3 Strategies For Building a Brand Advocacy Program

In the digital age, peer-to-peer recommendations are the most powerful advertising tools available. By leveraging pre-existing fans, you can increase brand awareness, develop strong customer loyalties and facilitate valuable customer feedback loops. Deciding to launch a brand ambassador program means preparing to activate advocates all over the globe. When done right, fostering brand advocacy can lead to company wide benefits, including an increase in sales and positive brand sentiment, as well as greater share of voice in your industry space.

Download the latest Community Management Tip, “Building a Brand Advocacy Program” and to learn how you can discover the right brand ambassadors, get them onboard and keep them active and engaged over time.

1. Initial Considerations

Deciding to develop a Brand Ambassador program doesn’t mean starting from scratch. If you’re active on social media, then there’s a good chance your customers and fans are as well. The key to building a strong advocacy program lies in leveraging your existing communities, here’s a few ways how to:

• Source the right fans


• Target strategic influencers


• Leverage employee evangelists

2. Getting Advocates Onboard

Once you have identified who you’d like to join the program, you will need to develop a strategy to get them onboard and excited about your new initiative. Be sure to develop the program around valuable opportunities and rewards for the participants. Here’s three ways how you can do this:

• Effective communication


• Clear program architecture


• Professional integration

3. Keeping Ambassadors Engaged

A well structured Ambassador program will expand rapidly. Before you know it, with hundreds of brand advocates, you will be challenged with keeping them engaged and avoiding attrition. You may even want to consider having a program lead within your organization to do the following:

• Celebrate your ambassadors


• Gamify the experience


• Provide access to education

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Community Management Tips: Building a Brand Advocacy Program from HootSuite

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