Seminar report

on
Advocacy Marketing

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Mrs. Shilpa Bhakar Dhruvi Jain
Rahul Prajapati
N. vvsuryanarayana
(MBA 1STTRIMESTER)

ITM UNIVERSITY
ADDRESS:
JHANSI ROAD, TURARI, GWALIOR, MADHYA PRADESH
 DECLARATION

We, students of MBA 1 Semester of School of Management, ITM

University, Gwalior, hereby declare that the report entitled “Advocacy
Marketing” is submitted by us in the line of partial fulfilment of course
objectives for the Masters of Business Administration Degree.
We assure that this seminar report is the result of our own efforts and
that any institute for the award of any degree or diploma has not been
submitted it.

Date:
Signature of the students
Place:

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 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that, and students of MBA 1 Semester of School of

Management, ITM University, Gwalior, has successfully completed
their Seminar Report entitled “Advocacy Marketing” under my direct
supervision and guidance.

(Mrs. Shilpa Bhakar)

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We, express our sincere gratitude to prof. Mrs. Shilpa Bhakar for giving
us the opportunity to work under her guidance on the report entitled
“Advocacy Marketing”.
We are grateful to our Dean Dr. Vandana Bharti, Seminar coordinator
Asstt. Prof. Ved Prakash, faculty members and other friends for their
valuable suggestions in the execution of report preparation.
We are also thankful to other staff that guided and helped us very kindly
at each and every step whenever we required.
We also acknowledge & convey thanks to the library staff, computer
department of SOM, ITM University for their kind and valuable
support.

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 CONTENTS

TOPIC PAGE
1. How marketing has changed in 21st century 5
2. What is advocacy marketing 6
3. advocacy marketing strategy 7-8
4. Application of advocacy marketing 9
5. Types of advocacy marketing 10
6. Advantages of advocacy marketing 11
7. Disadvantages of advocacy marketing 12
8. Examples of advocacy marketing 13-14

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 HOW MARKETING HAS CHANGED IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Marketing has been around since the Industrial Revolution. Everything we do, how we communicate, how we stop,
especially how companies’ market has changed since the turn of the century. One of the biggest and most obvious
reasons is the birth of the internet and modern technology. The 20 th century did not have the same luxuries of
touchscreen cell phones, Bluetooth speakers, social media, and many other things that we take for granted today.
Most interesting about marketing is that it changes rapidly, but still keeps its central principles. A marketer’s goal has
always been to bring publicity to their products and the company they work for, and that will never change. What will,
and has changed is how marketers go about doing this, it is no secret that the birth of modern technology has changed
marketing forever. Social media is a convenient and cost-efficient method to bring publicity to your product.
Although marketing techniques have changed throughout the lifetime, not an expert on marketing strategies before the
21st century. When I was younger almost all the advertisement, I engaged with either in magazines, on billboards, or
on television. While those are still used today, almost all the advertisement I come across now are on Facebook,
Instagram, and twitter. After the rise of social media advertisements, Seeker and engagement channels became a
widely used marketing strategy. Seeker channels are a great place for Social Selling because a consumer is on that
website for a specific purpose. The two main seeker channels are YouTube and Pinterest. Engagement channels are
websites or applications consumers go on to engage with one another. Examples of Engagement channels are
Instagram and Twitter. Marketers mainly use Engagement channels for social listening. Social listening helps
marketers get to know and understand the consumers they are pursuing. Social listening is a helpful tactic when
companies are trying to create personas for their target market.
Before the 21st century, marketers would launch a campaign and it could take weeks before a company knew if the
marketing campaign was a success. In today’s age, companies will know almost instantly through the use of the
internet and social media. Focus groups are no longer a necessity, but before the Digital Age, companies could not live
without them. This conveys how much marketing has changed in just 20 years.
Change is the dominant fact of life in every business today. And the ability to master and exploit changes has become
one pf the most sought-after management skills. This is particularly true in marketing where the very tempo of change
is constantly quickening.
Today’s chief executive faces a baffling dilemma. Change gets costlier every day: yet not changing can be costlier
still. And even while adapting to change, a company’s marketing effort must reflect an internal constancy of purpose
and an external consistency of image.
The 21st Century Marketing. The amount of marketing tactics available is mind-blowing. There is usually no single
method. Businesses must use a combination of strategies and see what best fits them. More and more companies are
adopting advocacy marketing for its simplicity and authenticity. It is gradually becoming the go-to marketing strategy
for many businesses in different industry.

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 WHAT IS ADVOCACY MARKETING?

Advocacy marketing is a directed word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) strategy driven by people. It

leverages your brand’s closest, most passionate and valuable circle of supporters for marketing, promotion
and advertising across digital and social media channels. Many studies have proclaimed this people-to-
people marketing approach — the most foundational type of marketing — to be the best ever.
It makes sense: People want to interact with other humans— not a faceless brand. And the people who do
the best word-of-mouth endorsement are brand advocates: The individuals most closely tied to your brand,
directly or indirectly, who love it and want to share that love with others.
These advocates — your staff, partners, customers, fans and more — are in the natural and best position to
spread adoration for your organization to their networks of your potential customers. They can do this by
sharing your brand content and by creating their own authentic media — videos, photos and more — on
behalf of your brand. Today, advocacy marketing activity is running in lockstep with general shifts in how
and where consumers spend their time consuming and sharing information. It’s happening almost
exclusively on digital and social media channels.
In most cases, these first-degree brand champions collectively have more followers on their social media
accounts than your brand accounts do. And they’ve built solid, authentic relationships with those followers.
So, they have a unique ability to extend your reach exponentially and build the emotional bonds that drive
consumer loyalty and activation.
Advocacy marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on getting your current customers to advocate for
your business, products, and/or services online.
Advocates can express their support for your business in many ways, such as:
 YouTube review videos.
 Facebook statuses.
 Instagram posts.
 Tweets.

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 ADVOCACY MARETING STRATEGY

5 basic principles that every good advocacy marketing strategy is built around. Let’s dive into them!
 Sell a great product or service
Rule number one in the advocacy marketing handbook is to make sure your customers have a reason to
shout about your products or services in the first place. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into
marketing or how great your customer experience is. If you don’t have a top-notch product or service,
they’re not going to become brand advocates. On the other hand, a fantastic product or service can make up
for poor marketing and an otherwise bad customer experience. If what your selling offers incredible value,
your customers are going to tell their friends about it anyway.
 Provide a memorable brand experience
That means every interaction or encounter they have with your brand should be excellent. The goal is to
create memorable brand experiences that they can’t help but want to tell their friends about.
That means the customer service needs to be on point. The product packaging should be intuitive. The
website should be well-thought-out and easy to navigate. Every piece of content you share with your social
followers should be compelling and engaging. This all helps create unforgettable experiences and positive
stories for your customers to share.
 Give excellent customer service
When the customers feel like they’ve been treated well by any brand, they’re motivated to do the same.
That’s why giving great customer service is so important.
By creating a customer-first approach, they will build customer loyalty. There are many ways to work on
your customer service, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
o Always respond to mentions, questions, and comments on social media promptly.
o Stick to your promises as a brand and make sure you deliver your products on time.
o Train your representatives on how to deliver great customer service consistently.
o Make sure customer aftercare is not an afterthought.
o Offer a generous return and exchange policy.
o Keep the call queues down, so they don’t keep customers waiting for your sales or support lines.

This helps your customers feel like they can trust and rely on your brand. When they feel they’ve been taken
care of well, they’re more likely to advocate for it.
 Make it easy to and encourage customers to advocate
The steps above will help ensure the customers have positive experiences with the brand. The next step is to
encourage them to share those experiences with others. Some customers will advocate for your brand
because they’re thrilled with their experience. But most of them will still require a little push. As such, there
are two steps you need to take: Make it easy for customers to advocate for your brand: Incentivize customers
to advocate for your brand.
o Step one might involve adding social sharing buttons to your webpages, providing pre-populated
Facebook messages, creating a branded hashtag for your customers to use when sharing reviews, or
anything similar that makes it less time consuming for your customers to advocate. 7
 o Step two is to give customers more reason to advocate for your business. There are plenty of
methods to incentivize them, but here are a few ideas you can try:

1. Set up an affiliate marketing program, such as offering a discount when they refer a friend
2. Create a rewards or loyalty program for your customers
3. Launch an Instagram contest or giveaway to encourage customers to share pictures with your
products
 Look for advocates
The best advocates for your brand are loyal customers that are very satisfied with your offerings.
Once you’ve identified those happy customers, you’ll be able to better personalize your marketing messages
and reach out to them directly when you launch your advocacy marketing campaign.
Here are a few ideas on how can it be done:
Assign a member of your social team to look up who’s engaging with your brand. Reach out to large profiles
for a potential brand ambassadorship
Use software solutions, such as social listening tools, to “listen in” on your customer conversations and track
who’s already advocating for your brand online.
Launch a user-generated content (UGC) campaign to find engagers.
Use NPS surveys to ask your customers to rate how likely they are to recommend your brand to others. The
customers who rate themselves “very likely” are your brand advocates.

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 APPLICATION OF ADVOCACY MARKETING

Consumer brand marketers everywhere today are struggling under the weight of many obstacles to reach and
activate consumers, particularly in the last 18 months. Slashed marketing budgets and headcounts, increased
costs for advertising and production, and wandering audiences, to name a few.
Advocacy marketing is so critical for brands because it enables their teams to stretch capabilities and extend
resources to meet their business goals — without increasing advertising spend, workload and staff. With the
help of brand advocates, you already have, organizations can do a lot in a very short time:
- Attract more new customers — for free
- Expand reach, engagement and build trust
- Increase sponsorship revenue and online sales
- Reduce or eliminate costs and increase efficiency
- Drop reliance on ‘official’ digital and social media channels
Brand advocates are the human face of your organization. Importantly, they’re also 50% more likely to
influence purchase decisions. People trust company, event and product endorsements from their closest
circles: their friends, family, co-workers, and even celebrities and other notable individuals they admire. As
one example, they’re 16x more likely to read a friend’s post about a brand than one from the brand itself.
Because of this, advocacy marketing is a core business concept that is more relevant than ever right now.
Consumers are ignoring ads more. And social media has diminished the control a brand has on its own
personality, image and voice. It has also changed buying habits and put consumers in charge of determining
whether what a brand puts out is real and should be trusted.
An organization’s message and perceived value are now in the hands of individuals, collectively more
powerful than even the biggest brand budgets. Savvy marketers know that leveraging the right advocates on
social media channels can turn those individual voices into a roar from millions that can prompt still more
people to embrace a brand.
You may be thinking that if you have paid influencers, your advocacy marketing work is done. But paid
influencers aren’t authentic brand advocates. They generally don’t have a genuine interest in the brands they
represent, they’ve saddled companies with a multitude of brand safety issues, and they’re expensive at any
follower count level. In reality, they’re the same as the brand advertising consumers are avoiding in favour
of quality content and credible endorsements from their real connection points.
That’s likely why only less than 20 percent of people trust brand influencers these days, while over 90
percent trust brand advocates. And consumers find authentic content nearly 10x more impactful than
influencer content when making a purchasing decision. Real photos, videos and conversation — not
manufactured, hyped brand content — spur higher brand engagement, activation and conversion.
Because the most effective brand advocates work with you in some way or are already customers, they have
meaningful ties to your organization that stand out in their communication. Consumers are more open to
engaging with them and more willing to act on their messages.

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 TYPES OF ADVOCACY MARKETING

When it comes to advocacy marketing, there are two types you can generally focus your efforts on:
employees and customers.
What your organization decides to focus on is entirely up to your business goals and strategies. The best
solution is to focus your efforts on both and really power up your brand.

Employee advocacy:
Employee advocacy is a type of advocacy marketing that encourages employees to share and create content
around the company they work for in an organic way to attract new business and top talent.
Customer advocacy:
Customer advocacy is a type of advocacy marketing that encourages customers to share and create content
and leave company reviews organically in order to drive more awareness and sales.
Earned Advocacy:
This is the most valuable type because the source is authentic – actual customers, industry thought leaders,
and influencers. It’s also the most scalable because it’s self-perpetuating: as you fill the funnel with new
leads and gain new customers, the advocacy process begins anew. Additionally, earned advocates are more
likely than others to be content creators – people who generate content that references, touts, and/or links
back to yours. Like “earned media,” earned advocacy is not paid for … at least not directly (there’s a lot of
hard work involved in providing great products, services, and storytelling that lays the groundwork), and it
can’t be bought. It can be effective through the entire funnel.
Owned Advocacy:
Owned advocates are “inside players” who are associated with your brand and have a stake in its success;
e.g., employees, fellow travellers, suppliers, and business partners. Its value can be important in the middle
and bottom of the funnel when prospective buyers are diving deeper and looking for more specific proof
points and engagement levels on which to base their decisions.
Paid Advocacy:
Like the term, these are advocates a company pays to endorse the brand. Celebrities and athletes fall into this
camp, as do doctors, lawyers, and other influencers who are remunerated in exchange for their seal of
approval. Although they’re far less likely to be viewed as authentic, paid advocates can help jumpstart
awareness and interest for a product or service.

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 ADVANTAGES OF ADVOCACY MARKETING

Natural marketing
People would be ready to advocate your brand only when they find real value in your product. Having the
first-hand experience with it, they share their natural views about the product to others. Since their listeners
are listening to it from an unbiased angle, they are more likely to get converted.

No investment
Companies do not have to pay to build advocacy. It comes out of the natural passion and sentiments people
hold for a brand. And it spreads from one person to another without any investment.

Real life experience

Advertisement’s people see through paid channels often give the best glimpse of the product and are mostly
biased. But through advocacy marketing, people get to hear about real life experiences of users. That is
anytime more effective in generating trust and converting a customer than paid ads. By sharing real life
experiences, people transform it to a breathing and alive marketing strategy.

Wider reach
Companies should no way assume that since brand advocacy is free, it wouldn’t have a wider reach than
paid advertising. An average social media account holder has 400 connections in their network. When it
becomes a chain of promotion in multi-level networks, it reaches a much larger audience than paid
marketing.

Dedicated customers
Because advocacy marketing encourages clients to promote a brand, it can generate a strong base of
dedicated, loyal customers who are passionate about the product. They mat attract other loyal customers
who also develop a trusting relationship with the business.

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 DISADVANTAGES OF ADVOCACY MARKETING

There are some risks involved in advocacy. Identifying them and being prepared for dealing with them will
be extremely useful.
One of the largest risks is involvement in industry and political associations, public actions and events. This
may result in damage in reputation and finance, or to relationships with stakeholders, partners or the
government.
Some general rules of thumb to minimize risk:
 Work in partnerships to spread responsibility and share potential risk
 Make judgements about what risk is acceptable, or should be avoided
 Plan your initiative to understand the impact and map consequences
 Gather reliable evidence that is backed by science and statistics

A thoroughly planned advocacy approach should help you avoid confrontation in the first place. If you have
designed your goals clearly, and are impartial and transparent about your funding, you will stand up to
scrutiny from less friendly voices.
Internally, some examples of where risks can come from are:
 Loss of funding
 Loss of staff
 Funding allocated wrongly
 Misspent funds
 Legal confrontations
 Technology risks

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 EXAMPLES OF ADVOCACY MARKETING

1. Tesla’s Advocacy Marketing

Tesla found a great way to mobilize their loyal customers to attract even more clients. And not just any
clients, but people who view their brand in a positive light because the person who refers them is someone
close, happy with Tesla.
Basically, Tesla implemented referral packages that gave both the referred person and the existing customer
amazing discounts – a $1,000 discount on a new order for both of them, in fact.
That wasn’t all, though. Tesla offered existing customers even more motivation – if they referred 10 people,
they got the right to buy a limited Founder Series of the brand’s Model X SUV that wasn’t sold to the
public. What’s more, the first person to do that also got the vehicle for free.
Takeaway
Advocacy marketing goes hand in hand with referral marketing – you motivate loyal customers to promote
your brand, and in return get new business, as people are generally more likely to make a purchase when
referred by a friend.
You don’t really have to offer expensive rewards just like Tesla, but you can follow their example and make
it fit your own budget.

2. Starbucks’ Advocacy Marketing

Starbucks’ advocate marketing campaign was called Tweet-A-Coffee. The idea was pretty simple – it would
allow customers to buy a $5 gift card for their friends through Twitter. Customers just had to Tweet the
@tweetacoffee handle alongside the recipient’s own Twitter handle. The first 100,000 people who joined the
program also got a $5 gift card themselves.
Besides being a profitable strategy (generating around $180,000 in sales for Starbucks), it also allowed the
brand to identify both loyal advocates and potential customers (over 27,000 brand advocates alone
participated) they can engage with to boost sales even more down the road.
Takeaway
Your client advocacy marketing strategy shouldn’t just always focus on profit. Sometimes, it pays off to find
out exactly which of your clients are customer advocates so that you can engage with them to drive more
brand loyalty and attract new clients to boost long-term ROI.

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3. Apple’s Advocacy Marketing
Apple is very well-known for how much it appreciates user-generated content, and it’s no surprise they
based their own advocacy marketing strategy on that. Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign sourced dozens of
pictures from Apple users from all over the world.
The idea was straightforward – Apple asked users to share photos they took with their iPhones on social
media, using a designated hashtag. The company then proceeded to pick the photos it liked the most, and use
them on public transit and billboard ads.
Out of the numerous photos that were posted (many people lined up at the opportunity to become an Apple
“star”), Apple settled on shots from 77 people from 24 countries – plenty of material for ads, and barely any
editing required on their part (the photos were the ads, with only the “Shot on iPhone” phrase over them).
Takeaway
When it comes to ads, you don’t always have to spend time and money on copy and design – you can let
your loyal customers handle that for you. Using their content in your ads (or as your ads) makes them feel
more natural, and makes it easier for consumers to relate to them (in this case, the fact that the photos didn’t
seem staged really helped the ad seem genuine and not forced or fake).
Also, ads don’t always have to be grandiose and expensive – minimalist and cost-efficient ads can be very
efficient too.

4. Gap’s Advocacy Marketing

Nowadays, Gap is a well-known clothing retailer. But back in 2010, the company – while quite big – was
still working on building its brand to make it more popular. In the same year, the company teamed up with
Groupon to offer consumers a deal they could hardly refuse – a 50% discount on $50 purchases during a
single day.
As risky as such a strategy sound, it was resoundingly successful. It got to the point where 534 Gap offers
were being sold per minute before the midday of the release date. Obviously, it all paid off, with the
company earning around $11 million in revenue.
But besides that, we should also consider how much the brand won in terms of advocacy marketing –
numerous people took to social media on that day to let others know about the offer. Plus, it was the kind of
deal that likely got people talking with their friends, family, and even work colleagues about it. All in all, the
brand created a lot of social media buzz during that day, and the audience attention kept up after it as well.
Takeaway
Gap has the simplest lesson to teach us all – that, sometimes, risks are worth taking. Given the huge
discounts the brand offered, there was a chance they could lose a lot of money (just imagine how much it
cost them to cover the social media and email marketing expenses, plus the cut Groupon took) if things
didn’t work out the way the company intended.
Sure, tested and proven strategies should take priority, but trying out a new approach to advocacy marketing
(that carries some risk) can be worth it – provided the company can afford to deal with a potentially negative
outcome, and that the advocacy campaign is well thought-out.

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