There are happy customers, and then there are customer advocates. These customers are so happy with your company they will actively promote your brand, product, or service, singing its praises to their friends, family, and peers.
At a time when it seems like everyone is trying to sell you something, customer advocacy moves the needle with genuine enthusiasm. The trick is learning how to harness it in a way that helps your business and makes those happy customers even more committed to your brand.
Learn more about customer advocacy and how to develop a successful customer advocacy program for your business.
What is customer advocacy?
Customer advocacy is when customers voluntarily act as brand champions on behalf of your business. Word-of-mouth referrals, positive reviews, and user-generated content (UGC) on social media platforms are all byproducts of an engaged, loyal customer base. Because customer advocacy often is spontaneous and organic, it isn’t always easy to track or manage. There are, however, a few ways to incorporate opportunities for customer advocacy into your marketing and business strategy that can make it more predictable.
It’s important to note a customer advocacy program is different from an affiliate program, which provides a financial incentive to influencers and others who refer or recommend your business to their online followers.
Why is customer advocacy important?
The connection between a brand and its customers can be a mutually beneficial relationship, one that offers rewards for customers and sales for brands. Here’s how customer advocates can benefit your business:
Builds brand awareness and brand loyalty
Fostering customer advocacy creates a virtuous cycle. The work you do to win over customers leads to happy customers who make referrals, leading to more happy customers, and so on. As such, brand awareness and brand loyalty both result from and encourage customer advocacy.
Satisfied customers who tell their friends and family about your company or post about it on social media help build brand awareness; those new customers brought in through a referral are much more likely to become loyal customers themselves.
Generates demand
Customer advocacy can play a powerful part in a demand generation, a marketing strategy aimed at building brand awareness and affinity with new audiences. By complementing targeted marketing campaigns with positive reviews, engaging with posts on social media, and delivering new customers through referrals, customer advocates help validate your brand’s best features, and build trust for customers who might be on the fence about making a purchase.
Improves customer experience
Fostering relationships with your most engaged customers can yield valuable insights about your product, shopping experience, customer service, and more. Interviews with top or long-standing customers makes them feel even more connected to your business, while regular surveys and personalized outreach improve customer satisfaction.
How to develop a customer advocacy program
- Identify potential customer advocates
- Launch customer-centric initiatives
- Create opportunities for engagement
- Put customer input into action
- Embrace personalization
- Start a loyalty program
A customer advocacy program is a strategy centered on identifying and engaging your most loyal customers. Here’s what to consider as you build out your customer advocacy efforts:
1. Identify potential customer advocates
Customer advocates might surface naturally, but you can also nurture them by examining customer data to find your most loyal customers and repeat visitors, or noting engagement with feedback surveys and email marketing. If someone always opens your emailed newsletters, for example, or signs up for a subscription box after making a few purchases, they may have the makings of an advocate.
Going through this data as a team can infuse customer advocacy into the mindset of your entire organization. “It sounds crazy, especially at our size, but we’re still looking at every single customer exit survey that comes through,” Crystal Landsem, CEO of online fashion retailer Lulus, told Shopify on a Shopify Masters podcast. “The entire leadership team looks at it. It’s not aggregated. It’s not streamlined. It’s just raw customer feedback, every day. There’s something about having to go through it manually that connects your employees to your customer.”
2. Launch customer-centric initiatives
Lulus’ focus on customers led it to make a significant change that on the surface seemed at odds with its initial online mission. In 2023, it opened a brick-and-mortar bridal boutique where shoppers could directly interact with the brand and its products. “It’s a rational decision to put the product in her hands, let her engage with it, [and] get some user-generated content while we’re at it,” Crystal says.
Lulus’s turn to in-person shopping experiences solidified its connection with customers, not only through the strength of its product, but by proving the company was listening.
3. Create opportunities for engagement
Your brand has many opportunities for engagement with your customers along the entire customer journey. You can connect with them via social media posts, physical advertisements, pop-up messages and newsletter prompts, product recommendations, missives from the site blog, and post-purchase confirmation emails.
How and when you talk to your customers affects the tenor of the relationship you begin to build. Wherever possible, seek to transform an anonymous transaction into a thoughtful experience. Create brand guidelines detailing how your brand should show up in all of these instances and the unique tone you want to strike with customers. Ask for feedback whenever possible as well, and make it easy for customers to share via submission forms, direct messages, or email responses.
4. Put customer input into action
Solicit and incorporate customer feedback into a customer advocacy strategy, using community forums, social media conversations, or emails dedicated to super users or top purchasers.
For Nadya Okamoto, cofounder of the period-care brand August, community feedback was critical for achieving a thoughtful design and customer experience around menstruation products. “Everything you’re doing is in response to hearing what those needs are,“ Nadya says on a Shopify Masters podcast. “The goal is service. When I look at building a consumer brand, it’s that same mentality: Who are we serving? Who’s the end user? What do they need? What are they not currently getting? And how can we do it in a way that is unique and different?”
Once you start seeing themes in your customers’ feedback, create workflows that help you put those notes into action. Workflow automation tools can help you direct traffic, doling out big projects to the appropriate teams and directing minor complaints to the customer service team.
5. Embrace personalization
Nadya says August offers “highly customizable period care,” so shoppers can pick and choose exactly what they need in each order—like an assortment of tampons and pads in different sizes, rather than the single-size boxes typically found in pharmacies and stores.
Studies have shown that personalizing the shopping experience increases just about every metric you can imagine, from cart size to overall revenue and brand engagement. For customers, personalization can indicate that the brand is actively listening to their wants and needs, which in turn helps increase customer satisfaction and build trust. Trust is a cornerstone of a customer advocacy strategy.
6. Start a loyalty program
Customer loyalty programs both reward and encourage customers who routinely engage with your brand, incentivizing repeat purchases with points or discounts, and providing early access to new products or members-only experiences. Loyalty programs can also help showcase your brand’s mission and personality.
Customer advocacy FAQ
What is good customer advocacy?
Good customer advocacy programs attract potential buyers who hear good things from friends, family, and acquaintances about your business. These personal references and recommendations increase the odds that you will gain a new customer and get a chance to turn them into brand loyalists as well.
What is the role of a customer advocate?
Customer advocates are loyal consumers of your products or services, who recommend and promote your brand to others in their network. Customer advocates can boost brand trust and give confidence to potential buyers, thus increasing sales. Their input can also provide an internal gut-check on the customer journey, product quality, and overall shopping experience. Customer advocates are invested in the success of their preferred brand, and are willing and enthusiastic about contributing.
What does a customer advocate do?
A customer advocate is a satisfied customer who speaks positively about your brand to others. Product recommendations, testimonials, positive posts on social media channels, and word-of-mouth referrals are all forms of customer advocacy.
