Customer advocacy: More than loyalty and a game changer for brands

Brand advocacy leads to brand trust and the promotion of products and services by buyers, so brands that master the art of advocacy will win the consumers of the future.

• Brands have to be mindful that loyalty is fleeting whereas advocacy is aspirational.
• Advocacy gets people to provide inputs for developing a better product and this gives them ownership of the product.
• Selling will then be all about delivering experiences and delighting the buyers with customisation.

Why it matters

Content is the new currency for engagement, and brands that design and deliver a customised experience can successfully convert loyal customers into advocates in a connected digital world where people tend to switch brands.

Takeaways

• A transactional relationship focusing on the traditional 4Ps of marketing is not part of the customised experience.
• To acquire customers for life, brands must shift from just selling a product to establishing an ever-lasting relationship.
• Brands that take advocacy seriously experience growth twice as fast as the industry average.

As the COVID-19 pandemic transforms businesses and consumer behaviour with the greater adoption of digital, these changes are paving the way for data-led omnichannel experiences. Brands that master the art of advocacy will win the consumers of the future.

“Brand advocacy results in genuine brand trust and promotion of products and services by buyers,” said AjitSivadasan, Lenovo’s global head, online, at the virtual NGCX Summit Asia.

Advocacy powers business growth

Sivadasan said brands that take advocacy seriously witness 2X growth compared to the industry average in a product-service category.

KPMG’s 2019 global survey “The truth about customer loyalty” found that if a customer is loyal to a brand, then:

• 86% will recommend a company to friends and family
• 66% are likely to write a positive online review after a good experience
• 46% will remain loyal even after a bad experience
• 81% of millennials say their membership (loyalty card etc) increases their spending with the company concerned

The power of advocacy is that it gets people to provide inputs for developing better products and the person who does this then has ownership of the product. Such input providers become advocates and say good things about the product.

The idea of advocacy is to influence friends on Facebook with a true and emotional connection for them to adopt a particular brand. Consumers’ love for a brand resonates with their values.

Wide gap between loyalty and advocacy

There still exists a huge gap between loyalty and advocacy. KPMG’s 2019 global survey “The truth about customer loyalty” shows:

• 96% of respondents agree that customer loyalty programs can be improved
• 78% of all consumers would switch brands for a better loyalty program
• 59% of consumers who have signed up for loyalty programs do not use them to shop every week

The numbers show that brands need to work on their rewards and loyalty programs, and offer customers more value and personalised experiences to turn them into true brand advocates.

Advocacy in times of big business transformation

In a pandemic-hit world, every purchase experience is going to be more about the omnichannel experience, which is data-driven.

Selling will be all about delivering experiences and delighting the buyers with customisation. Many players in India’s e-grocery segment are getting users to order groceries from kirana stores using WhatsApp, proving that the omnichannel experience is becoming more commonplace than in the past.

Sivadasan highlighted that things are also moving towards the pay-per-use model, with consumers paying on a monthly basis for the services used.

Some of the industries that will be impacted in a big way include:

• Automotive: We are moving towards a future where the transportation and auto industry will no longer have dealerships. Automation is changing the industry landscape. Car rentals as we know it will vanish. Air taxis may become a reality sooner than we imagine.
• Education: Traditional universities will disappear as online and digital learning dominate.
• Retail: Consumers are fast shifting towards digital. Buyers are moving into the experiential zone. In the future, physical stores will be more like experience centres and less about distribution. Salespeople at the store will take on the role of ambassadors, talking about solutions to meet customer requirements.

Content for engagement in the advocacy world

With evolving consumer needs and the rise of digital, what’s that one thing that is going to help brands cross over successfully from loyalty to advocacy?

“Content is the new currency for engagement and the brands have to think hard: what does this mean for them?” said Sivadasan. “It takes a long time to convert loyal customers into advocates, more so in a connected digital world where people have the tendency to switch brands.”

To design and deliver a customised experience, consumer brands have to move away from a transactional relationship that focuses on the traditional 4Ps of marketing. The transactional relationship focuses on creating a sales opportunity (here customer involvement is slow), promoting a product or service, making a sale, and the customer-brand relationship coming to a close.

“Personalisation and media that communicate about the product will be the mainstay of all full consumer experiences,” explained Sivadasan.

The relationship marketing approach recognises a customer and community, and reaches out to the customer in a personalised manner, driving the omnichannel experience.

Customer-centric approach to promote advocacy

In a digital first-world, nearly 86% of millennials say they visit a physical store to see a product, only to buy it online. Brands need to tap into this set of consumers by promoting advocacy through:

• Acquiring customers for life: The starting point for brands to leverage advocacy is to focus on acquiring customers for life. The moment brands adopt this approach, they will start thinking differently. The entire brand behaviour will change and the focus will shift from just selling a product to establishing an everlasting relationship with customers.
• Relooking the purchase cycle: Brands have to rethink how best they can connect with ever-evolving customers. Identifying the right content and media for connecting with consumers is critical to promoting advocacy.
• Paying attention to post-purchase experiences: Brands have to realise that the real experience starts after the purchase. A brand can show shining products through apps, make a sale and say bye-bye to the customer. But that's not how you build advocacy and loyalty.

Brands that are serious about advocacy have to think:

• How can they make it easy for people to share their passion?
• How can they guide customers to create and share content?
• How can they enable consumers to talk to different groups of people using brand products?

Lenovo: A case study in promoting advocacy

True advocacy lies in showing consumers that as a brand, you care for them. Brand Lenovo believes in the power of community, rewards and peer-to-peer interactions.

To show that the brand cares about connectivity, Lenovo aligned with local entities in countries like Japan and the US to provide technical support to small-and-medium enterprises struggling with pandemic-led work disruptions.

Lenovo has also tasted success promoting advocacy for its brands such as ThinkPad and Motorola. It achieved this by:

Building a strong gaming community: Brand Lenovo has built strong gaming communities in its key markets by tapping into gamers’ desire to understand what’s coming next, helping them discover the next big gaming event, and providing them with tips for using their gaming machine more efficiently.

This collaborative and engaging approach helped Lenovo acquire customers in the gaming segment who are strong brand advocates and not one-time buyers.

Cultivating a strong student community: Lenovo has been working closely with educators, parents, students and several interested online agencies to promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education across countries. Its product features are engineered to cater to those pursuing STEM.

Embracing the future with advocacy

Brands that strive to solve real consumer problems will grow in the future.

As a brand, among the issues Lenovo is looking at is the future of ergonomic setups so customers don’t fatigue. What the pandemic has taught all the brands is that they have to listen to people much more empathetically.

• Brands have to think deeply about how to marry their product with customer needs.
• Brands have to find an intersection point for advocacy. Brands need to look at the demographic references more closely and accurately to innovate and provide users with more relevant products and satisfactory customer experiences.
• To succeed with advocacy, real-time measurement and end-term visibility are important. Brands need to have a digital-first mindset to have a better connection with their audience.

Brands continuously need to remind themselves that real loyalty leads to more engagement, advocacy and more purchase.