yinkaolaito.com – the branding gavel, brand communication expert, nigeria brand consultant, social media expert

There are several ways to look at brand advocacy. But the one I love to use is that brand  advocacy has to do with brand support, backing, encouragement, sponsorship that an outside or third party( the party may be internal sometimes) gives to a brand which is a product of the value individual has gained, benefited from the brand attributes, culture, behavior, services, products. This satisfaction then propels the individual to freely talk about the brand without any incentive to do so. I do believe after sometimes, incentives can be introduced as motivating factor. Brand advocacy is viewed as the most imperative, significant as well as vital factor in determining the present and future position of the brand’s growth. As a measurement for brand’s health, vitality, advocacy throws more light than what is known as market share, customer service, satisfaction survey result or statistics. It reveals the depth of customers’ commitment to the brand and more importantly reveals the depth of relationship. Advocacy shows the level of extremity that customers have toward the brand, their passion or disdain. In other words, advocacy can show customers’ sense of ownership of the brand.

Brand advocacy is essential today particularly during the crunch where there is not enough to spend on marketing. A public comment that praises or indicts a brand can either enhance or destroy brand’s profitability. Advocacy has the power to affect positive or negative awareness of the brand in all forms.  Advocacy reduces operating cost. Additionally, profits from referrals can trickle bottom-line performance. One of the avenues that help brand advocacy is to ensure point of contact delivery, making promises that you have internal capacity to fulfill.  More also, a right environments which erases barriers to provision of feedbacks must be in place. Brand must realizes that whichever it goes, stakeholders now have mega channels to express their feelings and it will be to their advantage for a positive words of mouths to flow. In brands owners are in doubt, there is now flickr, forums, blogs, videos, social networking etc.

Today recession has driven heavy reliance on words of mouth, customers now depends on friends to give them information on brands. Let me conclude by listing some of the factors I have seen can help your brand’ advocacy:

Educate your stakeholders, connect, be relevant, be useful, add value, and accelerate value. Ethics of advocacy are: be honest with your stakeholders, be willing to help out, be available, be looking outward together with your stakeholders on future challenges and help ease the journey. Remember that advocacy is the true measure of your brand’s strengths, competitiveness and loyalty.