tool,” according to Nielsen. In fact, many software companies get more than half their business from Word of Mouth. In today’s social-media-connected world, the voice of your customers on blogs, social networks, and third party review sites such as Amazon is more influential than ever. But how do software marketers harness the power of social media and Word of Mouth to drive sales and positive reviews?

Register now to attend this free webinar featuring real-world success stories from:

• Intuit
• Microsoft
• Webroot
• NetApp
• Corel

Participants will learn how to:

• Identify and energize your best customers (AKA Brand Advocates)
• Boost ratings and increase positive reviews on Amazon and other review sites
• Generate leads and drive sales via social media
• Measure the impact of mobilizing Brand Advocates

All participants will receive a free whitepaper, “The ROI of Energizing Brand Advocates.”

Expert Speaker: Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance (@robfuggetta)

Rob Fuggetta, the founder and CEO of Zuberance, has more than 20 years of experience in Word of Mouth marketing, His WOM strategies have created marketing success for Apple, Intuit, Norton, and many others. Fuggetta is a frequent speaker and author of an upcoming book, “Energize! How to Turn Social Media & Word of Mouth into Sales by Energizing Brand Advocates.”

REGISTER NOW