Ep 03. How to build your very own brand fans

Emma Drake:
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Communication Strategy That Works, with me, Emma Drake. Today, I’m going to be talking to you about using industry partners and brand advocates to grow your customer reach and grow your business. I’m going to talk you through what the hell are brand advocates, how they can help you grow and protect your brand and your business. And I’m also going to talk you through the five steps on how you can start your brand advocacy program, and also the common pitfalls and things to avoid that I’ve learned.

So, what the heck is a brand advocate? Well, simply put, these are people that will love your business. People that will support your business and people that can sing your praises for you. So, they’ll go out to their networks, they’ll go about their daily business, they’ll be singing your praises and telling people about your amazing product or service. These will also be people that can help you in times of a crisis, because you are going to need people on your side when things go wrong. Let’s hope they don’t, but they are great people to have when things go wrong.

So, how do I find these people that are important to my business? Well, you might know some of them already. I would start by asking yourself two questions. Who do you want and need on your side? And who are the doubters and naysayers? And I’m guessing with just those two questions, you’ve got a pretty good idea of who you need on your list.

You need to make a long list to start off with and include individuals that matter to your business success and be thorough. Ask your suppliers, ask your staff what they think. Be honest, really honest about this. My advice would be not to avoid those difficult relationships. Think, “Oh, I don’t want to engage that person because it’s been a bit tricky.” Put them on the list. We’ll deal with those later.

These are the ones you need to nurture. And remember, it’s a marathon and not a sprint, so the long list is really a starting point. But to make the list manageable, the next thing is to try and group these people in a manageable way, ways you can identify them. Now, you might have certain phrases that you use within your business, but we want to group them by the elements they hold common. And then we want to begin to prioritize them. You could also group them according to interests of areas of expertise. For example, this might be things like policy.

It might be supply chain and logistics. It might be that they’re a funder or an investor. They might have really in-depth product knowledge in the area that you’re in, in your industry. They might be an activist in your industry. They could be a key customer. Someone you’ve provided excellent customer service to and always buys from you. Or they could be members of your staff.

Well, this could be quite a long list, admittedly. So, one of the ways that I like to start with this is to think, “How can I regroup them? How can we split them up?” I’ve got a link in the show notes for you. Don’t worry, you don’t have to make lots of notes. There’s a link in the show notes to a really simple tool that I use with some explanatory notes with it called the Boston Matrix. Some of you listening might be familiar with the Boston Matrix. It was originally developed by the Boston Consulting Group to identify areas of business growth. But now it’s commonly used for a number of areas. And in this sort of relationship management area, it’s definitely a very overused tool purely because it’s so simple. I love using it. I’m a real advocate.

So, you’ll see, I have an example for you in the show notes, so don’t worry, but I’m just going to briefly talk you through this. So, this long list, what you want to think about is you want to think about who are the people on this list, firstly? I like to work in buckets. I like to put things in big buckets. So, my first big bucket is who do I know really well? Who are the people that are going to be quick wins for me here? Okay. Bucket number one.

Bucket number two might be people that are slightly further away, but that you have some connection with, but you know you need to bring them closer. You know that if you think about it, actually, you know who they are. You’re going to want to bring them closer. You want to bring them in, but you’re perhaps not sure how or when, or haven’t got the time. But that’s bucket number two.

Bucket number three is other people that you know of, but actually you may not have a connection with. You might have a second or third connection with. So that’s bucket number three.

Bucket number four is other people. They might be really important people. They might be a minister. They might be somebody in charge of your industry sector in some way. They might be just that absolute ultimate customer or joint venture you want to bring in or partnership. They’re going to take a bit of work. So, put them in bucket number four.

So, you’ve got your four buckets and you kind of have an understanding of how important they are just by throwing them in these big buckets. I’ve got some more detailed notes through the show notes. You can follow the link. So, what you want to try and do here is you’re looking at trying to have some quick wins and you want to look at ways you can bring those other people closer to you because they’re the ones that you know can be influential, you know they are influential in their particular expertise or sector or however you’ve grouped them, and you might want to even apply a bit of a sliding scale within the buckets here. You can get as nerdy as you want with this and as detailed as you like.

I like to get quite nerdy with it. But you might want to have a sliding scale within your big bucket that sort of is a one to five sort of how close they are to your organization.

And then you might want to have another scale that says how close would you like them to be? And then you want to work on the gap. Okay? So, once you’ve got your list of people, the next step for you is to think about how you want to reach them. Now, depending on what bucket they’re in, this could be completely different. So, there’s a little bit of work here to think about.

Where are they hanging out? Where will you find them? Can you pick up the phone to them? Is it a meeting? Are they hanging out at your next industry event? Do you need to reach them through media? Is it trade publications? Do you need to be on speaking platforms? Do you need to be sending them something direct mail? Do you need to enter into an agreement with them? Do you want to do some joint planning with them? Joint research? Are they on industry forums and round tables that you want to be on?

So, have a think about how you could possibly reach them. You might have some gaps and that’s fine, but have a think about that. You might already have a program of content or PR or marketing, and you might want to have a look at that alongside your list of people to see where you can map them together. And you might quickly find that actually some of the activity you’re doing, you can actually join that together quite simply. And you might have some gaps, but that’s absolutely fine.

The next step for you is to think about what you’re going to say. Now, this is a whole area of expertise. Working out your messaging as a business is hugely important. Hugely important. And you all need to be on the same page with it. What’s your USP? What’s your unique thing that you do? Maybe you make something that no one else does.

Maybe you just make it a different way. Maybe your service is all about you and you deliver it in a completely different way. Maybe your product is sourced from a particular area. But what is it about your product or service that can help that person? So, we’re talking about brand advocates here, how can your product or service help that person that you want to connect with? And then think about five things for each of those buckets and groups of people where you think you could strike a chord.

It’s really important to set goals at the beginning of your relationship management journey and your brand advocacy program. Be really, really clear about the destination. It can be time intensive, but it can also not cost you very much money. It can cost you time, which in a small business is money, but in terms of spend on budgets, a lot of this can be people to people type work so you can do it face-to-face, you can do it through meetings, et cetera.

I would really love to know what worked well and what didn’t work well for you. So, please follow me on social, DM me, let me know how you got on. Feel free to email me. My details are in the show notes. I’d really like you to try and keep a score and keep a track of it and track how you’re doing. You could do this with a sliding scale. You could allocate a person to manage the program. You could do it via a number of different things, but I’d really like you to do that and keep a track of what’s happened and how far you’ve got with those relationships and whether or not you feel like you’re succeeding with that.

Finally, I’d like to share with you two common pitfalls that I’ve come across, and I don’t want you to make the same mistake. So, the first one is make sure everyone is on board in your management team. Quite often, I find that this is not the case. You need to be really clear when you set about your brand advocacy program, where you’re headed, and therefore what your message is. And also because of that, you need to make sure the management team is completely aligned with sharing information with people and also bringing people into the organization or closer to the organization that everyone’s happy to do that with.

Okay. So, that’s my first one. You need to all be aligned. My second one is that the individual relationships should not sit with the individual. Now, again, this is something I come across all the time where someone joins a business to help it grow and help it succeed, and they have their little black book and then that person leaves and those relationships leave with that person. I mean, how crazy is that? So, you’ve invested that time and money and then the relationships leave. This is why it’s super important to have brand advocacy as part of your communication strategy. Okay? This is one of the reasons why it’s absolutely imperative that it’s part of your business planning and communication strategy. It’s not just a business development tool.

So finally, thank you so much for listening today to the Communication Strategy That Work podcast. I’m Emma, and don’t forget to check my show notes for those links that I mentioned. I’d also love it if you would subscribe to my podcast and leave a review, and please share this within your networks if you think there’s someone that could benefit from listening, too. So, I’ll just say bye for now and speak to you next time.