Building Brand Evangelism through Social Media.
This week’s social media blog posts:
Monday: Seven ways to doom a Social Media program.
Tuesday: Co-Creating with Social Media.
Wednesday: Building Brand Evangelism through Social Media.
Thursday: Social Media and Reputation Management.
Friday: Now that you’ve engaged, it’s time to re-engage.
(This is the twentieth in our series of Social Media posts for the month of October. We look forward to your feedback on this series.)
Recent studies show that as many as 70% of American consumers do not consider themselves “brand loyal.” This means that no matter what your category, a lot of sales are going to be up for grabs on a transaction-by-transaction basis.
Often times, the deciding factor for many consumers is just knowing what other people like them choose. This is the value of communities to brands.
Communities operate in much the same way as any other organization does. It needs leaders. It needs a common purpose. It needs critical mass. It needs infrastructure. You’ll discover that online communities aren’t that difficult to form, what is difficult is keeping them engaged. This is where your brand evangelists can help.
A brand evangelist is defined by us as a customer who is not only a loyal customer, but also passionate about the brand to the point of selling others on it, with no thought of gain for themselves.
Great brands tend to gather passionate fans. The challenge is to leverage your most loyal customers’ passions to produce even greater results (and create even more evangelists). When considering how to architect a program to enable brand evangelism, it might help to consider how evangelism works. It has much more in common with multi-level marketing than it does with traditional marketing methods.
A multi-level platform traditionally eschews mass marketing in favor of distributing products or services one-to-one through its distributors’ personal networks. This allows multi-level distributors to engage their target audiences on a much different playing field. Basically it’s, “we believe in our product so much, that we want to invite you to be a part of this brand as well.” Multi-level marketers turn their audience into their colleagues.
Okay, so as marketers, you may not be in the position to make your customers your distributors, but you can use their natural energies and their passion to enhance your brand and get similar results.
Here is a rundown of the tenets that apply to brand evangelism via Social Media:
1. Brand evangelists share their personal experiences. If you’ve ever heard a multi-level marketing sales pitch, you know that a personal story is a significant component to its effectiveness. “My back doesn’t hurt anymore.” “I lost 60 pounds.” “My carpets have never been cleaner.” Whatever. Your brand evangelists are the ones who are willing to share their own experiences with your organization or brand. The weight these personal stories carry in social networks cannot be overstated.
2. Brand evangelists exhibit an unusually high level of brand pride. Across the board, brand evangelists have an incredibly high level of pride in the brand they represent. Just as the houses of Amway distributors seem to be furnished in “early Amway,” brand evangelists’ lives are plastered with the brands they represent. How can you plaster your brand all over the lives of your evangelists? Will they change their profile picture on Facebook or Twitter to your brand icons? Will they wear your t-shirts and slap your sticker on their laptops? Put a bumper sticker on their cars? Marketers should enable their ardent customers to show their brand pride.
3. Brand evangelists want to know as much as there is to know about you. They want to know the minutia of how your products are made. They want to know where your factories are. They want to know the history of the company. They want to know the names of the Chief Marketing Officer’s children. These folks are interested in the brand, and will use this wealth of information as part of their personal “story” about you.
4. Brand evangelists are looking for a place to congregate with other evangelists. What would Mary Kay Cosmetics be without its giant conventions? Whereas multi-level marketers meet up at Holiday Inns or Dollywood, brand evangelists meet up with one another online. It is one thing to have an online forum for your fans to discuss the merits of your products, but it’s a whole other thing to provide a fanatical atmosphere for your customers to share stories and participate in co-creation. Starbucks for example, does a terrific job of allowing its evangelists to connect with one another via its Facebook page.
Of all things that Social Media can help you do, perhaps nothing matches the ability to activate, inspire and enable brand evangelists.
Posted by Mickey
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