“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

– Sam Walton, Walmart

What is your company’s greatest asset?

A lot of business owners and managers like to think their employees are their most valuable asset. Others think it’s their intellectual property that gives them an edge.

Sam Walton had it right: It’s the customer.

Why you need a customer advocacy program?

They say “the customer is always right” for a reason. It’s the customer that has the power to make or break our businesses, especially in the era of social networking when everyone is a potential influencer, and we’d be foolish to forget that. But many people see the customer as only a threat, and they spend their time trying to limit the potential for their customers to complain about them instead of giving them a reason to sing their praises.

In many cases, the customers want to help. They love your brand. And they want to spread the word by recommending it to their friends and family. It’s just that sometimes they need a little push, which is where customer advocacy programs come in.

What is a customer advocacy program?

A customer advocacy program is a marketing initiative that is designed to turn customers into spokespeople for your brand. A formal customer advocacy program does this by offering customer incentives. By doing this, you can encourage your best customers to take time out of their busy lives to spread the word about your company.

Don’t show them the money, show appreciation.

You can achieve customer advocacy through a variety of ways, but money is not one of them. In fact, it’s a bad idea to outright pay people. Doing so will send the wrong message and attract people with undesirable motives.

Instead of merely buying their loyalty, the goal is to offer a token gift of appreciation to reward the people who are already loyal to your brand. The goal is to make them take one more step by recommending you. Instead of looking at it as a transaction, treat it more organically like a relationship. You’ll find yourself developing the right customer advocacy program in no time.

Why turn customers into advocates?

Customers make for great advocates because they lend your brand credibility. Nobody trusts a nameless, faceless company when it tells them how great they are, but they do believe their friend Dave when he talks about exceptional customer experience in a Facebook post. It’s called social proof, and it’s the reason why we take the time to look at product ratings and to read customer reviews.

Another thing to remember is that a brand advocate will continue to spend money with your company. If you can take someone who’s just made their first purchase and turn them into a brand advocate, their lifetime value for your business will go through the roof. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that they’ll also do your marketing for you at no extra cost.

All in all, creating brand advocates can be a low-cost way to spread your message through word of mouth to the people who it’s most likely to resonate. It’ll cost you less and be much more useful. What’s not to love?

How to Create a Customer Advocacy Program

Now that you know what a customer advocacy program is and why you might want to deploy one, the next step is to get started. The problem is that if you’ve never created a customer advocacy program before it can be difficult to know where to get started. That’s why we’ve done the hard work for you and distilled the approach down to five easy steps. Let’s go.

Step #1: Prepare yourself

One of the most common mistakes that people make with customer advocacy programs is that they dive right in without taking some time to prepare. For example, they’ll start up a customer advocacy program where they have to log the data manually, and then the advocacy program will take off, and they’ll end up processing vast amounts of data by hand.

Dedicate an employee to manage your customer advocacy program

On top of that, you’ll need a solid strategy in place which outlines exactly how the customer advocacy program will work, including how you’ll communicate the news about your customer advocacy program to the people who’ll be interested in taking part. You’ll need to do the same thing internally, too. In fact, you’ll need to pick out an employee and assign them the responsibility of managing the customer advocacy program and making sure that it happens.

Give your customer advocacy program credibility and resources.

For best results, it’s often a good idea to spread this responsibility across a team that encompasses employees from both marketing and customer service. Give them the time and the resources that they need to future proof your customer advocacy program and to adequately plan it out before you deploy it. Otherwise, you could be wasting your time and even doing more harm than good.

Step #2: Identify the right advocates

Ready to go out of your way to create and reward brand advocates? You’ll want to make sure that you’re targeting the right people. Not every customer will make a good brand advocate, and some will be more active than others. It’s usually a good idea to try to work with those who are already engaged in your industry. And if they are a busy and successful blogger or an expert with a following on social media you might just hit a home run without trying.

To do this, you’ll need to go to find people wherever they’re already spending their time. It might be social networking sites or on industry blog sites, and they might even be more comfortable to reach out to offline at in-person events. Creating a brand advocate follows many of the same principles as content marketing: you need to reach out to them at the right place at the right time with the right message.

The very best brand advocates will already have a reputation within the community. They’ll have an established history of participation from long before you reached out to them, and they should also have an existing social media following – if only a small one – that they can sing your praises.

Step #3: Develop a relationship

Now that you’ve got your infrastructure in place and a list of potential advocates to reach out to, the next step is to get in touch with them and develop a relationship. Don’t make the mistake of looking at this as purely transactional. Instead, think of it as a friendship and don’t be afraid to put some time in and to listen to what your advocates are saying. The conversation should be a two-way dialogue.

One way to develop a relationship is to show people that you trust them. Invite them to come to your office or allow them to try products before they are released. All you want in exchange is their feedback. You’ll also want to remember that relationships don’t spring up overnight. Just like a marriage, it’s something at which you’ll need to work. If you don’t put the effort in then, people will soon get bored and move their loyalty elsewhere.

Another common mistake is to think that you’re somehow done developing relationships. Building trust between your company and your customer advocates requires a continuous, ongoing effort. If you start to get complacent, then you risk allowing those relationships to stagnate. If you only ever reach out to people when you want something, they’ll notice.

Step #4: Facilitate communication

A customer advocacy program is all about communication. And that conversation can flow in different directions. Your advocates can act as a filter between your company and its customers by occupying the grey area in between, but they can also channel information the other way. Take this opportunity to listen carefully to what they’re saying. You’ll be able to take their feedback and pass it on to your research and development team. Hence the program will also allow your customer advocates can help you to improve your products.

It’s your job as the brains behind the customer advocacy program to make sure that your advocates have access to a platform that allows them to make their voice heard. This platform could be a blog, a forum or a Facebook group. It could be a mixture of all three and more, or a bespoke solution from a specialist software provider. Don’t just set it and forget it, though – you’ll need to invest some time of your own to moderate these communication platforms and to make sure that the information is up to date.

Remember that communication is vital, and that holds true even if someone’s unhappy. Negative feedback is still feedback, and you’d be crazy not to investigate it also if it turns out that there’s nothing in it. And you never know, you might examine a piece of critical feedback from one of your brand advocates and find out that they have a point. If that’s the case, you’ll want to take steps to fix it and to stop the problem from happening again.

Step #5: Make it the new norm

Once you’ve set up your customer advocacy program and started to see results from it, the final step is to fully integrate it into your way of working by making it a part of your protocols and workflows and offering full recognition to the advocates who change the way your business works for the better. Much of this will happen naturally, but you’ll also need to make a concentrated effort to keep the momentum going.

For B2C companies, this may mean inviting brand advocates to submit ideas for new products and even bringing them in-house to work with an R&D team. For B2Bs, it might involve empowering brand advocates to become public speakers and to attend events and conferences on behalf of the company. It looks different for every company, but you’ll know once you’ve got it right. Once customer advocacy becomes the new norm, it changes the way that you do business.

The great thing about customer advocates is that they’re a gift that keeps on giving. As long as you remember to put some time into your relationship, they’ll continue to use their voices to sing the praises of your company. After all, if you give someone a positive customer experience, then they tell their friends about it. A well-designed customer advocacy program just grabs hold of that concept and takes it to the next level.

Ten ideas to show appreciation in your customer advocacy program:

1. Give recognition in the form of leaderboards and shout outs on social networking sites.
2. Provide early access to new products and invite their feedback.
3. Give them a t-shirt or other wearable promotion that displays your brand.
4. Invite them to an exclusive event to meet your team
5. Create unique graphics badges that advocates can use on their blog or in social media
6. Encourage advocates to promote your company or product by asking them to post a photo on social media. Then re-post or retweet customer social media posts to show thanks and give recognition.
7. Involve advocates to coming up with ideas for new products and give them credit when you use their approach. Yes even if you already had planned on doing it anyway.
8. Ask for help to improve the way you do business. You might uncover issues you did not know about that are hurting your brand.
9. Have an essay or art contest. Publish the creative works and results on your website and social media.
10. Give thanks and show appreciation back for every effort your advocates make. Respond professionally and in a positive way to every comment.

Conclusion

Customer advocacy programs can be an exciting way to level up your marketing and to create a network of brand advocates who do your marketing for you. Just don’t make the mistake of relying entirely on a customer advocacy program. You’ll need a balance

Customer advocacy programs are best when used as part of a broader marketing mix.  This mix should include marketing automation and a process for managing the customer journey.   Used correctly, it can integrate with content marketing campaigns, SEO, social media marketing and all sorts of other online and offline marketing channels. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

As the customer’s voice continues to gain importance, it’s pretty clear that well-executed customer advocacy programs have a firm place in the marketing mix. This approach is most useful for companies that specialize in niches and dealing with specific types of customer.

If you sell Warhammer figures, for example, then the chances are that every gamer you reach knows a dozen more people who don’t just play Warhammer – they live it. All you need to do is give them a reason to sing your praises and your product will sell itself. Customer advocacy programs are here to stay.

The post 5 steps to creating a successful customer advocacy program appeared first on New Hampshire Web Design.

Setting up and launching a website can be a stressful business. Even when you know what you want, it can be difficult to explain this to someone else, and when you try to do it yourself, you often end up way out of your depth or creating a website that just doesn’t do your vision justice.
The good news is that if you do it right, working with a web designer doesn’t have to be painful. Here are ten tips to make the process smoother and much more enjoyable.

1. Communicate your business needs thoroughly when working with a web designer

There’s no point having a fantastic website if it’s not meeting your business goals. That’s why it’s a good idea to set up either a meeting or a remote screen sharing session so that you can go through competitor and industry websites. Tell your designer what you like and what you don’t like and discuss what you can do to make yourself stand out. Remember that remote calls can save time (and money) by cutting the amount of time your designer spends on meetings, but only if you’re both comfortable with using remote technology.

2. Do a good job communicating your brand

Your company’s marketing standards play a huge role in the design phase, so it’s important to share essential information about colors and font preferences, logos and the visual imagery that you use to convey your message. Some people think that they need a new website and discover that they need a rebrand, while others fail to share brand information and end up causing delays and higher costs down the line.

3. Work with a professional web design company

Many people are tempted to work with freelancers or to give the job to the lowest bidder in an attempt to cut costs. This approach is usually a bad idea because there’s no guarantee of quality and it’s impossible for any one person alone to know everything there is to know about every area. A company, by contrast, can offer subject matter specialists in different areas and form a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.  When you have problems working with a web designer from that company you can usually ask for a new one and they can usually accommodate you quickly without going through a month-long search and rescue which is what you might need to do if you have to start over.

4. Find ways to lower your costs and that of your web designer

One way web design companies make a website more affordable is by limiting creative design options.  If an artist doesn’t limit creative options, they risk getting abused by a difficult client who insists on seeing as many design options as possible.  I had one client that LOVED the first design our designer created, and they said it was perfect.  After further consideration, they insisted on having us create two additional design options.  WHY???  Well, our contract stated that they could have up to 3 designs and the next design could be better than the first one, so they insisted on seeing more options.    This “grass could be greener” in the next design drives up costs unnecessarily and can cause relationships to sour.   It’s better to get it right first time and to focus on the revision process.

5. Consolidate feedback when working with a web designer

Avoid sending hundreds of emails with every little change that you think of because this will take up more time for your designer and potentially lead to things being missed out and forgotten altogether. Instead, consolidate the feedback as part of a list and pay particular attention to key decision makers at your organization so that you know they’ll be happy to sign off on the final design.

6. Write the content first or ask your web designer for help

Designers are business owners too, and the faster they get a job done, the sooner they can get paid and the more money they make. They’ll be able to pass those savings on to you if you speed up the process by preparing the written content beforehand instead of causing delays and redesigns later on in the process.  Furthermore, given that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) requires creative content, many web design firms now have full-time creative writers on staff.  If you let them take on your writing, you may find that your pages will get a higher rank with search engines in the process.

7. Work with your web designer to create a schedule of deliverables

When there are deadlines and deliverables in place, you know what to expect and when to expect it. Make sure that you consider the vacation plans of your decision makers so that you avoid rescheduling and putting extra pressure on an already busy designer. The best web designers run a busy shop and have a lot of work in production, so proper planning on your part will make their life easier and improve your relationship with them.  If your web designer is promising to complete the job in less than one month, that is a red flag, and maybe there’s a reason he is not so busy.

8. Agree on a scope

Work with your designer to create a written scope of work that details everything that the final website should contain.  For complex sites and systems, a design document includes pages of business rules and database designs.    The designer or programmer can refer back to this scope of work or design document, and you can use it to solve any disputes.   It’s also fairer for both parties because if you set a fixed price, that price covers everything in the scope – but no more and no less.   If you receive a one-page proposal for an e-commerce website, run the other way.

9. Keep deadlines on both sides

Web design takes time.  Be assertive if they miss deadlines but do it professionally.  If you constantly badger your web designer for updates, it may take even longer. Trust them to meet their deadlines and repay the courtesy by meeting any deadlines on your end for when you’ve agreed to pay invoices or sign off on designs.

10. Foster the relationship

Don’t just forget about your designer after you complete the project. It’s likely that you’ll want to make modifications down the line and at some point, you’re going to need to refresh the design or to launch a new version. That’s why it’s a good idea to stay in touch with your designer after the project is over in case you need to work with them again in the future.  Besides, you should consider the fact that making updates to your website is critical because its environment frequently changes.   Unless you’re working with a web designer to make upgrades and improvements a priority, your site will go stale and give your customers a bad experience.

Conclusion

Working with a web designer doesn’t have to be difficult. As with most forms of collaboration, communication is essential, so the best thing you can do is to stay open and transparent with your communication throughout the process. By following the ten tips in this article, you’ll be off to a good start.
Good luck – and enjoy your new website.

Want to work with a great web design firm?

NH Web Design can provide custom web design, development, SEO and managed web hosting services for those who want to have a worry-free WordPress website.  Contact us for a quote on your next project.

The post 10 Tips for Working with a Web Designer appeared first on New Hampshire Web Design.