Introducing G2’s New Brand Advocacy Services Category

On April 26, 2023, G2 launched a new category called Brand Advocacy Services. This category is aimed to reflect the growing offerings among marketing service providers to help businesses develop advocacy programs and drive brand loyalty. G2 has a Brand Advocacy Software parent category housing Customer Advocacy software and Employee Advocacy Software. With the new category, G2 will cater to the software and service side of advocacy marketing. 

Decoding brand advocacy services 

Brand advocacy services are marketing strategies that focus on building advocates for your brand. Brand advocates are customers, employees, or partners who promote positive information about your business. This will help boost a brand’s reputation, increase exposure, and drive brand loyalty and sales. Essentially, anyone who frequently supports your company can serve as an advocate, but identifying the ones that are most engaged and willing to share is key to building a successful program. 

A typical example of a brand advocate would be a returning customer that uses a business's product or service and is willing to share their experience. This may look like a customer making an Instagram or TikTok post and tagging your brand. It could also be an Amazon shopper leaving a glowing product review. Brand advocacy services will help your brand identify which customers' profiles are most engaged and excited about the brand and strategize ways to harness their loyalty. 

Although brand advocacy is often first associated with customer advocacy and referral marketing, brand advocates are not limited to just satisfied customers. They also include engaged employees and trusted channel partners. No matter the advocate, the general method of advocacy is sharing one’s positive experience with others.

Leveraging brand advocates

The most potent way advocates can promote a brand is through word-of-mouth marketing. 

Word-of-mouth marketing allows customers to share their personal experiences with a product or service to their immediate network. Their reach often includes their family and friends but isn’t limited to a physical circle; it also includes their digital one. Social networks have broadened the number of people digitally crossing one’s path, casting a wider net of potential customers with similar customer profiles across different social media platforms. 

By partnering with brand advocacy service providers, businesses can leverage their advocates’ network by reaching people in-person and online to generate more leads and sales.

Brand advocacy services are more than just identifying champions of your brand or business; they also provide strategies to leverage their loyalty and network to grow customers, gain new employees, and strengthen partnerships. 

Businesses often use brand advocacy services to help empower advocates through establishing referral programs, creating review initiatives, managing communities, or even producing content. 

Additionally, brand advocacy service providers can help implement brand advocacy software for their clients to help automate and streamline their advocacy programs. While the tools are typically used to manage and measure the program's effectiveness, it allows the service providers to focus on developing and implementing different strategies to create a successful advocacy program for their clients.

Great advocates start with great business

Every brand dreams of having advocates that are willing to share their positive experiences with a brand that ultimately generates marketing buzz and increases revenue. However, companies must also do their part in order to achieve this. 

Companies should prioritize being customer-obsessed and creating a great product to maximize the benefits of brand advocacy marketing services. 

Customer-centric companies that can maintain a standard of excellence when delivering high-quality products and services will benefit the most from these services, especially if they can build and nurture their community while developing mutually beneficial partnerships with their customers, employees, or channel partners. 

The future of brand advocacy services

It’s safe to predict that brand advocacy services will start incorporating AI-powered predictive intelligence and personalization to help identify, engage, and empower brand advocates. The power of AI within the marketing space is still very novel, but there is an abundance of opportunity to leverage AI within the service and software side of advocacy marketing.

Edited by Shanti S Nair