3 Ways to Turn Influencers into Your Brand Advocates

Deepak Sakhuja — November 8, 2016 Follow @RippleLinks

Influencer marketing has been doing the rounds in the industry for a significant period of time with brands capitalizing on the concept of influencing customers and their purchase decisions. The question now is – how can we move a step ahead with influencer marketing? And thus comes the need for brand advocacy – talking about your brand with a positive tonality, implying a faith in your products which has been built over time. Brand advocates believe in your products and services and hence, the authenticity of their opinions surpasses those of regular influencers.

The need of the hour is to convert your trusted set of influencers into brand advocates themselves with a long-term engagement. With brand advocates almost 50% more likely to wield influence on purchase decisions and almost 70% more like to be believed as an authentic source of information, investing in brand advocacy is ideally the next step for your native marketing programs. Building brand advocates out of influencers may be a tad time-consuming process, but they will leave deeper impressions on the minds of their customers and yours.

Here is how you too can turn influencers into advocates of your brand.

Start Engaging With Them Frequently and Gain Their Trust

The first step in creating your brand advocates is to identify influencers who resonate best with your brand’s personality and start engaging with them on a regular basis. Also, ensure that you carefully analyze their preferences amongst your products and leverage them to share their opinions.

Make room for exclusive content and services to motivate the influencers, send them premium and limited edition samples to experience, and let them voice their opinions. Exclusive access to information is a great way to build a long-term, trusted relationship with the influencers in order to evolve their advocacy.

Help Them Resonate on the Same Level as Your Brand

Brand advocates are known to be a well of knowledge with a constant hunger for new information. Help the influencer understand your brand’s essence, vision, target audience and the products or services you offer. Influencers should be able to comprehend how your brand accommodates itself into our contemporary lifestyle which, in turn, will help them define their trust in your brand.

Brand advocacy works on a base of experience which explains why certain influencers advocate the brands that they work with. Only with a consistent engagement with your brand over a period of time will influencers be able to evolve their advocacy, understanding the nuances of how your brand works and consequently targeting their followers with content customized for your brand.

Focus On Building Real Conversations and Opinions

The precision of brand advocates in their category is highly valued and herein comes the significance of their ideas. Inspect their hold over the audience and then move on to considering their social reach. Especially when it comes to cutting through the noisy market of promotional content, influencers with a trusted base of followers – even if it is a comparatively small one – should be the chosen medium to showcase your brand positively, albeit with honesty.

With the rise in advocacy, brands must look towards creating opinionated views among their consumers and building relevance in their lifestyles. Learn to select your influencers basis their quality of content and engagement rather than their followership. Consider makers as part of your brand programs – influencers who can differentiate between brand and product characteristics – as these are the ones who opinions are based on years of research and thus held in high regard.

Brand advocates are often found to be engaging with their audience on an emotional level as compared to influencers who put forth logical preferences, consequently building a close-knit group of followers with whom they discuss and share opinions on a regular basis. Keeping all the above factors in mind, it is not tough to realize that brand advocacy is the way forward in the world of influencer marketing.

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