Best practices for launching advocacy marketing campaigns
Best practices for launching advocacy marketing campaigns
Every time an expert logs onto ExpertVoice, they have the chance to discover something new about your brand — whether it's learning about your latest initiative, signing up for your expert community, or ordering a highly recommended product that recently piqued their interest.
Advocacy marketing campaigns help your brand connect with target experts on ExpertVoice and strengthen their knowledge. Campaigns typically have an objective, a target audience, and a start and end date.
Because experts have 22x more conversations about the brands and products they love compared to the average consumer, it's essential to launch campaigns to the right experts at the right time to help more consumers make better purchasing decisions.1
Here are the best practices for launching advocacy marketing campaigns.
#1. Determine your program objectives
As the campaign manager of your company, we recommend defining your ExpertVoice program objectives early on with your Account Executive. Your example program objectives could include:
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#2. Select your campaigns
Next, determine what campaigns will help you reach your program objectives. You can run multiple campaigns that target different experts throughout the year to help meet your program objectives and foster year-round advocacy for your brand and products:
Education + Seeding: Educate experts about your latest products and reward those who pass your lessons.
Education: Provide experts access to lessons about your brand, without providing a reward for completing your lessons.
Seeding: Provide experts access to an exclusive discount for your products without requiring any education to unlock the reward.
Product Sampling: Quickly gather expert recommendations and photos from a curated audience to amplify your upcoming product launches or boost your existing products.
Survey: Gather expert insights and feedback on-demand.
Activity: Activate your expert community with off-platform activities and track their completion.
#3. Determine your target expert audience
Experts are hungry to learn about and experience your latest product innovations and technologies.
We segment our audience of nearly 1,000,000 verified experts into three separate groups— Retail Sales Associates, Industry Professionals, and Enthusiasts. When building your campaign, target the experts who matter most to your business and help you meet your program objectives — whether it’s a broad group, your dealer list, or a focused expert community.
#4. Determine how frequently you will launch campaigns
In a recent survey, experts expressed they want to see campaigns more frequently from the brands they love on ExpertVoice. For example, they prefer that brands launch new content at least once per month (44%), and they’re willing to spend an average of 16 minutes learning about one brand in a single session on ExpertVoice.
As you plan your ExpertVoice program strategy with your Account Executive, consider launching campaigns to reach your authentic target expert audience and strengthen their knowledge at critical points throughout the year. When you launch campaigns, the number of experts engaging with your brand will increase to help meet your program objectives.
Remember that your educational lessons and enticing incentives are crucial components to building strength, but they must be regularly maintained and updated to be effective. An ongoing supply of new campaigns and product inventory keeps your brand top of mind and ensures continual engagement.
#5. Determine who will create your campaigns
When you partner with ExpertVoice, you can create campaigns using a combination of professional services from our Studios team and self-service features in the Advocacy Platform. ExpertVoice Studios can create campaigns for you or create these on your own using the campaign creation features in the Advocacy Platform.²
Here are a few questions to consider when determining your campaign creation strategy.
Do you want to launch campaigns on demand? If you do, the Advocacy Platform’s campaign creation features provide you the tools to quickly build campaigns with just a few clicks.²
In addition to any campaigns you create, you can also work with ExpertVoice Studios to create custom campaigns or campaign components that will supplement your program. Learn what it’s like to work with Studios here.
Do you have the resources to create campaigns on your own? If you do, the campaign creation features in the Advocacy Platform are the right fit for you.²
If you don’t have the resources to create campaigns yourself, consider working with ExpertVoice Studios to develop and manage your campaigns from start to finish – from a custom content build to your campaign launch and maintenance. Learn more about what it’s like to work with Studios here.
#6. Determine your promotional strategy
When you’re planning your ExpertVoice program and campaigns with your Account Executive, consider also layering on a promotional strategy to increase brand awareness and engage more experts.3 Did you know participating in promotional media can double your engagement during your promotion?
Scheduling promotions throughout the year allows your brand to:
- Stay top of mind with target experts
- Drive traffic to your ExpertVoice brand page
- Meet your program objectives at an accelerated rate
Learn more about the available promotions here.
#7. Launch and track your performance
You now have a new and compelling campaign ready to be published on ExpertVoice. Your Customer Success partner can approve and push your campaign live to appear in your target expert audience's main feed if you'd like.
After your campaign is published, visit the Advocacy Platform each week to regularly track, learn and optimize how your campaign is performing and ensure it's helping to meet your program objectives.
- You can view a high-level overview of your ExpertVoice program performance and your expert engagements over the past 30 days and 12 months on the Advocacy Platform Homepage.
- In Analytics, you can create custom dashboards to track program trends over time and view more detailed program-specific reports.
In Campaigns, you can view your overall campaign performance and campaign-specific analytics reports to help you better identify your most successful campaigns. You can also track your promotional codes here if they are part of your seeding campaign.
Final Thoughts
After an expert engages with one or more of your campaigns on ExpertVoice, they'll be more likely to recommend your brand to others both online and offline. An ongoing supply of new, relevant advocacy marketing campaigns throughout the year will keep your brand top of mind and ensure continual engagement with your brand advocates.
1 ExpertVoice White Paper: How to Ignite the Flame of Brand Advocacy - and Not Get Burned, 2021
2 The ability to create and publish campaigns will only be made available by reaching out to your Account Executive.
3 Activity Campaigns targeting an ExpertVoice Community do not require Promotional Media.