How do we break it down?
The definition of advocacy we go by at Ambassify is the following:
“Advocacy is what happens when your most trusted people become your brand ambassadors on social media, and they co-create and share your content to amplify your brand organically.”
In other words, advocacy happens when your people share their experiences and their knowledge about your brand on social media (generally and hopefully, in a positive way). At Ambassify, we mainly focus on how to turn your employees into social media advocates, but the concept also applies to your customers, your partners, etc.
The core of advocacy is relationship building, it’s culture building, and collaboration: building a solid bond with your advocates will provide a solid foundation for a durable and strong program aimed at amplifying your brand.
Instinctively, advocacy is something that many have experienced firsthand. Whether it be by hiring someone through a referral from another employee or simply by being on the receiving end of things and being yourself persuaded in your purchasing decisions by other people’s personal recommendations.
Yet, few companies actually have a clear process or structure in place to organize, facilitate, and manage advocacy. The biggest hurdle for companies at this point is getting started: taking the first step can often be a daunting moment as people don’t know where exactly they should start. So, where do you begin?
Whether we’re talking about customer or employee advocacy, one of the most frequent roadblocks for companies is not knowing who within the company should own the program. Who is responsible for advocacy?
Sometimes, it's unclear whether it should be Marketing, Sales, or — in the case of customer advocacy — Customer Success. Establishing who’s responsible for organizing the program is a fundamental starting point if you want to coherently and gradually grow the number of advocates you have.
If we look at customer advocacy, it’s easy to see how Customer Success can have a massive impact. At the same time, Marketing owns the content and the messaging, which is the pivotal building block of a good employee advocacy program.
The solution? Cross-departmental collaboration. It is important that two or more departments share the load of managing and advancing any advocacy program — in the case of customer advocacy, for instance, Customer Success can provide precious insights on the customers’ journey that can inform and drive Marketing’s efforts in involving them as advocates.
Is there ever a case where you shouldn’t ask a customer to be an ambassador? Yes, there is. And that’s why input from Customer Success is crucial here. Understanding the customer journey, their growth, and their progress in achieving their business goals. Only a happy customer, a customer who’s achieved its business outcomes, will be a good advocate. That’s why you should be very careful whom you ask to be your reference, of course.
If a customer is struggling, if they're they have low usage, then asking that type of customer to be a reference shows that you don't understand how things are. And ultimately, we might even be worse off by asking them, actually.
When we talk about employee advocacy, the discerning principle is similar. Especially at the start of a program, it’s important to look at those employees who are already quite active on social media and who feel comfortable (and proud of) sharing company- or industry-related insights and content. Those are the employees who will be strong and active ambassadors.
When an employee or a customer is happy and satisfied with your company – your culture, goals, and mission in the first instance, and your product and service in the second — it becomes natural for them to want to advocate for you. Being an advocate is going to become part of their online identity.
With time, the more advocates you have, the more your advocate base is going to grow: word of mouth works as much externally as it does internally, which means that ambassadors will attract and convince others to also become advocates for your brand — and that’s when it’s time to start scaling.
Scaling word-of-mouth marketing becomes a tangible, measurable strategy with platforms like Ambassify. An employee advocacy and community-building platform, it empowers companies to harness the power of their employees and loyal customers by turning them into active brand advocates.
Through the platform, you can create and distribute targeted content to different user groups and engage advocates with a variety of asks — from sharing positive experiences and testimonials to engaging challenges and polls and getting feedback.
The platform offers tools to track engagement and measure the impact of these word-of-mouth initiatives, providing valuable insights into how effectively these messages are spreading. Additionally, you can measure performance, ROI, advocacy-generated traffic, and other metrics to scale and grow your program and keep an eye on your KPIs.
By leveraging Ambassify, companies can systematically scale word-of-mouth and amplify their reach, turning personal recommendations into a powerful extension of their marketing strategy.