Brand advocates: what makes them tick?
‘Evangelism marketing’ as a loyalty tactic is often seen as an advanced form of word of mouth marketing. With evangelism marketing, the idea is not to ask people to relay a marketing message, but to make the customers so happy with a product that they will spontaneously try to convince others to buy it and use it.
Guy Kawasaki – the former chief evangelist at Apple Computers – calls this practice ‘customer religion’: customers become passionate about the product and become ambassadors, or advocates, for the brand. In contrast to word of mouth communicators, evangelists work independently. In his books ‘The Art of the Start’ and ‘How to Drive Your Competition Crazy’, Kawasaki states that the driving force behind evangelism marketing is the fact that individuals ‘simply want to make the world a better place’. He calls it ‘customer religion’ because these individuals do what they do out of pure belief, not for money or ‘goodies’. Since evangelists are free agents, it is harder for companies to first identify and then influence these evangelists.
In May 2011, BzzAgent.com conducted an in-depth study with Dr. Kathleen Ferris-Costa at the University of Rhode Island, College of Business Administration.
The study found that brand advocates are 83% more likely to share information about a product than typical web users, and 50% more likely to influence a purchase. Advocates enjoy solving problems and helping others make better purchase decisions. They are 75% more likely to share a great product experience and three times more likely to share product opinions with someone they don’t know.
Brand advocates:
- are more than 2.5x more likely to use social media to expand their social circles.
- are prolific content creators - they write and share more than 2x as many online communications about brands.
- genuinely enjoy sharing product information and are always looking for new things to share
