Creating Brand Advocacy

Producing newsworthy and shareworthy content may get you noticed but to create true Brand Advocacy you need, ultimately, to lead Buyer Opinions on five key Motivational criteria:

• Relevancy
• Association
• Accessibility
• Value
• Expectation

Get ticks in the boxes on all of these, and outperform your competitors on the overall score, and you will create brand advocates and grow your business performance. Knowing which, if any, you lag behind on gives you your first steer on what you need to improve.

Growing brand advocacy is a strong sign you are growing likelihood to buy.

Knowing your RAAVE© Score gives you the metric and diagnoses to achieve both.

The next question, of course, is how to increase buyer perceptions on each of these 5 criteria?

Let’s start with Relevancy.

Relevancy

To increase perceptions of Relevancy you need to think like the potential Buyer and consider what aspects of your offer are relevant to them.

If you are selling cars, for example, you’ll already know that market segments exist – that is why there are many different classes of vehicles. Does your range cover all potential classes and variants? The more you offer, the more relevant you will be. And what about all the optional extras, the gadgets and creature comforts – how well do they fit the need?

And so on. Consider all the functional aspects – and then score yourself versus the competition – how does that look?

The first step in creating advocacy is to have a product that fits the needs of the market – for as many segments as possible.

Let’s now look at the other elements so you can begin to consider how to build your levels of advocacy and likelihood to buy.

Association

So how, then, to increase the level of Association – the ability of buyers to be proud to say they buy your brand?

If Relevancy was about the functional reasons for buying, Association is about the emotional (or spiritual) reasons.

Continuing with the car buying analogy, you will recognise that differing marques have differing “personalities”. What image are you portraying about yourself by driving an Audi, Renault, Nissan, etc?

Another aspect of building Association, is Corporate Social Responsibility – will they mark you down on that score? Are the competition out-playing you?

And the third aspect, what percentage of people have a view about your brand one way or the other? That is about Awareness – “do they know you exist?” – and significance – “do they care?”.

Create your using these various criteria and think how well Buyers would be likely to rate your brand on them versus the competition. How well do you come out? Which aspects could you improve on?

Accessibility

Thirdly, Accessibility.

There are typically 5 aspects you need to rate yourself on relative to competitors:

• Physical
• Digital
• Logical
• Financial
• Social (‘inclusiveness’)

Physical: this is your real-world distribution e.g. for cars: How many store locations & what’s the total catchment area?

Digital: how easy you are to find, contact & buy from online?

Logical: the usability of your brand. What unnecessary barriers are you placing on the usage? e.g. for cars, does that new way of locking the vehicle work in all situations? By insisting owners take their vehicles to your dealership for servicing are you making it inconvenient? etc

Financial: making your brand affordable to the widest number of people. e.g. for cars, not everyone can afford a Mercedes but offering easy payment terms may widen the market. Intermediaries like Klarna trade on your equity here.

And finally Social. Are there sections of society who would use your brand but feel disenfranchised from doing so? Visiting a car dealership can be an intimidating experience. Are you thinking about nervous shoppers and how you care for their needs for information, reassurance, nurturing? Are your competitors?

So, what’s your score on Accessibility?

Value

If Relevancy, Association, and Accessibility are what you are offering, how much are you charging for the privilege of having them?

And how do they compare vs the competition?

If you think your combined score on the first 3 dimensions puts you 10% of the market average, is charging 50% more than the average market price going to look like good value for money in the eyes of the potential Buyer? It’s a key trade-off.

What’s your view on the balance of the package of benefits you’re offering versus the price you are charging?

Expectation

And lastly, Expectation.

This is the dimension that often turns Satisfaction into Advocacy.

Do you deliver on all your promises, all of the time?

When the Buyer has the vehicle you’ve sold them, do they look forward to driving it every time they take a trip? Does the actual build quality and reliability match what was put in the brochure and the video? Do Buyers look forward to interacting with your staff or view it with trepidation?

So, how well do you think Buyers would rate your brand on this dimension, relative to the competition?

Your Overall RAAVE Score – How well would you rate your brand?

So, how well did you rate your brand overall?

Is the overall Score you gave yourself ahead of the market or lagging behind it?

If the former, what are you doing now to perpetuate your lead and/or extend it?

If the latter, which of the five dimensions are dragging you down most and you therefore need to fix first?

And whilst, so far, that’s your view of what you think Buyers would say, do you now need to ask actual potential Buyers to get their real perspective? Or have you got the information in your existing Brand Tracker or U&A data, but you’ve never looked at it in this way before?

Wherever you are, you can now put together your agenda for how you will create brand advocacy.