6 Benefits of Building Online Advocate Communities

According to Google, around 60% of the business technology customers search for peer recommendations during their decision-making process.

When a brand inspires its customers to transform into brand advocates, they become a valuable marketing channel helping the brand gain other potential buyers.

That’s why most of the B2B and B2C brands are opting to create and launch their customer communities focused on the respective brand’s most loyal and passionate users or advocates.

Here’s a list of benefits that comes with an online brand community.

1. Increased sales

Starting an Advocate community can work wonders for a business’s sales department. Many brands have witnessed getting doubled or tripled some referrals within weeks after starting a community. Advocate communities can also increase the sales by encouraging Advocates to share the brand’s promotional offers with their peer networks.

1. Fewer ads and promotional dependency

Whenever people purchase from their favourite brands, they never wait for the brand to have a sale for it or to see an advertisement. People buy from their favourite brands because of their love for the specific brand’s products and how they make them feel.

Having an Advocate community can save the promotional expenses one has to make to generate traffic. A brand’s community represents the brand’s values and what it is all about.

1. Increased customer retention

A company loses revenues worth millions of dollars every year due to customer attrition. The attrition is as big as 50 per cent in some of the industries.

A brand’s community members create a switching barrier and help cut churn by building deeper relationships with Advocates. The one time shoppers will also become repeated purchasers if the brand’s community connects with them emotionally.

1. More engagement

Effective marketing doesn't end once you acquire a customer; instead, it starts with it. Keeping your customers involved with the brand works most effectively for the cause. Advocate communities help a brand to get maximum engagements through referrals, content creations, surveys, polls etc.

1. Drive Advocacy

According to Google consumer study, 9 out of 10 potential buyers are influenced by product reviews while making purchase decisions, and 59 per cent of them opt out of buying a product after reading only 3 negative reviews.

Online communities increase a product’s Advocacy by getting more positive reviews. Other contents like Advocate-generated stories, case studies or success stories can also help to drive organic search traffic and increase website sales.

1. Understand the customers better

Knowing what your customer is experiencing or expecting is the best possible way to make the customer experience better. An online Advocate community lets a brand to learn what the customers do and don’t like about the brand’s customer experience. The communities also generate feedbacks to improve the products and customer experiences.

Nowadays, most of the top brands understand that competing on price, selections or advertising muscles are not as easy as it was in the past. There will always be another company willing to lose more on sales only to conquer over one. So, the Advocate communities are the only way to go for building a stronger brand by strengthening customer relations.

Initial based in Mumbai Graduate student of data sciences I used to write on different topics which I like most such as Technology, Educational, and Financial.