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A raving fan.  A madly loyal ambassador.  A customer advocate. Marketing professionals live to create customer relationships with brands that have emotional bonds so tight that they are almost impenetrable.  We LOVE these customers as they are the brand's advocates. Last week, I participated in a webinar entitled "Influence the Influencer: Creating Brand Advocates with Social Marketing" led by two panelists,  Jill Griffin of The Loyalty Marketer and Allen Silkin of Atkins Nutritionals. Jill presented a list that I found to be very simple yet very important.  It was called 9 ways to minimize detractors and maximize advocates.  I'm sharing the list she presented below; however, I wanted to add to what Jill shared by providing a few concrete examples.
  1. Identify talkers.   Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV.com does this better than anyone I can think of.  Gary goes into the trenches and utilizes search capabilities of many different social platforms to identify people talking about wine and/or his show.   He then immediately reaches out to them and helps them find an answer to their problem.  This has lead to Gary having a tremendous following.  Given they are active users of social media, they are also the ones who can quickly spread word of mouth.   Check out the recent succcess of his book, Crush It! , which landed on the Wall Street Journal's Best Seller list with no traditional advertising.
  2. Query new buyers. This one is a standard in the hotel industry.  I think of the Ritz Carlton as being best in class in learning about its new customers and utilizing this information to give them even better service on their next visit.
  3. Thank referral. If in step #2, you learn of customer who referred this new client, PLEASE thank this personal who referred them.  Many companies have "Refer-A-Friend" policies that give them a specific type of reward for the referral.  This is good, but make sure you go out of your way to say "Thank You".   Alice.com, an online retailer of common household goods, gives you 3% of your friends order not once but for an ENTIRE year.
  4. Get testimonials and use them. Red Robin Gourmet Burgers utilizes a recommendation application on social networking sites such as Facebook that allows customer to "recommend" Red Robin.  They utilize this as it spreads positive word of mouth very quickly.  With most users averaging 150 friends, getting only 1,500 people to recommend Red Robin can account for about 225,000 positive, unique impressions.  Think of the value of this versus a fan page with 1,500 fans.  (Source: Adage.com 9/28/09 issue)
  5. Greet "talkers" on service visits.  If you have a physical location, you NEED to treat these talkers special when they are inside your "brick and morter" building. There is no excuse not to.  Greet them enthusiastically!  I particularly like how I am greeted at Discount Tire Company (Twitter: @DiscountTire).  I typically can't get out of my car before I am approached by a friendly salesperson who diagnoses my problem immediately and then walks me to the waiting area where I can enjoy a cup of coffee while they fix my tire problem.  My advice - assume all customers are "talkers".
  6. Send periodic notes to talkers. Harrah's Casino's utilizes their Total Reward's program to keep in touch.   They have found so much value in staying in touch with their most valuable customers that they have slashed traditional advertising by over 50% over 2008 and 2009 . Instead, they invest heavily in non-acquisition direct marketing to these members of their Total Reward's prgram.  (Source: Adage.com - 10/5/09 issue).
  7. Host special events for advocates.  LEGO does this very well.  They have an ambassador program picked from the most loyal advocates of LEGOs from the non-affiliated Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL) community.  LEGO brings these ambassadors to special event to help in new product development.
  8. Acknowledge when things go wrong. When you are with a customer and something has gone wrong, you should fess up and acknowledge it.   A customer will see right past excuses and know that you are insincere.  A good example of this may include anything from a personal example such as a restaurant messing up your order and correcting it (versus blaming the chef or someone else for punching the order in wrong) to the CEO of KFC acknowleding they erred during the Free Grilled Chicken promotion on Oprah earlier this year.
  9. Regularly re-inforce your value.  Amazon.com makes the most of the information that they receive from you and pair it up with customer's with similar interests to better deliver "Recommendation" emails that describe a recommended book for you to enjoy (ahem...purchase).  Typically, these recommendations are very good and it re-inforces why you do business with Amazon online.
Think of this list as one where you should accomplish all of these items.  The tactics by which you execute on each of these can vary substantially but you should put into place a system that addresses all. Let me know if  you have any questions.

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