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TheADVOCACY

MARKETExplained

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By now, you’ve probably heard some buzz about advocacy. Gartner talks about “brand advocacy”, Sirius Decisions talks about “customer advocacy”, and some people say WOMM (word-of-mouth marketing) is synonymous with advocacy. It’s all a bit confusing. So here’s a breakdown of the Advocacy Market and what you should care about.

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Advocacy is when a brand empowers an advocate (an advocate can be a customer, employee or partner) who has the power to influence those in his/her personal or professional networks and will take an action in support of your company if asked to do so.

“Wait!” you exclaim “What about fans?” Fans are awesome and they are absolutely advocates and shout from the rooftops about how fabulous you are without being asked. If you have a great product and treat your customers well, then hopefully you’ve got some awesome fans. But let’s be clear, Advocacy Marketing is about attracting new customers. Loyalty Marketing is about keeping your existing customers happy.

d. Advocacy/advəkəsē/noun

When an advocate (customer, employee or partner) takes an action to influence individuals in their personal or professional networks on behalf of a brand.

BUT, WHAT IS ADVOCACY?

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BRANDAWARENESSVSDEMANDGENERATION

So how do we make sense of the Advocacy Market? First off, let’s consider that some advocacy solutions are geared toward awareness, while others are focused on demand generation. Some are trying to do both, but with limited success as there are very different buyers (which will be addressed later). The other differentiation is the size of company that the technology is geared toward. Large enterprises have very different technology needs to address advocacy at scale.

Brand Awareness

Enterprise

SMB

DemandGeneration

THE 4GROUPS OF ADVOCACYTECHNOLOGY

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Looking at the Advocacy market this way gives us 4 different technology groups to discuss:

• Advocacy as a channel for demand generation and sales enablement

• Advocacy as a campaign for demand generation

• Advocacy as a campaign for awareness

• Advocacy as a channel for awareness or sales enablement

Advocacy as a channel for

awareness or sales enablement

Advocacy as a campaign for demand generation

Brand Awareness

Enterprise

SMB

DemandGeneration

Advocacy as a campaign for awareness

Advocacy as a channel for demand generation and sales enablement

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In the top group, technology is focused on providing demand generation solutions that tie into sales enablement for large enterprises. The main source of demand generation is referrals, but unlike advocacy solutions for SMB, these solutions are really platforms that turn personal, one-to-one referrals into a permanent channel for customer acquisition and lead generation. This channel can contain multiple programs sourcing customers, partners or even employees for referrals. They also integrate tightly with sales via automation at every step of the program.

There is a lot of innovation happening in this space as well as new applications. Some companies are using referral automation as a light-touch system for their partner network. Others are applying it to cross sell initiatives. Companies are realizing the ROI of advocacy and are looking to leverage it in many ways to grow revenue and shorten sales cycles.

ADVOCACYAS A CHANNELFORDEMANDGENERATIONANDSALESENABLEMENT

Advocacy as a channel for

awareness or sales enablement

Advocacy as a campaign for demand generation

Brand Awareness

Enterprise

SMB

DemandGeneration

Advocacy as a campaign for awareness

Advocacy as a channel for demand generation and sales enablement

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In the right group, technology is focused on providing demand generation for small to mid-sized companies. The primary way this is done is via referrals. Typically these solutions don’t have a lot of features or integration, but can collect referral entries. These solutions are great for running a referral program as a limited offer campaign, but are severely limiting if you want to run as a permanent channel or to scale it.

Many of these solutions also use pixel tracking for attribution which means only 80% of referrals can be attributed properly to the advocate. This is usually fine for a small group of advocates where you can manage manually, making it a great, low-cost option for small companies.

ADVOCACYAS A CAMPAIGNFORDEMANDGENERATION

Advocacy as a channel for

awareness or sales enablement

Advocacy as a campaign for demand generation

Brand Awareness

Enterprise

SMB

DemandGeneration

Advocacy as a campaign for awareness

Advocacy as a channel for demand generation and sales enablement

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In the bottom group, technology is focused on providing brand awareness for small to mid-sized companies. Smaller organizations have no need for the customer reference and evidence collection platforms that large enterprises have, but at the same time, they are tired of managing advocacy via spreadsheet and begging customers for participation. There are some innovative start-ups in this space that are looking to gameify advocacy.

The solutions don’t yet satisfy the needs of large companies, but the successful ones will likely grow their offering in time. If you are small or large, you can experiment with new technology here to see what works for your needs.

ADVOCACYAS A CAMPAIGNFORAWARENESS

Advocacy as a channel for

awareness or sales enablement

Advocacy as a campaign for demand generation

Brand Awareness

Enterprise

SMB

DemandGeneration

Advocacy as a campaign for awareness

Advocacy as a channel for demand generation and sales enablement

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In the left group, technology is focused on providing brand awareness or sales enablement for large enterprises. This includes some “older” platforms like reference management as well as some newer ones like social amplification that automates the promotion of your brand in social media via the individual social streams of your employees or customers. Usually, these are things companies of all sizes are doing, but with a large company it requires a platform to manage.

There is a wide range of variance between systems that just collect data that you can use for awareness or sales enablement to those that automate the syndication of your message. The one similarity in this group is that it requires scale for the platforms to provide a positive ROI.

ADVOCACYAS ACHANNELFORAWARENESSORSALESENABLEMENT

Advocacy as a channel for

awareness or sales enablement

Advocacy as a campaign for demand generation

Brand Awareness

Enterprise

SMB

DemandGeneration

Advocacy as a campaign for awareness

Advocacy as a channel for demand generation and sales enablement

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As you’ve likely already guessed, there are very different buyers for brand awareness versus demand generation with few exceptions. On the brand awareness side, you’ve got your typical players like Brand and Communications and Social Media looking to amplify the brand message. Your Product Marketers, Sales Operations and Customer Marketers are traditionally involved in the reference and evidence collection solutions.

On the demand generation side, there are specific titles popping up in both B2B and B2C for referral marketing and those with demand generation as a part of their roles are a natural fit. Partner marketers are also getting in on the action by running referral platforms as light-touch partner management.

WHO ISBUYINGADVOCACY?

BUYERS OF AWARENESS ADVOCACY

Brand and CommunicationsCustomer MarketingProduct MarketingSales Operations

Social Media Marketing

BUYERS OF DEMAND GEN

ADVOCACY

Customer MarketingDemand Generation Marketing

Partner MarketingReferral MarketingSales Operations

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“Our recent 2015 Study on Customer Advocacy and Engagement revealed that 53 percent of b-to-b companies are planning to invest in technology to support customer advocacy efforts in the next 12 months. This is a critical area where technology helps companies get the scale they need to extend the essential contribution of their customer advocates in the market.”

- Megan Heuer, VP & Group Director

Sales Ops and Customer Marketing are also occasionally buyers on the demand gen side. Sales Ops gets involved when the drive to purchase is initiated by sales versus marketing. Customer Marketing involvement is a new trend. As those in Customer Marketing roles are trying to add more strategic value to the organization, they are looking to options like referral platforms to help them impact cross sell and up sell or to simply drive new business into the pipe. The crossover role of Customer Marketing to balance both brand awareness and demand generation objectives will be an interesting trend to watch!

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After reading this, you’ve hopefully got a pretty good idea about whether or not you fit into the Awareness or Demand Generation side of Advocacy. From there, you need to clearly define what problem(s) you are trying to solve. As a starting point, here are some key challenges that would likely drive you to buy an advocacy solution. Use this checklist to identify your issues.

HOWYOU CANGETSTARTEDWITHADVOCACY

AWARENESS CHALLENGES SOLVED

BY ADVOCACY SOLUTIONS

Sales is burning out top customer advocates with reference asks.

Managing our reference base via spreadsheet is no longer working.

Customers aren’t reviewing us on third party review sites.

It is a huge manual effort to get customers to provide content.

Our customers love us, but they don’t talk about us in social media.

We try to get our employees to share our brand message in social, but few do.

It is hard to get our advocates to continue taking action versus being a one-time advocate.

Customers buy and don’t think about us until we call them for renewal.

DEMAND GEN CHALLENGES SOLVED

BY ADVOCACY SOLUTIONS

Cost of lead generation is increasing while lead quality is decreasing.

Sales continues to complain that marketing is not providing tangible value.

Getting pressure to demonstrate the ROI of marketing programs.

Need to deliver sales results for both cross sell and up sell.

Customers buy and don’t think about us until we call them for renewal.

It’s difficult to consistently create ways to keep customers interacting with us.

There is little information on marketing leads for sales to know if they are worth contacting.

Reps are not consistently following through on leads.

Only good reps are asking for referrals.

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Now that you’ve got your issues identified, prioritize them into your top challenges. There are lots of features floating around in these solutions, but not all will be useful to you. When you start talking to vendors, specifically ask them how they solve your key issues.

A comprehensive list of vendors in the Advocacy space does not yet exist. Consider speaking with an analyst who covers Advocacy and tell them your key challenges. They can help match up a shortlist of vendors to look into. (Or just use good old Google!)

TOP CHALLENGES

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PRIORITIZEYOURADVOCACYCHALLENGES

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Amplifinity’s referral amplification software turns customer, employee and partner advocacy into revenue. Our platform provides complete tracking and management of referrals with 100% accuracy so no referral is missed. Enterprises like ADP and DIRECTV trust Amplifinity to enable high-quality acquisition while providing an engaging, fully-branded experience for their advocates.

LEARNHOW AMPLIFINITYHARNESSESADVOCACYAS ACHANNELFORDEMANDGENERATION

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