5 Automation Tools to Promote and Reward Brand Advocacy

Have you ever been so satisfied with the service you received that you left a glowing review on the company website? So pleased with a product that you shared a link to it on your social media? Loved working someplace so much that you recommend people apply?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are a brand advocate. It’s that simple – whenever you share positive thoughts and feelings about a service, product, or job with the people within your sphere of influence, you engage in brand advocacy. 

In this blog, we’ll explain why you as a business leader should harness the power of brand advocacy, give examples of companies that built successful advocacy reward programs, and share top automation tools to help you promote and reward brand advocacy yourself. 

3 Primary Aspects of Brand Advocacy

On the surface, brand advocate messaging might seem shallow and based on one-off experiences. But look deeper and you’ll see that people become brand advocates after a solid foundation has been built on trust, communication, and shared values. 

1. Trust

Brand trust extends beyond transactional loyalty – consumers need to believe in the brand’s mission and values. Brands can cultivate trust with consistent, honest, and ethical interactions with their audience.

2. Communication

Open communication that involves sharing relevant and helpful information with consumers and actively listening to feedback from advocates is key. This requires consistent messaging across all channels to maintain engagement and strengthen relationships with advocates.

3. Shared Values

When you and your advocates share common values, you create a deep emotional connection, enhancing loyalty and leading to authentic brand promotion. 

Types of Brand Advocacy

Brand advocacy is not new, nor does it encompass only online behaviors. It can take many forms, including:

Positive Word-of-Mouth

Whenever you share customer experiences or stories, you engage in word-of-mouth marketing. This includes our original examples of reviews and product recommendations, as well as ratings. (For a deeper dive into this marketing strategy, check out this article from Sprout Social.) This form of advocacy is effective because people are prone to trust recommendations from their network.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) takes word-of-mouth marketing to another level. Advocates take their positive experiences and stories with your brand and create content (think social media posts, videos, blogs, etc.) about them.

Engagement in Brand Activities

Ideally, you have multiple touchpoints to meet customers and prospects where they are on their journey. Brand advocates are more likely to engage in campaigns, events and any other efforts you plan to generate awareness and build connections.

Social Media Amplification

Similar to engaging in brand activities is social media amplification. Instead of scrolling by your content, advocates will stop to like it, leave a comment, and maybe even share it on their social profile. Increased engagement gives your content better reach, and by sharing your content, advocates introduce your brand to new audiences.

Authentic Communication

Brand advocates can be influencers, but the fact that they share their love of your brand organically (without being paid) makes it more authentic. This authenticity helps build trust in new audiences, which we know is key to creating brand advocates.

Emotional Connection

Sharing personal experiences and stories is, well, personal. Because these messages are authentic and from the heart, they have the power to form an emotional connection to your brand.

Why Brand Advocacy is Important for Business

Customers, employees, and partners (think: vendors and distributors) can all be advocates for your brand, and you want them to be. Having advocates on your side makes scaling easier and faster and gives your business a boost in other ways.

Enhanced Credibility

Advocates boost a company’s credibility. Why? Recommendations from advocates (like customers and employees) are more trustworthy than ads. Enhanced credibility fosters trust with potential customers, which makes them more likely to engage with the brand.

Cost Efficiency

Free marketing! Advocates can organically share their enthusiasm for the brand without the direct costs associated with advertising. 

Wider Reach

Every time an advocate shares a positive experience, they introduce the brand to new audiences, allowing the brand to tap into new markets.

Valuable Feedback

You know commercials and ads are only going to say good things about a brand – and those “good things” are going to come from an insider perspective. Advocates, on the other hand, provide critical insights from a customer’s perspective.

Deepened Loyalty

Advocates have an emotional connection with brands that extends beyond mere appreciation to deep-seated loyalty. Loyal customers are valuable to businesses because they tend to make repeat purchases and spend more than new customers.

Sustainable Business Growth

Brand advocates are more easily retained and are a reliable source of revenue. Through their brand advocacy efforts (e.g., word-of-mouth marketing and UGC), they attract new customers for you, reducing customer acquisition costs. 

3 Examples of Successful Brand Advocacy Programs

In our blog Loyalty Rewarded: How to Make Exclusive Offers for Your Current Customers and New Audiences, we compiled top strategies for crafting compelling offers for brand advocates. Three top consumer brands built brand advocacy programs tailored to their advocates to deepen loyalty and grow their businesses.

1. Adidas Creators Club

Adidas created a community for its advocates, the Creators Club. Membership is free, and it offers members exclusive deals, access to special merchandise, and the opportunity to earn rewards redeemable for Adidas products.

2. Lululemon Ambassador Program

Lululemon also leaned into the community aspect of its ambassador program but with a twist: Instead of getting access to deals, ambassadors test products before they hit the market. However, the real focus of the program is on developing relationships within one’s community.

3. Tesla Referral Program

The stated purpose of Tesla’s referral program, which ended on April 30, 2024, was to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” To accomplish this, Tesla used a combination of benefits and credits to entice first-time buyers, encourage buyers to become advocates, and then reward repeat purchases. 

5 Automation Tools for Promoting & Rewarding Brand Advocacy

Though brand advocacy will have far-reaching benefits on its own, it is possible – and encouraged! – to incorporate it into your marketing strategy so you can activate and nurture advocates. (We walk you through how to do that in our blog 3 Steps to Activating Brand Advocates that Boost Your Reach With the B2B Customer Journey.) Leveraging automation tools makes promoting and rewarding advocates a breeze. Here are 5 tools we recommend.

1. Bamboo Reach

This all-in-one platform consolidates various marketing tools in one package, which helps manage different aspects of brand advocacy campaigns. 

Its automation and personalization features allow you to automate tasks, segment audiences and deliver targeted messages – both of which can be useful for engaging and nurturing brand advocates. 

Because Bamboo Reach automates email, SMS, and social media, it helps you to reach and interact with advocates across different platforms.

With Bamboo Reach, you can also create multiple funnels to map out customer journeys that suit your needs. Set up automated triggers to guide advocates through different stages of engagement.

In-platform analytics and reporting allow you to track performance and gain insights for continual improvement.

2. Influitive

Influitive is a comprehensive platform specifically for brand advocacy. By gamifiying customer campaigns, you engage advocates with personalized challenges and rewards.

With platform analytics, you can track advocate activities and program performance.

Influitive can integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) and other marketing automation tools for even greater tracking.

3. Hootsuite Amplify

Amplify focuses on employee advocacy to turn staff into brand advocates. It does this by making it easy for employees to share content across social networks.

Similar to Influitive, there are gamified elements to encourage participation. Because the focus is on sharing social content, Amplify’s analytics track the reach and engagement of shared content. As an offshoot of Hootsuite’s social media scheduling tool, Amplify integrates with the rest of Hootsuite’s platform for added functionality and insights.

4. Yotpo

A retention marketing platform, Yotpo uses artificial intelligence (AI) to drive customer content and loyalty programs that foster brand advocacy. AI-powered review requests help you collect more reviews and display the reviews most relevant to your customers. As an added perk, the AI can analyze customer feedback for sentiment, yielding insights you can use in future marketing campaigns and to improve the customer experience. Showcase curated UGC to build social proof with visual marketing tools. Their out-of-the-box campaigns help you start and manage loyalty and referral programs.

5. Mention

As you can tell by its name, Mention is a social media monitoring tool, but it does come with features that support brand advocacy efforts. Those features include

• real-time monitoring of brand mentions across the web and social media,
• sentiment analysis to identify positive brand experiences,
• influencer identification to find potential high-impact advocates, and
• automated reporting on brand perception and advocacy trends.

Amplify Your Brand Advocacy with Bamboo Reach

Engaging brand advocates is essential for building credibility, expanding your reach, and driving sustainable business growth. By leveraging automation tools like Bamboo Reach, you can seamlessly promote and reward advocacy, making it easier to nurture relationships and encourage ongoing support. 

Bamboo Reach, with its robust features for automating communication, segmenting audiences, and tracking performance, stands out as an excellent choice for managing your brand advocacy campaigns. By using this tool, you not only streamline the process but also maximize the impact of your advocates, ensuring that their efforts contribute to your long-term success.

To start with automated brand advocate marketing today, visit our website or schedule a demo of our proprietary CRM, Bamboo Reach.