You're scrolling through Instagram when you come across a post from an acquaintance who can’t stop raving about her new favorite coat. Each time she wears it, she highlights another feature she loves: the classic style, the roomy pockets, and its ability to keep her warm without feeling bulky. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and when you’re in the market for outerwear, you decide to get the same one.
That’s advocacy marketing in action. With this approach, brands encourage customers to recommend products or services on their behalf. While you can build brand advocates by providing a phenomenal customer experience and stellar products, there are also proactive ways to tap into the power of advocacy marketing.
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What is advocacy marketing?
Advocacy marketing is a strategy to convert loyal customers into brand advocates who authentically promote your products through reviews, recommendations, and referrals. Advocacy marketing differs from influencer marketing partnerships or paid endorsements. It relies on organic, unpaid promotion from satisfied customers who share their experiences voluntarily or with minor incentives.
Common forms of advocacy marketing include:
- Customer reviews
- Unpaid social media mentions
- User-generated content
- Referrals through reward programs
- Product success stories
- Product unboxing photos and videos
- Community forum discussions
Strategies for advocacy marketing
- Create a customer referral program
- Craft post-purchase review request emails
- Design Instagram-worthy unboxing experience
- Encourage and amplify customer-created content
- Transform customer testimonials into marketing assets
- Build an engaged product community
To build a successful advocacy marketing campaign, select strategies that feel true to your brand. Some businesses might focus on collecting and amplifying customer testimonials, while others build thriving online or IRL communities. However, the most effective advocacy marketing strategy often combines multiple approaches to develop a full-fledged program. Consider these strategies:
Create a customer referral program
While word-of-mouth recommendations happen naturally, a structured referral program propels satisfied customers to share your brand with friends and family. The most effective referral programs offer compelling incentives for both parties—perhaps store credit for the referrer and a welcome discount for the new customer, creating a win-win scenario encouraging participation.
Make your referral process simple: It should take a few clicks and integrate naturally into your post-purchase journey. Track those who consistently refer new customers and demonstrate brand loyalty, and consider developing deeper partnerships with these organic advocates.
Craft post-purchase review request emails
Potential customers scrutinize reviews to understand a product before making a purchase decision. They want to know if a sweater shrinks after washing, if those sneakers are true to size, or whether that vitamin C serum effectively fades dark spots. Post-purchase emails are an opportunity to gather meaningful reviews you can use to attract new shoppers.
Send your request post-delivery, giving the customer enough time with the product. Offer clear guidelines for helpful reviews, and consider adding prompts about specific features to generate more detailed responses.
The post-purchase review email from Matteo’s Coffee Syrups has a warm, branded design and clear call to action. By displaying individual review buttons for each purchased product, it guides customers to leave specific feedback for every item.
Design Instagram-worthy unboxing experiences
With the rise of social media, everyday customers have become content creators—sharing snippets of their lives online. As a result, package unboxing has evolved from a private moment to a shared experience across platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Creating a memorable unboxing moment encourages spontaneous sharing that turns buyers into customer advocates.
Consider incorporating custom tissue paper in signature colors, branded stickers, appealing packaging inserts, and personalized thank you notes to make every package photo-worthy.
Luxury chocolatier Compartés shows what attention to detail looks like, with packaging so striking it earned a spot in the Smithsonian Design Museum. Rather than following traditional chocolate packaging norms, founder Jonathan Grahm reimagined each bar as a piece of fashion-inspired art, while maintaining the handcrafted quality. This has led to unboxing videos and taste tests across social media channels, like this:
Encourage and amplify customer-created content
User-generated content influences purchase decisions by showing products in real-world contexts, rather than staged on a pristine studio background. Unlike paid influencer posts, the content from real customers show people’s genuine experiences with your products.
Consider multiple channels for gathering customer content:
- Highlight customer stories on your blog.
- Create dedicated spaces for product tutorials.
- Encourage review photos on your website.
- Launch social media hashtag campaigns.
By featuring customer-generated content across your marketing channels—from email newsletters to product pages to social feeds—you make customersfeel valued, and your brand gains authentic social proof.
Fluff, an Australian beauty brand known for its refillable makeup products and quarterly drops, focuses its marketing strategy on authentic customer content rather than paid influencer posts. Through its editorial platform Fluff Issues, customers share unfiltered stories about beauty and identity.
“Our [posts] are all about people’s concerns or feelings toward the beauty industry or about themselves and their identity,” says founder Erika Geraerts on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “We hardly edit these pieces; they’re just posted there for people to view.”
Transform customer testimonials into marketing assets
Your marketing team needs fresh content for weekly newsletters, landing pages, and social media campaigns. Often, your customers’ words resonate more powerfully than polished marketing copy.
Transform customer testimonials into compelling graphics and weave them into product descriptions or email sequences to build trust at key decision points. Select testimonials that address common concerns, highlight unique product benefits, and demonstrate customer satisfaction.
You can see this form of advocacy marketing at play in a Glossier post about its You Doux eau de parfum. The candid customer review about how the fragrance “smells like my ex” is a relatable piece of user-generated content turned into a selling point. The post caption, “Reclaiming good smells from our exes, one bottle of Doux at a time,” shows how real customer stories can make for memorable marketing.
Build an engaged product community
Vibrant customer communities on platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Facebook groups create spaces where curious prospects can gather and learn from existing customers. This approach is particularly effective for brands offering high-ticket items or products with learning curves. Potential buyers can observe real discussions about product use and results before buying.
When building a community, focus on facilitating genuine conversations rather than promoting products. Your role is to support troubleshooting, answer questions, and encourage member-to-member interactions that build long-term engagement.
Keychron, a keyboard manufacturer, has an active Discord community in the computer peripherals space. Its 32,000-member community is a technical support hub. It also serves as a passionate space where users share custom builds, mechanical switch preferences, and keycap modifications—creating a vibrant ecosystem around its products.
Advocacy marketing FAQ
What is an example of advocacy advertising?
Glossier transforms candid customer reviews into engaging social media content where real users share genuine experiences in their own words.
Why is advocacy marketing important?
Advocacy marketing is important because people trust recommendations from real users more than traditional marketing messages. Satisfied customers who share their genuine product experiences can become a powerful marketing channel to persuade others about the benefits of your product or service.
How do you build advocacy in marketing?
To build natural avenues for advocacy marketing, design thoughtful customer touchpoints throughout the buying journey—from post-purchase emails to community forums—that make sharing feedback and experiences feel natural and rewarding.
What is the most effective way to attract advocates for your business?
Focus on building genuine customer relationships by giving your buyers a platform to share their voices through user-generated content, community spaces, or review programs.
