Influencers vs. Advocates: Knowing Your Brand Goal
For the savvy brand, developing networks of advocate influencers is the way forward to real, genuine, long-term marketing success.
For the savvy brand, developing networks of advocate influencers is the way forward to real, genuine, long-term marketing success.
There is an ongoing debate over which is the best group of people to use to spread the message of your brand: influencers or advocates. Let’s have a look at both groups to see why you would work with them and the benefits and drawbacks of each.
Influencers are people who have a wide reach and many followers. They may be celebrities or they may be influential figures in their industries: experts, bloggers, columnists, or authors. They may be several of these things at once. The main reason that a company would use influencers is because of their reach: that they can convey a message to many people in a short period of time, with the hope that such a “celebrity” endorsement will encourage more people to buy a product or use a service. Influencers are usually paid for their promotion and are often used as a short-term face of a brand.
Advocates don’t need to be paid to talk about your brand: they tell all their friends how your product revolutionized their life, made it easier, or how they just love going into your store because of a great environment or fantastic service. If advocates follow their favorite brands online, they will share their posts and comment on photos because they want to be a part of the conversation. Advocates stay loyal to the brands they love and will sign up to get information about an upcoming product because they are excited about its release. They might not have the reach of the influencers, but their network unmistakably knows about their passion for their favorite brands and they have high influence within their own communities.
Knowing Your Goal
If your brand wants to convey the message to the new audiences, which group do they choose to engage: influencers or advocates? This is the question we consistently get from our clients. Seemingly an easy one to answer, there are a number of factors we recommend them to consider. Before committing to a certain marketing strategy, think hard about the objectives you are trying to achieve. Here are just some of the considerations:
Advocate Influencers: The Way Forward
At the end of the day, it doesn’t have to be a choice between influencers and advocates. For the savvy brand, developing networks of advocate influencers is the way forward to real, genuine, long-term marketing success. At my company we coined the term “advocate influencers,” which represents the golden middle – an intersection of people with wide reach who are already committed to your products and already endorse them in their daily lives. An example of this would be the Walmart Moms blogger team.
Another option would be finding celebrities who are fans of your product before you sign an agreement with them, as Weight Watchers did when it approached former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Ana Gasteyer, who was tweeting about using its points system to lose weight. But not every brand will have access to a celebrity like that; and most of the time it will still require investment to engage that celebrity to be your spokesperson in the long term.
In Closing…
It is important to remember that even consumers who don’t have wide reach, when brought together, can build up a real long-term momentum and ignite true movement around your brand. After all, scientists proved that it only takes 10 percent of the population holding an unshakable belief to influence the rest of the population. To inspire advocate influencers, you need to build customer engagement into every level of your interaction with your users, and encourage feedback and user-generated content, as well as provide easy ways and tools for them to discuss your brand online. This requires a solid platform (to help you build sustainable networks with your advocates/influencers, engage them, and measure the impact), a long-term commitment, and a sprinkle of imagination for sustainable engagement. That, fueled by true respect and reciprocal love toward your customers, will help elevate your brand to new heights. And that’s your brand’s goal, isn’t it?