To ensure that you are asking for testimonials effectively, it is important to understand the best ways to approach customers and use each available communication channel for maximum impact. Email, SMS, social media, and even in-person interactions are all powerful ways to gather testimonials – as long as you are mindful of best practices.

How to ask for a testimonial? In this comprehensive guide, we will discuss who to ask for a testimonial, how to craft the perfect request, and the most effective ways to showcase the testimonials once you have them.

The importance of testimonials

The power of client testimonials is indisputable. Studies have shown that potential customers are more likely to purchase a product or service if they can observe the experiences of other purchasers. This phenomenon is known as “social proof” — meaning that people want to see evidence that other customers are happy with the products and services they are considering.

In addition to helping build credibility and trust among potential customers, testimonials can also play a major role in increasing conversion rates and improving SEO. By featuring customer experiences on your website and social media channels, you can increase engagement and trust among website visitors and search engine users. When done correctly, this has been shown to result in higher conversion rates as well as improved ranking on SERPs.

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When to ask for a testimonial

Reaching customers when they are most satisfied with your products and services is essential for obtaining useful and positive customer references. Consider asking customers for testimonials when:

• They have completed their purchase or received a service
• They have had time to experience the product or service
• They are talking about your brand on social media
• They cite their positive experience in an email, social media comment, or survey
• They have left a positive online review on a third-party review site
• You are sending out follow-up emails after a transaction

You should be consistent in asking customers for testimonials. Make it part of your customer service process, and use every opportunity to capture feedback from customers – turning success stories and positive feedback into testimonials.

Who to ask for a testimonial

As mentioned, you should target customers who have had outstandingly positive experiences with your products or services. Examples of such customers can be those who have been your loyal clients for a long time, those whose businesses enjoy a strong reputation in the industry, and those who have achieved remarkable success with the help of your products or services.

To expand your appeal and showcase the usefulness of your products/services to a larger group, gather feedback from customers who come from different backgrounds. This means reaching out to people across various industries, age groups, countries and other demographic groups. You’ll also want to highlight customers with different use cases, if applicable to your product or service. This will help you reach a broader audience by featuring a diverse mix of customers in your testimonials. Gathering feedback from both new and long-time customers will also give you a more complete understanding of the customer experience.

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Crafting the perfect request

Besides an outstandingly positive customer experience, the success of your testimonial request largely depends on how you write it. It should be polite, concise, and appealing enough to invite the recipient to write the testimonial. Personalization is essential: sending out generic, overly formal requests will likely result in fewer responses and lower-quality testimonials. Here are a few tips for crafting the perfect request:

1. Personalize the message: Taking some time to personalize your request can go a long way in getting favorable responses from customers. For instance, you can mention the customer by name, mention something specific about their business or their use of your product/service, or thank them for their loyalty.
2. Make it easy: Don’t make the customer think too much about what they need to write in their testimonial. Provide them with a few prompts (open-ended questions) or even a testimonial template that they can use as a starting point for their feedback. You can also include a sample testimonial from another customer to give them an idea of what you’re looking for.
3. Keep the tone professional yet friendly: Make sure your request is written in an amicable and professional manner. You don’t want to sound too robotic. Avoid using overly informal language that might make the customer feel uncomfortable while maintaining a professional demeanor.
4. Ask the right questions: Asking specific, strategic testimonial questions (like the ones directly below) will help you collect the most powerful testimonials.

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Convincing the client to give a testimonial

Showing how testimonials are beneficial for both parties can increase the likelihood of a customer giving one. Consider offering incentives, such as backlinks, promotional material to their business, gift cards, or even money off their next purchase in exchange for the testimonial. 

Demonstrating high levels of sincerity also goes a long way in creating a positive impression, So does offering the customer choice in how their testimonial is collected (e.g., text, audio or video testimonial). Even providing the option of a Twitter-length testimonial for those who may not have time to give a longer one can help get the customer on board.

How to ask for a testimonial via different channels

Similar to advertising, asking for testimonials should be done across a variety of communication channels. Each channel offers unique advantages and different approaches should be taken to ensure success in each respective medium.

Testimonial request email templates

Email is one of the most commonly used methods for asking for testimonials due to its affordability, accessibility, and convenience. As previously mentioned, your email should be concise and to the point while also being professional and friendly.

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Aside from introducing yourself and providing background information, your email should also include a brief explanation as to why you are asking for the testimonial, what it would mean for your business, any possible benefits the customer may receive for providing the testimonial, and a touch of personalization to make the customer feel appreciated. If you do not receive a response after the first contact, consider sending a follow-up email within the next few weeks to inquire again.

Here are some examples of testimonial request letters that you could email:

Asking for testimonials via SMS

Another popular channel for requesting testimonials is SMS (text messages). While it can be a fast and convenient way to reach customers, there are some challenges associated with this method. For one, SMS messages have to be brief and concise since customers only have so much time to read them. As such, you should make sure your message is clear and to the point. Additionally, customers may have privacy concerns when it comes to providing testimonials via SMS, so you should make sure to get their consent first before sending any messages. And since it’s tough to type out a detailed testimonial via text message, be sure to link to a testimonial form or leave your email.

Although it may be acceptable to send a follow-up message if you haven’t received a response after the initial request, be mindful of the frequency you are sending messages and ensure that your customers are not being spammed with requests.

Asking for testimonials via social media

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook offer unique opportunities for businesses to request testimonials from customers. When asking for a testimonial through social media, it is important to keep in mind the character limits and etiquette that come with each platform.

Twitter, for instance, could be better for a brief and straightforward direct message asking for a testimonial, while Instagram or Facebook may be better suited to commenting on a customer’s post about your product or service. You can also ask customers for permission to repurpose any positive comments or posts they make about your business on your website or other marketing materials and turn them into testimonials.

While social media can be a powerful platform for acquiring customer testimonials, it is also a space that allows you to directly address negative feedback. By quickly responding to negative comments with a sincere apology and an offer of help, you can show your customers that their feedback is valued and demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction.

Asking for testimonials in person

An in-person request(or video call request) is the most traditional way to ask for a testimonial. In some ways, this can be the most effective because it allows you to bring up the topic naturally during a conversation and the customer can provide real-time feedback with immediate clarification of any issues or concerns.

When asking for a testimonial in person, it is important to be mindful of the customer’s time and focus on the points that are most relevant to them and their experience. Also, it is helpful to note key points or even record the conversation (with permission) to ensure accuracy when writing up the testimonial.

Following up on testimonial requests

A large number of customers will forget to provide a testimonial once they’re asked for it, so follow-up is essential. Follow-up should be done respectfully and in a timely manner, taking care to avoid being too pushy. The most common methods of follow-up are email, phone calls, or in-person meetings.

When a customer agrees to provide a testimonial, be sure to express gratitude and provide any relevant information they may need (such as a link to your website or product page). Supplying them with some guidance and structure will help ensure that their testimonial is in line with your expectations. Many customers will ignore or decline the request, and in these cases, it is important to maintain a positive relationship with the customer. Do not take it personally and thank them for their time regardless.

Showcasing the testimonials

Figuring out the best way to display customer testimonials will help maximize their impact and ensure that potential customers are more likely to read them. Testimonials should be placed in high-traffic areas of the website, such as the homepage, landing pages, or product pages. Additionally, they can be used in marketing materials like brochures or flyers and on social media platforms to further amplify reach.

When it comes to format, testimonials can be presented in a variety of ways – from text and images to short video or audio clips. Text-based testimonials are often formatted as quotes, short stories, or reviews and these can be accompanied by customer photos for added credibility. Videos and audio clips are great ways to provide a more personal touch and give customers the freedom to share their experiences in their own words.

The process of collecting customer testimonials should be ongoing, allowing you to continually update and refresh your testimonials page. This will ensure that visitors are not met with the same set of testimonials every time they visit and will provide potential customers with a more diverse set of opinions and experiences.

Asking for referrals and asking for testimonials: How they’re related

You can, and should, ask for referrals and testimonials in similar situations. People who refer your brand to friends regularly are also great testimonial candidates, because they’re willing to share how great your brand is with others. And if someone gave a testimonial, it’s probably a given that they would recommend you to others directly, via a referral program. Both referrals and testimonials are powerful forms of word of mouth!

You should ask for testimonials and referrals from happy customers, who you’ve built strong customer relationships with This may include those customers who have left positive customer reviews or comments, those who have expressed how satisfied they are, those who have recently purchased, those who you’ve just accomplished a goal for, and those who have been your loyal customers the longest. 

Conclusion

In recent times, authentic customer testimonials have become one of the most powerful marketing tools for businesses. Asking for customer testimonials may seem like a daunting task, but with some careful planning and thoughtfulness, it can be done in a way that is both respectful and effective.

By providing customers with professional and personalized requests, reaching out in a variety of ways, and following up on requests in a timely manner, you’ll be well on your way to building a strong collection of customer testimonials for your business.

If you’re considering adding an employee advocacy platform to your business tool stack, you’re in good company. But how do you get started with choosing employee advocacy software? This guide can help. 

We cover:

• What employee advocacy is (a quick overview)
• What is employee advocacy software?
• What to look for in employee advocacy software?
• Types of employee advocacy programs
• Our top 12 picks of the best employee advocacy software programs, reviewed

What is employee advocacy?

An advocate is someone willing to publicly recommend or endorse a brand or product. Employee advocates function in exactly the same way, except that they’re devoted to the cause of promoting their own company. The company benefits from a marketing perspective because employee messaging is more likely to be trusted and seen as genuine over random brand advertising. 

• Employee advocacy occurs every time an employee recommends your brand or talks positively about it to the people on their network – friends, family, followers, and potential job candidates. 
• Typically, in employee advocacy, your employees share content around your product, your company, and the latest company news and updates via their social media platforms. 
• Your employees help you sell your products and services by providing trustworthy recommendations. 

What is employee advocacy software?

Employee advocacy tools, like employee advocacy software, help you build and scale an intentional employee advocacy program with minimal effort. Aside from you providing some initial input, setting up your workflows, and actively monitoring performance, the software does it all. 

The software will help you stay on top of all advocacy-related activities, track metrics, and even award bonuses to your star performers. 

• You can use the software’s built-in marketing tools to encourage employees to share your brand online using their referral links or social media channels. 
• You can set up single-tier incentives (one fixed reward) or multi-tier incentives (the higher the returns, the bigger the rewards) for your employees through the software.
  • These incentives will be awarded when the employee completes a pre-determined action, whether that’s generating qualified leads, sales, or conversions.  
• You can use the software to track your employees’ sharing and measure the ROI of their efforts.
  • Generate a bird’s eye view of performance through analytics and reporting functions to understand what’s working well and what needs to be fixed in your advocacy program. 

The best employee advocacy software 

With that said, let’s get to the meat of this article by breaking down the top 12 employee advocacy software to consider.

Referral Rock

Referral Rock does it all, whether you’re looking for employee referral software for employee-to-employee advocacy programs, employee-to-customer referral programs, or programs where employees serve as brand ambassadors – or even all three!  You’ll be able to create a gamified advocacy program, a tiered program, or a multi-step one if you wish. And no matter what structure you choose, you’ll be able to track every time employees share your brand, and the customers or employees each employee-advocate brings in, through unique links. 

Give employees the freedom to share their links directly, or on social media with the messages of their choice. Instantly reward employees for their advocacy when it results in sales, and send out reminders to keep employees engaged. Then, track your employees’ impact with robust data reporting, and give your employees visibility into that impact at any time.

You can expand your scope even further by running other advocacy programs, such as customer-to-customer referral programs, affiliate programs, and channel partner programs inside the same platform. Referral Rock is a great tool for businesses serious about leveraging all types of advocacy programs to extend their reach and build their customer or employee base.

Top 3 key features:

• Referral Rock integrates with some of the most commonly used tools in businesses today, such as the HubSpot and Salesforce CRMs, plus Mailchimp, Stripe, WordPress, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, Shopify, and so many more.
• Referral Rock is consistently rated as the best “value for money” advocacy software, given the sheer scope of features you get within the pricing offered to its customers and the overall maturity of the platform.
• Referral Rock reliably delivers on the promise of stellar customer service. You’ll get set up in days rather than weeks, and the team is always on hand to provide expert onboarding guidance and support – for your launch and beyond. 

Our take: Referral Rock is the best value-for-money software – it’s the total package at an attractive price. It’s the ideal solution for businesses keen on maximizing every opportunity to leverage referral marketing, including employee advocacy, to build your brand. 

Also hugely appealing is how the team will help you set up quickly and guide you every step of the way. Users also love the template customization features and email engagement features, which are constantly being refined and improved.

Overall, Referral Rock is definitely worth looking into, regardless of the size and niche of your business, for the potential ROI you could be earning from a single platform that does it all. 

Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social (formerly Bambu)

Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is purpose-built for social engagement. Expect this tool to deliver everything you expect in a social media management platform with the additional benefit of being able to drive employee advocacy through it. Think social listening, analytics, engagement, automation, and last but not least, social collaboration as a quick overview. 

Top 3 key features:

• Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is easy to use, set up and maintain, whether it’s for content curation, selection, scheduling, or sharing for back-end users, content creators, and social sharers. Employees can even recommend content for sharing. 
• Integrates with all the major social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and even WhatsApp Messenger.
• Gamification features such as leaderboards, and the ability to provide incentives for sharing, allows for increased employee engagement and more social shares. 

 Our take: Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is a user-friendly and engaging software that hits all the right notes for employee advocacy as powered by social media. Users will enjoy how easy it is to use the features to share, schedule, and collaborate on content and gain insights into performance. 

Some businesses may find the prices leaning too close to the higher end. Costs start at $249 per month for the Standard plan, the lowest-tiered plan. And unfortunately, the employee advocacy tool isn’t included in the main Sprout Social plans and must be purchased as an addon.

Sprout Social recommends the software as an ideal solution for the travel and hospitality, computer and hardware, retail, and education industries. If you’re outside those buckets, it might not be for you.

Oktopost

Oktopost is a social media management and employee advocacy solution created by B2B experts for the B2B community. It does everything you might expect from a social media management solution, whether it’s social listening, monitoring, engagement, or performance tracking, together with employee advocacy. Oktopost offers powerful social media monitoring and analytics tools that support content amplification and data-driven scaling. The engaging user interface and data insights are routinely rated as some of its most popular facets. 

Top 3 key features:

• Oktopost integrates with some of the most commonly used marketing tools available currently, such as Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, Microsoft Teams and Power BI, Facebook, Linkedin, Google Analytics, Canva, and Zapier, to name a few. 
• Gamification through leaderboards, so employee advocates have visibility into performance and are actively engaged in going the extra mile.
• Extra social media-based employee advocacy tools, like advanced post-scheduling, support for rich media content, availability of a mobile app, segmented board creation, and the ability to implement banned keywords. 

Our take: Oktopost is a popular and user-friendly employee advocacy tool for B2B businesses. Oktopost specifically targets businesses in the technology, financial services, higher education, manufacturing sectors, and law firms.  

Based on our research, a small percentage of users experience a learning curve in terms of getting to grips with how certain features work. 

But the brand delivers consistently on customer service, and a dedicated customer success manager is available for support. 

Information on the pricing and availability of a free trial is unavailable on the brand’s website, which can be a bummer for people who like transparency. 

Hootsuite Amplify

Not to be confused with the Hootsuite social media management platform, Hootsuite Amplify is an addon for employee advocacy. Hootsuite Amplify makes it easy for your employees to share content on social media networks, amplifying your brand visibility and increasing opportunities for social selling.

Top 3 key features:

• The user interface has been generally reported as intuitive and easy to get around by most users making content sharing easy.
• Hootsuite Amplify is primarily a mobile-centric solution, so employees can easily build their brand on social media and stay on top of updates across departments and regions. 
• Seamlessly works with the core Hootsuite platform. 

Our take: Hootsuite Amplify has generally been rated highly by most users for its ease of use, effortless onboarding, and highly responsive customer care team. The Amplify tool can be added seamlessly to your existing Hootsuite dashboard. 

While gamification features like leaderboards exist to drive employee engagement, these are available to the admins only, and not to all the users yet. Disadvantages of this software revolve largely around employees not having visibility on the leaderboards. This essentially defeats the purpose of leaderboards because employees can’t be motivated by a friendly competition they can’t see. Hootsuite is also on the expensive side, especially given that you must pay extra for the employee advocacy tool.

Ambassify

Ambassify pegs itself as the complete social sharing and engagement tool available online. You can use many different features within this software to increase employee engagement and social reach for your brand. 

There’s the ability to customize descriptions and pre-define visual and copy alternatives. You can use the campaign wizard to guide you to the exact campaign required specifically for the result you’re looking for. The solution is white-label ready, so you can customize the branding to make it your own and more.

Top 3 key features:

• Ambassify takes pride in the fact that it’s a low-effort, intuitive, and easy-to-use but feature-rich platform. 
• Aside from automated emails and push notifications, you can use SMS and WhatsApp texts to engage your employees. And if you want to verify a share, you don’t have to do it manually. The platform will automatically verify shares for you. 
• Ambassify can help you share your video content natively to your LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook feeds, so you don’t have to redirect the viewer to another platform simply to view the video. 

Our take: Ambassify has a lot of pros going for it, like the easy user interface and the sheer amount of useful features available. You have great reporting tools, GDPR compliance, and the ability to integrate with all your favorite tech/marketing software. 

The Ambassify team quickly implements customizations – but not as an out-of-the-box solution, so users end up paying for the customized features. 

Also, while the analytics suite is useful, it’s not as comprehensive as some users would like. Generally, though, Ambassify has been positively reviewed, especially for the highly-responsive customer support team. 

EveryoneSocial

EveryoneSocial believes passionately in making every employee socially savvy. The software platform reflects this ethos in how it’s been set up to make the process as easy and efficient as possible. 

You’ll find this software the ideal solution to engage every single employee regardless of their department, whether it’s recruitment, sales, marketing, branding, communications, or employee engagement.  

Top 3 key features:

• With EveryoneSocial, you can build custom content streams for different departments or verticals. You can even provide access internally for your employees to wider content platforms such as TED Talks. They can then organically share what they resonate with and connect it back to your brand. 
• Gamification features include competitions and leaderboards to motivate employees to share. 
• Ability to add admins or moderators for your content sharing.

Our take: EveryoneSocial is best suited for mid-market to enterprise brands. It’s a great tool overall for ease of sharing and the ability to customize how you use, categorize, and share your content. While EveryoneSocial works for most social media networks, it’s not currently available for LinkedIn. 

Also, you may find the pay-per-seat model cumbersome if you prefer software that can be made available to everyone in your organization at a more affordable price. Some users have pointed out that the software can sometimes lag or be buggy/glitchy, especially on the mobile interface.It also can’t handle employee referrals of potential customers.

PostBeyond

PostBeyond combines the best of employee advocacy and social sharing to help you become a powerhouse employee brand. PostBeyond makes it effortless for you to discover relevant content and share it across multiple social media networks simply with the click of a button. 

Top 3 key features:

• Users across the board enjoy the ability to schedule and auto-queue content on PostBeyond.You can schedule posts at the beginning of the week so you’re free to manage other, more critical tasks for the remainder of the week. The Auto-queue option helps you schedule content on behalf of your busiest executives. 
• Employees can sign up for the platform through an invitation link, email, or an Excel file. There are guided onboarding support options as well as support for multiple languages. Employees also have their own personalized dashboards where they can view how they’re doing performance-wise. 
• You have real-time compliance, mandatory hashtags, and compliance archive features to ensure your content is always on-brand and for training purposes. 

Our take: PostBeyond is a user-friendly tool with many features that make it an ideal solution for social-media-focused employee advocacy programs. The scheduling option is popular among users. Plus, PostBeyond integrates with major marketing software such as HubSpot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Slack, and more.

Disadvantages of PostBeyond include the lack of more options, such as being able to tag content prior to posting and creating a better user interface on the mobile version. It’s also extremely expensive per month compared to other options.

Haiilo

Haiilo is, first and foremost, an AI-integrated employee communications platform. It will help you create a digital home for all your employees, make content creation easy, help you implement successful social recruiting, and measure engagement through automatic pulse surveys –  just to name a few of its core features. 

You’ll be able to generate more leads and sales through the social selling pipeline you’ll activate on your Haiilo platform. 

Top 3 key features:

• The top-rated feature on Haiilo by users is how easy it is to share content to social media networks via phones or laptops because of its mobile-first design. 
• Gamification features motivate more shares and engagement, and surveys help you understand employee sentiment better.
• Haiilo doesn’t require much of a learning curve. Users have generally reported that it’s intuitive and fairly straightforward to understand. 

Our take: Haiilo is easy-to-use, which right off the bat makes it appealing both for employees as well as management teams. It also functions as a digital tool to unify employee communications on one platform, which means fewer silos and more team cohesiveness. 

There were concerns by at least one user over deploying the on-premises installation as there was a lag in getting on board with cloud updates. It also appears difficult to share a large number of photos and videos at a time.

Haiilo is ideal for use cases across Healthcare, Energy, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Automotive, Media & Tech, and Retail. 

GaggleAMP

GaggleAMP is a powerful internal communications software that doubles as an effective advocacy tool. GaggleAMP’s solution will help your brand build brand awareness, enable the sales team and empower internal communications across the company. 

It will also help your HR teams drive workplace engagement while providing a means to attract and retain top talent and increase personal branding opportunities.

Top 3 key features:

• GaggleAMP offers a choice of over 50 different actions that employees can take across social media networks to boost brand visibility, such as post comments, follows, retweets, shares, and subscribes.
• One-click advocacy that makes it easy for your employees to share content without slacking on the job across platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, so there are no clunks in the wheels ever.
• GaggleAMP integrates with many of the most widely used social media and tech platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Hootsuite, Pinterest, Marketo, Oracle, and Google Analytics.

Our take: While GaggleAMP can be used across industries, it’s found the most adoption among Computer Software and IT services providers. On the plus side, the platform connects to all the major social media networks, although user feedback suggests that it may need to keep up with the features updates on the platforms themselves. For example, GaggleAMP doesn’t work for LinkedIn Carousels. 

The GaggleAMP team appears to be highly responsive to feedback, and much of the feedback has been included in development updates.

Social Seeder

Social Seeder is an ambassador marketing software that helps you run employee ambassador, influencer, and advocacy programs. You can identify, recruit, segment, and engage with your ambassadors to build highly-targeted campaigns.

You can also monitor the performance of your ambassadors or employee advocates, in this case, every step of the way. 

Top 3 key features:

• Social Seeder set out to make their software easy to use, and the software scores highly on this aspect on review sites. Users generally find the software’s interface easy to navigate.
• The software makes it possible to cover the entire life cycle of advocate management, from recruitment to monitoring performance and conversion tracking. The software also has engagement features in the form of surveys and polls. 
• Responsive and knowledgeable customer support,including support for customizations to fit your organization’s needs.

Our take: Social Seeder is worth considering if you’re looking for full cycle advocacy/ambassador management inside one tool. In addition to tracking, you can run targeted campaigns and analyze how well your campaign is doing. 

Social Seeder also has great customer support and is responsive to tweaks you may need to bring the software up to your required specifications. Pricing isn’t transparent, though, so it’s hard to know how much you’ll need to pay per month or per year upfront.

ClearView Social

ClearView Social’s core USP is its simplicity of design and use. Easy prompts and email reminders make it seem effortless for your employees to share content with the click of a button across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This solution is best suited for mid-market and enterprise-level businesses. 

Top 3 key features:

• ClearView Social’s smart scheduling algorithm called PeakTime leverages AI to identify the best times to post content on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to achieve maximum reach. The platform will schedule posts based on the unique best times for individual platforms.
• The Virtual Assistant feature posts content on the employee’s behalf without them needing to sign off on each one. Employees can toggle back and forth between keeping the feature ON or OFF as needed. 
• ClearView Social also supports auto-liking employee shares through company accounts. Top posts can be reshared automatically as well to amplify their reach. 

Our take: ClearView Social is a great tool for mid-market and enterprise-level businesses to leverage employee ambassadorship for social reach. Overall, the solution is rated highly for its social media-centric ambassador features. 

Still, a small percentage of users would like ClearView Social to develop more customization and features for posting and scheduling, such as being able to change the language based on location or having photos pulled into posts consistently. 

Sociabble

Unlike many of the other employee advocacy tools mentioned on this list, Sociabble didn’t start off as a social media management software. It was the creative brainchild of a team of bootstrappers who wanted to create the ideal solution for businesses to inform and engage employees. At the same time, engaged employees often make the best ambassadors. 

Top 3 key features:

• Sociabble’s content is personalized to each employee and organized into channels thematically. Plus, it’s easily shareable to the employee’s social media platforms with just one click. Employees can even share third-party curated content related to your vertical.
• Gamification is another aspect that Sociabble scores highly on. You can use several different tools to keep your employees engaged and motivated to share, such as leaderboards, quizzes, polls, badges, and so on.
• Sociabble also allows you to extend your software’s use to preferred partners, external influencers, and even your brand’s biggest fans, who have a large social following. 

Our take: Sociabble delivers on the promise of being a highly engaging platform to attract and retain your employees’ attention. While the platform has all the expected features, you can customize it further to drill down or drill up. It’s a solution worth considering if you operate with bigger teams so you have enough resources to manage all of its moving parts.

Sociabble’s customer service is consistently rated high, whether it’s considering and implementing user feedback or their in-house consulting and support. A mobile-first solution, Sociabble works just as effectively across desktops, display screens, intranets, and social media 

networks. It’s another solution without transparent pricing, though, so it’s likely on the expensive side.

What to look for in employee advocacy software?

Use these factors to help you identify the best employee advocacy software for your needs:

Integrations

On a very basic level, the employee advocacy software should allow for easy integrations with your existing marketing and sales stacks. You probably don’t want to switch back and forth between multiple systems to compare and contrast data. Does your advocacy software integrate with internal communications like Slack, marketing tools like Salesforce, your HR system, social media management platform, finance and payroll, your mobile app, and so on?

Automation

The best employee advocacy software should have all the core functions of an employee advocacy program automated. Think beyond analytics dashboards to the automation of rewards payouts and employee engagement. How easy would it be to promote your brand’s latest updates, notifications, or updated incentives using the software? At the same time, there should be enough flexibility to customize how you want the program to run.

Analytics and tracking

Speaking of analytics, your advocacy software should help you record and analyze performance to help you optimize and streamline your marketing activities for the best results. 

The best employee advocacy software will allow you to generate trackable referral links that employees can share directly via email or social media accounts (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.). Trackability allows you to understand who’s generating sales for you, by how much, and reward them per how well they’re doing, all in real-time. 

Gamification

Some employee advocacy solutions provide additional marketing tools in the form of gamification. This means that you can use the software to generate competitions (like creating leaderboards, for example) to encourage social selling by your employees. Higher rewards for higher sales/leads can be extra motivating. 

Authentic sharing

Another distinctly advantageous feature that some employee advocacy platforms have is allowing employees to share content more authentically. So, they can share relevant content without adhering strictly to an authorized script or pre-written template. 

This can, of course, be a lot better for attracting organic reach because naturally shared content looks more authentic and genuine. With some platforms, you can only go so far as having your employees share brand content or company news and updates in a pre-approved format replete with employer branding and rules of engagement. 

Types of employee advocacy programs

Your brand employee advocacy software should be flexible enough to help you run variations of your core employee advocacy program depending on your targets. There are a few different types of programs you can leverage depending on your audience segmentation:

• Employee-to-customer referral programs: an employee referral program where your employees refer new customers to you through various social networks. This program type is typically open to all employees across the organization. The combined social reach of your employees means that this option is an effective way to get your marketing messaging across with minimal spending. 
• Employee-to-employee referral programs: a referral program subtype where your employees function as brand advocates to attract the right employees for your open positions. This employee referral program is generally open to all employees except for the recruiters or direct reporting managers managing the specific vacancy.    
• Employee ambassador programs: The employee brand ambassador program subtype is generally similar to employee referral programs, except the employee advocates undergo formal training before serving as ambassadors. 
• Social media employee advocacy programs: In social media employee advocacy programs, employees actively talk about your brand through social media posts, essentially drumming up brand awareness and interest through word-of-mouth social sharing. They’re extending your social media marketing to their networks. In other words, they help support the amplification of company content.  

Conclusion

Employee advocacy software tools are all the rage right now, and with good reason. Leveraging employee advocacy can boost your business by leaps and bounds, provided you have software to help you manage all the moving parts and scale effortlessly. Use this guide to help you understand your non-negotiable requirements, and then read through our reviews to help you decide the best employee advocacy software for your needs.

Maybe a company offered you a personalized experience, or a VIP treatment in addition to some killer discounts and coupons. Did you tell your friends about it? 

A good customer experience (CX) prompts you to want to tell the world about it. Chances are you told your peers about it or posted it on social media. And that’s what inspires brand advocacy. When a customer spreads good vibes about a business, they become a brand advocate. 

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And advocates have power. Studies show that an overwhelming 93% of consumers trust recommendations from family and friends over any other form of advertising. 

Companies have recognized the power of referrals and word-of-mouth marketing, and are leveraging them through advocacy programs. In this guide, we’ll discuss what a brand advocacy program is and its benefits. We’ll then guide you through the steps to creating an advocacy program that drives results. Let’s dive in! 

What are brand advocacy programs?

A brand advocate is someone who promotes your brand through word-of-mouth marketing. Brand advocates are real people who know your brand and what it stands for, and who have become your promoters. Besides word-of-mouth advertising, these individuals also spread the word through positive reviews of your business on your website, social media, and other review sites like Yelp. 

Brand advocacy happens every day whenever there are happy and satisfied customers. But it’s not until you nurture and cultivate your advocates that you get to see the true power of advocacy marketing. Businesses can achieve this through a brand advocacy program. A brand advocacy program incentivizes customers and fans for recommending your brand to others.

A brand advocacy program is a marketing strategy that encourages loyal customers, employees, and fans to actively promote and endorse a brand. Simply put, it’s a form of modern business marketing that focuses on creating brand advocates. 

Brand advocacy program benefits

Brand advocacy is beneficial to a business because it’s authentic. And as mentioned, people trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than any other type of marketing. Besides the trust brand advocacy builds with your audience, brand advocacy also offers many other benefits:

1. Brand advocacy creates brand awareness

Brand advocacy can be one of the most powerful ways to create brand awareness. 

When a customer advocates for a brand, they help expand your brand’s reach to new audiences. Advocates provide an organic way to create brand awareness. The more the recommendations, the higher the number of people who get to know your brand.

2. Advocates create buzz

The beauty of brand advocacy is that it creates buzz around your products. And buzz is all you need to penetrate a market deeply. 

Buzz makes people curious about your brand and why it’s stealing the spotlight. 

The more people visit your website or social media pages, the more leads you can generate and grow your business. An increase in social visits can increase your following, while an increase in traffic can create a positive loop for Google, leading to higher rankings on SERPs. 

3. Advocate sharing portrays your brand in a positive light

New customers often rely on referrals and reviews from online review sites to form an opinion about a brand. This means they value the information they obtain from these channels and most likely act on it. 

Brand advocates portray a brand in a positive light in all their promotional efforts. This way, they help create a positive profile about the company in the customer’s mind—whether through word of mouth or testimonials. 

4. Brand advocacy increases customer retention

Advocates help to draw more consumers into the business through their recommendations and positive experiences with the brand. Their enthusiasm motivates others to check out the brand for themselves, so it will drive sales of your products or services.

Moreover, the likelihood of these customers sticking around increases if their experience with your business is satisfactory. Satisfied customers are also likely to become loyal customers and new brand advocates. 

Types of brand advocates 

Brand advocates come in several different types. Knowing what sets each type apart will help you select the right type – or types – for your brand’s needs. Some of the most popular types of advocates are:

Referrers: These customers tell their friends and family about your brand via a referral program. They can promote you as often as they like. When one of their referrals results in a purchase, a referrer earns a reward. 

Affiliates: These content creators talk about your brand in their content, and place a trackable link to your site so their audience can purchase from you. Any purchases made through the affiliate link earn the affiliate a cash commission; this encourages affiliates to keep featuring you in their content. 

Ambassadors:  These official representatives of your brand promote you online and offline. Brand ambassadors agree to promote your brand for a certain length of time and at a certain frequency, and are bound by a contract. 

Employee advocates: Sometimes, employees are the best advocates for your brand, since they know your brand well and are experts on what makes it stand out. Why not incentivize all your employees – not just your sales team – for promoting you and driving sales?

Referral partners: These advocates are more formal than your typical customer-referrer, and sign a formal contract to promote you. But like the more informal referrers, referral partners will only share your brand with people they’ve already built a relationship with. 

Brand advocates vs. brand ambassadors

Is a brand advocate always the same as an ambassador? Advocates and ambassadors are similar because they both promote you enthusiastically and genuinely. In fact, as we mentioned above, ambassadors are a type of advocate.

But often, brand advocacy programs are less formal than brand ambassador programs.

Most brand advocates can promote your brand on their own cadence. They don’t always have requirements to promote your brand at a certain frequency, like ambassadors do, and usually aren’t bound by a contract. But your best informal advocates will still promote you regularly, purely because they love you and want your brand to succeed.

Steps to a successful brand advocacy program

Brand advocacy should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. 

Your advocacy program should apply to both employees and fans so as to drive maximum engagement. This is an opportunity to encourage people to become a part of your brand and create something special. But where should you start? Follow these steps to create a brand advocacy program that drives results. 

1. Identify potential brand advocates

The first step in designing a brand advocacy program is to identify potential brand advocates. 

Not everyone who interacts with your brand is a potential brand advocate. You’ll want to carefully analyze your fans, customers, and even employees to determine who’s worth the title of advocate.

For those who follow your brand on social media, you can start by checking who engages with your posts more. You could use tools like Google Analytics and social listening platforms to gather data on customer engagement and demographics. 

Speaking of engagement, note that not everyone who follows your brand on social media is a potential brand advocate. 

A 2017 Harvard Business Review study revealed that likes, shares, and engagement are not predictors of action at all. To identify the strongest candidate, you’ll need to listen. Social listening can help identify people who always recommend your business/products. 

The people with promoter potential are those who always provide feedback, independently talk about your product offerings, and praise you in their own words. Find them—they have the potential to become your greatest brand advocates. 

2. Promote advocacy through your content strategy

One of the best ways to encourage engagement from your advocates is to create easily accessible and shareable content. 

Creating content that resonates with your audience helps drive engagement, builds trust, and generates credibility. While you could create many different types of content, UGC is the most authentic way to create resonant content. 

According to Searchlogistics, 79% of buyers say user-generated content highly impacts their buying decision. Your advocates can achieve better results by leveraging UGC in their promotional efforts. 

3. Incentivize advocates with rewards

Once you’ve got the right advocates, nurture them. 

Make sure your advocacy program includes various opportunities and rewards for the participants. But why incentivize your advocates when they’re already willing to help you for free?

Don’t think of the incentive as a payment or “bribe” for recommending your brand or products. You’re not buying someone’s advocacy. You want your brand advocates to be authentic when sharing your messaging. After all, loyalty can’t be bought. 

Think of incentives as a way to say “thank you” for being a part of the brand. Your advocates are giving up their time to create content, spread positive vibes about your business, and even defend it online. Naturally, you’d appreciate them for their hard work and effort. 

So, what incentives or reward programs should you use? 

• Provide exclusive discounts and coupons
• Give advocates the VIP treatment they deserve
• Host events for them
• Offer free products
• Recognize them on your marketing channels

You could also use gamification and leaderboards to encourage friendly competition among the advocates. 

4. Empower advocates through training

Your advocates can’t properly promote your products if they don’t know how your products work. Empower them through training!

You could host regular webinars and workshops to teach advocates about your brand, products, and messaging. You could also offer free learning resources, such as e-books, to help them better understand your business and what sets it apart from the competition. 

Additionally, have an open line of communication where advocates can easily reach you should they have any questions or concerns. 

5. Create a community of brand advocates

The most successful businesses know that a community is only as good as the people in it. 

Brand advocates help grow the brand’s visibility online and offline by recommending your products to consumers, which stems from a genuine belief in your brand. Creating a community of advocates helps foster business growth in many ways. 

For instance, creating a community can bring advocates together where they can share tips and ideas and unearth insights you can use. Moreover, communities are a great way to get new product ideas from your advocates, as well as collect and apply feedback to your existing offerings. You can also create a wider fan community, and mobilize advocates to offer support to other customers within that community. 

6. Use brand advocacy software

Brand advocacy software can help you easily mobilize advocates and create effective brand advocacy programs. These systems provide the tools to support and encourage customers to endorse, comment on, and recommend business products and services. 

The software monitors and records the performance of each advocate. It creates links unique to each advocate, so you know which advocates are responsible for the most purchases. Better still, it increases advocate engagement with messages and reminders. 

Not all brand advocacy software is created equal. Some program software can only manage one type of advocacy, so they’re not flexible. But Referral Rock software can mobilize all types of brand advocates, including customers, employees, ambassadors, and other fans.

7. Measure and optimize your brand advocacy program

Measuring the performance of your advocacy program is important to justify the budget you spent on it and identify areas that need improvements. 

Every brand advocacy campaign you create must be tied to the KPIs you want to achieve. Metrics such as referral rates, engagement rates, and social media shares can help you determine the effectiveness of your advocacy program. 

To continuously improve your brand advocacy initiatives, regularly measure performance to determine what works and what has room for improvement. 

Monitor conversion rates and website analytics to gain insights into what campaigns have the best ROI. Use this knowledge to develop your advocacy strategy and develop fruitful long-term relationships that drive sales. 

The power of brand advocacy for long-term success

Brand advocacy plays a critical role in growing your business because it’s authentic and can easily expand your reach organically. This customer-centric marketing strategy offers many benefits, such as brand loyalty, increased brand awareness, and long-term business growth. 

If well executed, a brand advocacy program can be your silver bullet to increased customer loyalty, retention, and sales. It can also create buzz online, leading to increased social mentions, traffic, and sales. Ready to harness the power of advocates? Find out how Referral Rock can help you create and automate a brand advocacy program today. 

In this guide, we’ll look at what social media employee advocacy is, its benefits, and best practices. You will learn how to build an effective strategy to engage your employees and contribute to your business results.

What is social media employee advocacy?

Employee advocacy refers to activities undertaken by employees to promote the organization they work in. Social media employee advocacy mostly involves employees sharing company content on their personal social media accounts.

People tend to trust what others say over official brand statements, so what your workforce says about your brand or company matters. You can harness the power of social media advocacy by having your employees promote the company and its values on their social media accounts, ideally with trackable links that lead to your website.

Social media employee advocacy can be organic or part of a structured program. A structured program makes it easier to mobilize employees, set goals, and measure them. This way, you can correctly attribute ROI to your employees’ marketing efforts.

Your company cannot afford to overlook the increasing importance of employee advocacy in today’s digital landscape. You only need to look at case studies of companies crushing employee advocacy to see how much of a game-changer it is.

Social media employee advocacy examples

Reebok, a popular sports apparel company, has had a successful employee advocacy program. The company encourages employees to post photos of themselves in company products on their personal social media accounts. The employees embraced the challenge, posting running, cycling, and weightlifting photos with their custom hashtag, #FitAssCompany.

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Starbucks is another good example, with its “Starbucks Partners” employee advocacy program. All employees that promote their company, including on social media, earn the title “Partner.” The program has been a great success and an invaluable source of employee learning opportunities.

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Benefits of social media employee advocacy

Harnessing the power of your workforce through social media employee advocacy will help increase your company’s reach without exceeding your marketing budget. A wider social media reach equals better opportunities to engage your audiences meaningfully and generate leads organically.

Here are some of the major benefits of employee advocacy:

Increasing brand visibility and reach

Social media employee advocacy is a powerful tool that can help organically extend your brand reach on social media platforms. Social networks tend to prioritize personal interactions over branded content, and your employees have individual networks you can capitalize on.

With the right content marketing strategy, your employees’ personal networks can be a powerful marketing strategy. According to Neal Schaffer, brand messages are re-shared 24x when distributed by employees than shared by brands. Consumers trust the average employee more than the brand CEO, which increases engagement and helps you amplify your brand’s visibility.

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Boosting customer acquisition

People tend to trust their peers over brand messages, so they’re more likely to trust the information your employees share. You can use employee advocacy on social media channels to improve your brand trust and credibility.

Your employees’ word-of-mouth is trusted more than messages from your brand, and their recommendations are seen to be authentic. This is an important part of social selling, as people will be more likely to purchase from you after recommendations from their peers. 

With social media employee advocacy, you can infuse an element of personality and personal experience into your social media marketing strategy.

Attracting top talent

Employee advocacy, when done right, is a powerful recruitment tool. When your employees share brand content and showcase the company culture, it makes the company more appealing and makes it easier to attract top candidates for any open positions.

With social media employee advocacy, your employees act as brand ambassadors, sharing their positive experiences and opportunities. Employee ambassadors have established networks with like-minded professionals, so as they share content, it opens up a new pool of qualified candidates who view your company as a great place to work at.

Retaining top talent

Employee advocacy is also very instrumental in increasing employee retention and job satisfaction. Employee turnover is one of the major challenges facing companies post-pandemic. When your employees are also brand advocates, it gives them a vested interest in your company’s success. The more they serve as advocates, the more engaged they are in their work.

Best practices for encouraging social media employee advocacy

If you’re looking to build an employee advocacy program from the ground up, it may seem overwhelming. But with the right strategies and tools, it’s easier than you think. Here are the best practices that can help you set up a successful employee advocacy program.

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Create a workplace culture that encourages employee advocacy

If your employees are happy and satisfied at the workplace, they are more likely to become brand ambassadors. The first step to creating an employee advocacy platform is creating a workplace that encourages advocacy. Open communication and collaboration are great examples of a positive workplace culture that encourages and fosters advocacy.

Successful employee advocacy needs leadership buy-in. When the leaders at the top model advocacy behavior, it’s easier for the other employees to follow suit. So, how do you create a supportive work environment that inspires employees to promote the brand? Here are a few tips:

• Give employees autonomy in decision-making, as this makes them feel empowered and invested at work.
• Recognize and celebrate employee achievements, as this helps motivate them to improve their efforts.
• Create open lines of communication to avoid alienation and silos.
• Offer career development opportunities so your employees don’t feel stagnant.

Google is one of the companies with a strong workplace culture that encourages advocacy. All corporate leaders in the company are taken through Bill Campbell’s communication lessons, and this has gone a long way in creating a great workplace that encourages advocacy.

Set goals and KPIs for your social media employee advocacy

Your employees may already be sharing brand content, but without clear strategies, objectives, and goals, it’s difficult to take full advantage and track progress. You need to set and communicate the goals of employee advocacy and come up with measurable social media metrics that will help measure their achievement.

Establish SMART employee advocacy goals, like engagement, brand visibility, talent acquisition, and purchases driven in given timeframes. It’s important to review your employee advocacy program regularly to see how much progress you’ve made and whether you need to adjust your program based on your findings.

Find social media employee advocacy leaders

While all your employees may be involved in your employee advocacy program, some will naturally excel, and it’s important to spot them and nurture them further. What are some characteristics of effective advocacy leaders?

• They are enthusiastic about sharing content and engaging on social media
• They are social media savvy
• They have a significant social media presence
• They are highly engaged in the workplace

It’s also important to support your employees by providing resources for advocacy. Without proper support, the advocacy program will feel like added work, dampening their enthusiasm. You can provide support by positioning your employees as industry experts and providing them with the content needed to make the job easier.

Establish guidelines for employee social promotion

Aside from the actual content to be shared, it’s also paramount to establish clear guidelines to help your employees as they share content. They should not only know what to say but how to say it as well. The guidelines should cover topics like content, tone, and disclosure of affiliation.

Your company should provide educational resources and regular training sessions to ensure the employees understand the guidelines to avoid security risks. You can create a brand style guide to help set the tone of your content. You can also have a content policy, including the do’s and don’ts of social media. 

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The guidelines should serve as a guide and not be used to police employee content. If the guidelines are too strict, it may deter your employees from sharing content to avoid risking their jobs.

Starbucks is a great example of a well-done employee social media policy. It’s a set of clear and concise guidelines that’s publically available and easily accessible.

Incentivize employees to be employee advocates

You can get your employees more involved and active in your employee advocacy platform by using incentives such as prizes, gift cards, or event tickets. It’s even more beneficial to gamify the process, where you have a contest of sorts and reward the best employee advocate.

Some of the incentives should be tied to specific KPIs like purchases or engagement. Recognizing and rewarding employee efforts motivates them to keep participating and keeps them engaged in the workplace.

Empower employees as brand ambassadors

You may have a content marketing strategy and support your employees by providing resources, but ultimately, the content should come from the employees themselves. It needs to be as genuine and authentic as possible, as this will lead to higher engagement. When the content is personalized, it’s more fun for the employees, and their audience can easily recognize their voice.

You can support your brand ambassadors by providing the resources they may need to answer questions from customers, potential candidates, and leads. The leader’s role, in this case, is to create an enabling system that fosters advocacy.

Choose the right employee advocacy platform

Even with all the resources at your disposal, consolidating all this information and executing your employee advocacy program may be a challenge. One way to overcome this problem is to use an employee advocacy platform.

You have many software platforms to choose from, but essential features to look for include creation tools, employee engagement features, and detailed analytics dashboards. Mobile accessibility and ease of use are also determinants of an effective employee advocacy platform.

One of the greatest benefits of using employee advocacy software is it creates trackable links. Normally, it’s difficult to track social media advocacy, but with unique links, it’s possible to tie purchases back to a specific employee’s advocacy efforts.

Some of the most popular employee advocacy software include Referral Rock, Hootsuite Amplify, Post Beyond, Oktopost, Mo, Bambu, and Blueboard. Referral Rock is your best option, because of our dedicated onboarding specialists, engagement features, and the ability to track conversions that result from employees’ advocacy. 

Wrapping up

Social media employee advocacy is a powerful tool that has numerous benefits for the company and the employees. With a proper employee advocacy program in place, you can increase your brand’s visibility and organic reach, attract and recruit top talent, and position your workforce as industry thought leaders.

An employee advocacy platform, coupled with the right software to support your employees’ efforts will go a long way in taking your company to the next level. Harness the power of employee advocacy today by evaluating your current advocacy initiatives to explore opportunities for improvement. 

Referral statistics indicate that 77% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase if they learn about a business from friends or family. The rewards or incentives you offer your happy clients to refer new customers can go a long way when it comes to creating more brand awareness, acting as a PR medium, building a loyal customer base, and enabling higher sales conversions.

By the end of this post, you’ll have a clearer picture of the intricacies involved in creating a successful HVAC referral program.

What is an HVAC referral program?

An HVAC referral program is a marketing strategy that offers a streamlined way to reward your previous clients for referring your heating and air conditioning services to their family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues, among others. When existing customers bring in new ones, you give them incentives, such as a gift card or a discount.

The best HVAC referral programs automate the tracking of referrals. Automation helps provide insight into how much HVAC business comes from referrals as well as how your program is performing. This is a lot easier to manage than a manual program, where people give you their friends’ names, and you keep track of who referred whom by yourself.

Why do you need an HVAC referral program?

No matter how long you’ve been in the HVAC industry, you could use a referral program. HVAC businesses that commit to referrals eventually achieve success through high-quality leads that come with a greater likelihood of closing sales.

Referrals not only boost your company’s sales profile: they are also a testament to the growing reputation of your business, since they show that customers are satisfied enough with your brand to recommend them to family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

Here are some other reasons referrals are necessary:

HVAC referrals are a reliable client acquisition channel

The nature of HVAC services, in particular, makes them ideal for referral marketing. People usually don’t need HVAC services very often, so you need a reliable way of finding new clients. Referrals create an acquisition channel by leveraging happy existing clients.

People trust referrals

A high-end HVAC service, involving the installation of a new or replacement HVAC system, can cost as much as $5,000. This explains why people spend lots of time researching options before they decide who to hire for HVAC services. The research process includes asking friends and family for recommendations as well as checking online testimonials.

People usually have a high level of trust in what those close to them recommend. For example, 92% of consumers in a Nielsen survey prefer friend and family recommendations over any kind of advertising. If someone recommends your services to a friend, the person who received the recommendation is more likely to use your services.

Referral programs cost a lot less than ads

Referral programs are low risk, as you aren’t spending blindly like you would with traditional ads. You only pay for referrals when they result in sales. 54% of a Forbes survey’s respondents say that referral programs have a lower cost-per-lead than other channels.

Unlike traditional marketing channels, referral marketing lowers customer acquisition costs (CAC) because it only utilizes current customers who help recommend your brand to others, hence helping to improve your bottom line.

A study at the Wharton Business School found that, on average, referred customers were $0.45 more profitable per day than all other customers. Also, the CAC for these customers was $23.12 lower than those of non-referred customers.

Are you ready for an HVAC referral program?

You’ll need the following essentials in place before you launch the program, in order for your HVAC referral program to be a success:

• A healthy base of existing customers who love your work – ideally, some of them should already be recommending your services without prompting
• A customer experience worth recommending, from first phone call to last check on the new or repaired HVAC system
• A high level of customer satisfaction, including high ratings from customer reviews 
• A website to send referred leads to

HVAC referral program best practices

If you intend to achieve success with your HVAC referral program, then how well you implement it will be key. Following these best practices will help you obtain the right results:

Select your rewards carefully

Referral rewards are the drivers of successful referral programs. However, before thinking of what reward to use, it is necessary to first figure out who exactly you’ll be rewarding. Is it the referrer (or advocate), the referred friend, or both?

Double-sided rewards (a rewards program for both the referrer and the referred friend) not only inspire frequent referrals but also motivate the referred friends to hire you for their HVAC services. They are, therefore, more impactful than single-sided rewards.

Since HVAC projects are often relatively large purchases, the reward for your advocate should reflect the value of the purchase he or she induced. Cash, gift cards to other businesses, gift baskets, and travel or event-based rewards are great advocate reward options. (Rewards for the advocate should have nothing to do with your business, since they probably won’t need another HVAC job done anytime soon.)

It’s a good idea to offer higher rewards for successful referrals to higher-priced services – say, more cash back on an installation referral vs. a maintenance referral. You might also offer higher rewards for business HVAC service referrals (if you service both homes and businesses) since business services tend to be more expensive.

Rewards for the referred friend should be directly tied back to your services in order to encourage the person to seek those services. Discounts, credits toward the project, cash back after the project is paid for, and free or discounted added services are great rewards for the referred friend.

Decide when you’ll give the rewards

In referral programs, you generally give the rewards when the purchase is successful – once the referred lead signs the contract for the job and/or pays you. But you might also give the referrer a smaller reward when a lead is qualified, because the sales process of an HVAC service is longer.

Ask for referrals

One of the best ways to get referrals is to ask. This shouldn’t be difficult, especially if you’ve been conversing with the client regularly during their project and have therefore established a cordial relationship with them. 

Ask customers for referrals when you know they’re happiest and you are top of mind, like when:

• You’ve completed an HVAC project
• You’ve received a positive review from them
• You’ve received a positive social media comment from them
• They give you great in-person feedback
• You know they were satisfied, and you’re sending the invoice for the completed project
• It’s the first or second anniversary of a project completion you know went well
• You’re calling for a warranty check-in (or other post-project check-in) and the customer says the HVAC system is holding up well
• You know they’ve already recommended you outside of your referral program

Make the sharing process seamless

Customers should be able to access the program and share it with friends with as few clicks or taps as possible. Create an enticing headline that states exactly what customers should do (share) and what’s in it for them (the reward).

Concisely explain the program – and what must be done for the rewards to be earned –  in a few steps. Include an easy-to-find call-to-action (CTA) button to get customers to share. Direct customers to an FAQ page if they have other questions.

Give multiple options for sharing based on the ways that customers naturally share things they love with friends. This should include email and social media options, as well as a referral link that customers can copy and share anywhere.

Use social media to your advantage

Social media is where your customers naturally share things they love with many friends at once. So it makes sense to include social media sharing options in your HVAC referral program – one social share will potentially get your business in front of thousands of relevant eyes. 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase or engage with a business based on social media referrals.

Design a simple referral form

HVAC referral programs tend to ask for a lot of information. But too many questions can quickly become overwhelming. Only ask for the information you need to track where the referral came from and then contact the new lead.

Consider one of these simple lead form combinations:

• Referrer name, phone, and email; lead name, phone, and email
• Referrer name and email; lead name, phone, and email
• Referrer name and email, lead name and email

Promote your program

People need to know about your program for it to generate new sales!

Promote your program:

• On your website (place a hero image or banner where it’s easy to find, and/or buttons in the top and bottom menus)
• In conversations with clients, when you know a customer is satisfied!
• In personal referral emails sent to your most satisfied customers
• In mass emails focused on your program, sent to all customers
• In news/update emails, confirmation emails, invoices, and other emails unrelated to your referral program
• Through social media posts
• In email signatures and social media bios

Choose the right referral software

The right referral software will streamline your program creation process and automate all aspects of program management. Thanks to the referral links it generates, referral software lets you track exactly where every referral came from and instantly issue rewards for successful referrals.

It also collects program data that you can use to measure success and refine your program for optimum results, and send reminders to keep customers engaged with your referral program. Referral Rock software offers best-in-class referral tracking, sharing, and engagement experiences, with concierge onboarding – no developers required.

Send the lead a personal note from the referrer

The message the referred friend receives through your program is often their first impression of your business. Ideally, the message should be written by the referrer and explain why he or she is recommending you.

But you can also prompt the referrer with ideas to include in the message or even include an editable message as a starting point. Be sure to include an eye-catching CTA above the fold to entice the referred friend to take action.

Thank customers for referrals

Thanking customers for referrals encourages them to make more referrals because they feel appreciated. Send a personal thank you note (preferably written) whenever someone’s referral results in a purchase. You might also post a public thank you for the referral on your social media page.

More details on how to send a thank you note for referrals can be found here.

Tell other businesses about your program

Often, HVAC services get lots of referrals from similar but non-competing businesses like construction contractors and pluming services. So, it’s a good idea to tell businesses like these about your program so that referrals that come from their employees can be tracked. You might consider setting up a more formal referral partner program for businesses like these in addition to a “standard” customer referral program.

Wrap-up

Referral marketing programs have emerged as one of the most optimal ways of attracting new clients. If optimally conducted, a referral program can help a business create more brand awareness, enhance its image, establish a loyal customer base, and yield higher sales conversions through high-quality leads.

If you implement the best practices we’ve listed above, and choose the right software to serve as your backbone, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t reap bountifully from your referral program.

What started as a simple communication medium has become the new marketplace for businesses. According to HubSpot’s 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report, social media is currently the top marketing channel for 44% of businesses. 

One of the top reasons why social media is a great marketing tool is that it hugely impacts consumers’ buying behavior through peer endorsements. Three out of four users say they discovered a product offering based on local recommendations and their friends’ posts. 

With such a competitive global marketplace at your disposal, what are you doing to set yourself apart and get people to talk positively about you? One way you can distinguish your business is through social media listening. 

So, what is social media listening? And more importantly, how can social media listening increase customer advocacy? Let’s figure it out! 

What is social media listening?

Social media listening, also known as social listening, involves identifying, monitoring, and analyzing customer conversations to derive insights from the information and take action. 

Generally, brands gather information such as product mentions, brand mentions, competitor info, and industry trends from conversations on social media. 

With social listening, you can identify emerging trends, improve your brand offerings, avoid looming crises, and understand consumer sentiments toward your brand. A robust social listening strategy puts your company in a better position to drive customer advocacy.

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How to conduct social media listening

Conducting social media listening is an excellent way to gain better insights into your customers. Studies show that almost 61% of businesses have a social media listening system in place. 

Some brands hire social media managers to take on the role of social media marketing, which encompasses social listening. Others, particularly those with smaller accounts, conduct the listening in-house. Either way, conducting social media listening isn’t difficult and can easily be achieved with just a few steps. 

Step 1: Discovery

The first step is to identify the social media platforms where your audience hangs out. These would usually include major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms that are relevant to your business. 

Step 2: Keyword searches

What phrases do you want to track conversations about? 

Identify the keywords and topics to track to identify conversations that might give you insights into consumers’ perceptions of your brand or products. You can also include competitor mentions to discover what your audience is saying about your competitors.

Step 3: Automation

Next, research the best social media listening and tracking tool. The best tool will help you track and analyze social media conversations happening in real-time. 

Step 4: Analysis

Lastly, analyze the collected data to derive valuable insights from it. These insights can help you identify potential brand advocates, understand your competitors, and identify potential issues customers face that need to be addressed. 

What is customer advocacy?

Customer advocacy is building and nurturing a relationship with your loyal customers who act as spokespeople for your brand. 

It’s simply the act of establishing fruitful relationships with customers. These customers become your “brand advocates” who spread positive vibes about your brand, increasing brand awareness and boosting positive word of mouth. 

Brands that focus on driving customer advocacy pay attention to customer retention, customer satisfaction scores, and other customer-centric metrics to inform their decision-making.

How are social listening and customer advocacy connected?

Now that you understand social listening and customer advocacy, it’s easy to see how they are connected. Essentially, social media listening is the first step toward exceptional customer service. By providing good and timely customer service, businesses can increase their customer experience (CX) and gain loyal customers in the long run. 

These loyal customers become your brand advocates, spreading positive vibes about your business to their friends, family, and colleagues. 

5 ways social listening can increase customer advocacy

Without further ado, let’s go over how social media, specifically through social listening, can lead to customer advocacy.  We’ll cover five ways below.

1. Identifying and engaging ambassadors

Social media listening can help you identify potential brand ambassadors.

By following conversations about your brand, product, or services, you can easily identify people actively praising or defending your products. 

You could also find people suggesting your product as a solution to a problem. It could be a key influencer talking about why they abandoned a competitor in favor of your products. Or an ordinary user who is happy and satisfied with your products. 

When you find these people, you’ll want to let them know you appreciate their advocacy. From there, you may want to consider enrolling them into your ambassador program or give them more resources to better promote your brand. 

You wouldn’t necessarily know about them unless you scan for brand or product mentions using a social media monitoring tool.

2. Monitoring and responding to feedback

Social media listening lets you keep your ears on the ground for all the mentions about your brand, products, and services. 

Has a video gone viral mentioning one of your product offerings? Are customers complaining about your products? If so, what problematic areas are they highlighting? These scenarios can give you deep insights into your products or services. 

It can be difficult to tell how a product resonates with your audience without listening to what customers say. Feedback lets you implement changes based on real-life concerns while letting customers know you care about their opinions. 

Even if a user is happy about a product, social listening can help you find out what they love about it. You can then use this information to improve your brand offerings. 

In a nutshell, listening to your customers on social media can tailor your products to what customers want. This can go a long way in improving customer loyalty and advocacy. 

3. Crafting personalized and relevant content

Great content helps your business build a relationship with your audience. It also helps build trust with your readers and generate credibility. 

So, how does social listening help build content that drives customer advocacy?

Social listening gives you a deep understanding of your audience. Most importantly, it helps you identify trending topics and customer preferences. 

When you understand what makes your audience tick, you can create content that resonates with them. Are you speaking to the right audience? Are you crafting the right message for them? Is your content strategy in tune with what they want? Social listening can provide answers to all these questions. 

To encourage loyalty and brand advocacy, speaking to your audience with content that matters to them is vital. Social listening allows you to obtain valuable insights into your customers’ behavior, preferences, demographics, geographic information, and more. This way, you can craft content that’s relevant to them with an authentic voice and tone. 

Take Glossier, a New York-based online beauty shop, for example. 

One of the reasons for its massive growth and recognition is its content strategy that’s built around understanding its audience. The company leverages UGC in its content strategy, which attracts micro-influencers and other social media enthusiasts. 

Through UGC, consumers get to share Glossier’s products online, a strategy that has helped build an online community of loyal users.

4. Utilizing UGC

User-generated content, or UGC, refers to original, company-specific content created by customers and shared on social media. 

Since the content is created by users who have interacted with the product, UGC is deemed more trustworthy and authentic. Additionally, UGC drives more engagement and is cost-effective compared to other forms of advertising. 

So, how does UGC foster customer advocacy?

Social listening can help businesses identify consumers who are already advocating for their products and encourage them to create more UGC. Social listening can also help you identify users’ content that you can repurpose for your own marketing. 

In addition, UGC can help businesses gain insights into their customer’s needs. By analyzing the type of content users create and share on social media, businesses can identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior and use the info to improve their product offerings. 

5. Monitoring competitors and industry trends

Social media listening can give you valuable insights into your competitors and industry trends. 

A robust social monitoring tool will allow you to gather information about your competitors and their products. If consumers deem competing products better than yours, you’ll be able to know why – and tweak your products to match or exceed theirs. 

Additionally, social listening will allow you to spot flaws in competitor products. 

For instance, you might see complaints about issues with one of your competitor’s products. In this case, you can leverage this intel in your marketing by highlighting how your products don’t suffer from such issues. 

Social listening and customer advocacy: Using the right software

As we’ve covered above, brand mention software is virtual for real-time social listening. But it simply helps you find opportunities to reach out to customers and fans, and encourage them to advocate for you. It doesn’t offer a way to track their advocacy, or keep them engaged as advocates.

That’s where referral software or brand ambassador software comes in. This type of software generates unique links, so you’ll know every time a customer’s advocacy has led to sales. It also makes it easy to communicate with customer-advocates, and keep them engaged in promoting you. Referral Rock software can help you track and mobilize all types of customer advocates, including referrers and ambassadors. 

Wrapping up

Social media listening is a crucial component of any marketing strategy. By monitoring social mentions related to a brand or its competitors, businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers’ needs and preferences. 

This information can be used to improve a company’s products or services, create a solid base of loyal customers, and build stronger customer relationships.

Businesses can increase customer advocacy by:

• Identifying and engaging ambassadors, 
• Monitoring and responding to customer feedback, 
• Creating personalized and relevant content,
• Utilizing user-generated content,
• Monitoring competitors and industry trends

By investing in a robust social media listening tool, you can easily turn your audience into powerful referral sources. 

Want to build a referral program that inspires customer advocacy? Get in touch with us today! Our referral software is designed to help you convert passive fans into active promoters. 

It’s well-known that people trust the opinion of their peers far more than they trust messages directly from brands, and are more likely to purchase a product or service as a result of a peer’s words. Case studies are a great way to show off the authentic stories of peers who have used your products or services, on your own channels. But how to optimize them to improve lead generation and sales?

Joel Klettke, case study expert and founder of Case Study Buddy, has had a front-row seat in planning case studies for over 350 companies. He’s identified seven key ways that the top 1% of companies best optimize their case studies to successfully improve lead buy-in and increase conversion rates. And all seven are strategies your own company can steal, to create the strongest, most compelling case studies. Check out these secrets below, as shared by Klettke in his webinar with Clearscope. 

What case studies should and shouldn’t be

Before we dive into the seven strategies, let’s lay the foundations of optimal case studies based on Joel Klettke’s expertise. According to Klettke, case studies should be strategic, not incidental. They should be an inevitable outcome within your system. And they aren’t just a project for the marketing team to take on – instead, they’re a “team sport,” and the entire company should be involved. 

Strategic case studies are curated stories, planned for and chosen on purpose. Rather than just showcasing every company that volunteers for a case study, the top 1% of companies start with a strategy for the stories they want to tell, intentionally curate real stories that fit the strategy, and align all teams on case study goals. 

Case studies should also be repurposed for many types and channels of media, for many goals, on many points in the buyer’s journey. So, what do the top 1% of companies do differently to create these strategic stories? Let’s dive in.

1. Have all teams within the company collaborate on case studies

Many companies think of case studies as a marketing team task. But isolating case studies to the marketing team is not the best approach. In the top 1% of companies, multiple teams (or all teams) collaborate in the process of planning and writing case studies.

This makes sense because: 

• Sales owns the process of building the first relationship with a lead and convincing people to become customers. They know the goals that brought a new customer in, and they know what convinces someone to close a deal.
• Customer success nurtures customer relationships, and doesn’t want to lose customers by asking too much of them during the case study creation process. They also have a deeper understanding of the wins customers have had with the product 
• Marketing best understands the creative and copy side of executing a case study. But since the marketing team doesn’t work directly with customers, and isn’t often aware of selling points and sales goals, they must be aware of what the other teams need and what roles they can play.

For the best case studies, leadership representing all teams (including the company’s overall leadership) must meet to align on the following:

• What case study success looks like for your brand
• How to select situations to showcase in case studies
• How to track case studies
• How to format them
• How to process them
• How to produce them, in what time frame

Keep in mind that case study formats need to be diverse to serve all teams. Don’t let marketing dictate the format in isolation, as all teams need something different. And make sure leadership understands what all the teams need from case studies. In particular, remember that the sales team needs stories to access to help with specific contexts, objections, and situations where leads are looking at certain competitors. 

All teams should be involved at all points in asking for and developing a case study, as all teams have different levels of customer access and different strengths.  

2. Intentionally choose stories

People want to relate to case studies in business size, industry, and situation. They want to see the goals that companies similar to theirs achieved, and how they could achieve the same goals – not in terms of metrics, but in the story of the problems solved. 

An intentionally written case study is credible, compelling, relatable, and prescriptive (it shows how a problem was solved). Some of the highest-performing case studies are relationship-based and focus on how to solve a problem, with no metrics included at all. 

You must always showcase an implicit promise in your case study that delivers value. Ask yourself when writing a case study: What situations do leads relate to, and what are they looking for based on their problems? 

Types of case studies that resonate well with leads include: 

• The story of someone who left a competitor
• The story of someone who upgraded
• Demonstrating a specific use case that many leads wouldn’t be aware of
• An appeal to employees in specific roles or positions; 
• “Here’s how to do x based on what y company did”
• The story of how an objector was ultimately won over 
• Describing how a business solved a problem
• A focus on individual features of your product, and how a company used them to drive results
• A profile: “Who are the kinds of people who choose our company?”

How to plan for and write an intentional case study? Check in with all departments with what they need, align with revenue goals for real-world businesses, find KPIs that matter in the realm of customer stories, and then go looking for stories that meet your team’s and your leads’ needs.

3. Use proactive prospecting

Proactive prospecting means knowing when and how to ask for a case study. All teams must understand what companies (and what stories) to go after, including key themes to go after, before reaching out to businesses and asking them to contribute a case study. 

Intentionally find targets who fill “content gaps” you haven’t covered, and then ask for the case study or gather feedback during the product use process in a natural way. 

Don’t send a marketer your client doesn’t know to make the case study “ask,” and don’t ask for a case study out of the blue. Rather, it’s best to “escalate the commitment” of feedback, especially when you’ve found a suitable story:

• Ask customers in your content and your customer portal: “Do you have a win that you’re interested in sharing?” 
• If you have a SaaS, ask for customer stories at natural points within the use of your software or app
• Create a brand advocacy program, such as an ambassador program, and ask those who participate if they would like to share a more detailed story
• Or offer rewards for case studies themselves, when they fit your goals (but be sure to disclose publicly if a case study was incentivized) 
•  Leverage surveys and feedback discussions to encourage (and ease into) the sharing of a case study
• Leverage conversations with reps to ease into the case study “ask”
• Know the metrics and KPIs you’d use in a case study, and intentionally check in with customers regarding these metrics before the case study “ask”

4. Make it normal to talk with customers about ROI and KPIs regularly

The top 1% of case study-crafting companies get success metrics from companies at the outset, and make ROI and KPI talks normal. They seed the specific ROI and KPI data they want before a case study conversation.

Getting metrics for your case studies starts long before the “ask,” and long before a customer identifies a win. Making KPI and ROI discussions normal, throughout customer check-ins, will make these discussions a lot less awkward if and when you ask them to share a case study. So, schedule frequent touchpoints with customers, based on your existing processes.

• What existing check-ins can you use to talk about KPIs throughout customer relationships? 
• What types of calls and check-ins can you use for KPI discussions (say, Zoom meetings or emails)?
• Who will check in about KPIs? 
• How often will check-ins happen?
• How will client KPIs be shared? 

Then, once you’re ready to write a case study, be specific about the KPIs, and other winning moments within their story, that you want companies to bring in and discuss. They’ll be more prepared since you already seeded these types of discussions. 

5. Set expectations well with templates and standards

Setting and being clear on expectations helps improve buy-in from the companies you ask for case studies.  Be sure to:

• Get buy-in from all parties beforehand
• Check that the client’s story is strong, and relevant to your goals, before you start
• Make the overall case study process clear
• Respect the client’s time and story by being efficient in your collection process
• Deliver on your promises about time commitments
• Check that the story is legally allowed to be released, by checking with the legal team or relevant parties early in the process

The top 1% of companies use lots of templates to standardize and streamline the process, and set up clear expectations. Examples of templates and scripts that these companies use include:

• An overall case study process template, with steps laid out for your company
• A case study ask template, where you explain why the client was selected, the parts of their story you want to cover, and the achievements you want to focus on
• A template for priming, so the customer knows specific metrics and story elements you want. Use this to clarify what is relevant or meaningful in the story you’d like to tell.
• A legal form, to clear the release of the case study 
• A pitch deck of what is involved in the case study process, for the customer to review
• Templates of the format of case studies (you might have different templates for different types of stories)
• An agreement for the types of media the case study can be used in
• A template for case study check-ins and approvals
• A template of how to publish and celebrate a live case study, both on your company side and the customer side

Standardize your case study templates across your company and make them accessible to all teams. But be sure to keep learning as you complete the process with different companies, and refine your templates as you make improvements.

6. Repurpose one case study across many mediums and needs

Be ready to leverage case studies in different mediums, across all stages of the buyer’s journey. Compared to the time, resources, and energy needed to get buy-in and approval, repurposing a case study is extremely cost-effective – and makes sense, because leads have different needs depending on their funnel stage. 

The 1% know that leads at different stages seek different amounts of information, based on where they are on the buyer’s journey. Always ask: Who will you serve with a given case study format, and how will you publish it?

You can make one case study into a:

• Video
• Text testimonial
• Email campaign 
• Audio bite from an interview
• Visualization or infographic
• Blog post 
• Ad campaign
• Social media quote… and much more!

Case studies should also cover different levels of details: “nibble, bite, snack, and meal,” as Joel Klettke describes. This way, you’ll meet leads where they are, throughout the funnel, no matter how “hungry” they are for information.

• Nibble = One quote
• Bite = Two-minute video or a short read on social media
• Snack = A page-long story with several strong details 
• Meal= A super detailed story spanning multiple pages, or a longer-form video

7. Have defined case study playbooks 

Just like your teams should have playbooks for other standardized company processes, you should create and maintain playbooks for the processes behind case studies. The only difference between these and most other playbooks is that your entire company – all teams – must have a role in creating and updating them.  

These playbooks must be accessible to all teams, clearly organized, and regularly updated on a schedule. Create them somewhere you can edit them easily, such as Confluence. 

They should include coverage gaps you’re seeking to fill with stories, how to select customers to talk to, what constitutes a win, who is responsible for what parts of the case study process, and all other guidelines you’ve set forth in the six other points we covered above.  

Key takeaways: Writing ROI-boosting case studies

So, how to write case studies like the top 1%? Here are our top takeaways from Joel Klettke’s expert webinar:

• Be proactive for case studies – plan the types of stories you want to seek beforehand. Don’t just react to any opportunity that might come up and write an incidental case study. 
• All teams must be aligned on case studies – you need reps from all teams to meet and discuss process for best results
• Decide on the type of focus you want and then find customers whose stories fit that focus
• Make getting feedback intentional at all stages, so case studies start getting written naturally.
• Use different mediums to repurpose case studies for different needs and buyer’s journey stages.

What is a customer reference program?

A customer reference program is an organized program where you ask your best existing customers to give testimonials about their customer experience. These testimonials can take many forms, including written reviews, case studies, video interviews, and social media content. 

The purpose of a customer reference program is to utilize satisfied customers to promote a business by sharing their positive experiences with others. In turn, their real-life success stories support sales and marketing efforts by providing third-party endorsements of your business concept, customer service, product or service quality, and other aspects of your business.

Why your business needs a customer reference program

There are several reasons why your business needs a customer reference program. First, it strengthens customer relationships and encourages retention by showcasing their success. When customers see that their business is valued, they are more likely to remain loyal and make repeat purchases. 

Additionally, customer testimonials and case studies are powerful influencers in the decision-making process for potential customers. Sprout Social reports that 71% of U.S. consumers are influenced by social media posts from friends and family when making purchasing decisions. In effect, a customer reference program enhances brand reputation through social proof and credibility, helping to drive lead generation and improve the sales cycle.

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Without that social proof, you risk having your prospects go elsewhere when they look up your business online — and, yes, they will be looking you up when researching your business. One of the first things a new customer will be looking for is online reviews, with over 99% of online shoppers seeking out reviews when they shop online. This includes negative reviews, too, so the more positive reviews and testimonials you have from happy customers, the better your business will appear to people seeking out companies like yours.

Customer reference programs also increase customer lifetime value by nurturing brand advocates. When your best customer becomes an advocate for your business, that person is more likely to make referrals and recommend your business to others. This can lead to increased revenue and profitability as well as overall greater trust in your brand. 

Customer reference program vs. referral program

Some people think that a customer reference program is the same as a referral program. But each asks for different types of recommendations:

• A referral program incentivizes customers when they directly recommend your business to friends and colleagues. 
• A reference program gathers testimonials and case studies from customers, to serve as a public recommendation.

A customer reference program is also a great natural follow-up to a referral program, since a referral program helps you find the customers who are willing to recommend you. So, it’s best to start a referral program before a customer reference program. 

• The referral program shows you who your best advocates are.
• You can then reach out to top referrers and ask if they want to go a step further, with a testimonial or reference (since they’re already willing to recommend you to friends).

Customer reference program vs. ambassador program

Reference programs are also slightly different from brand ambassador programs. The main difference is the channels customers use to promote your brand. 

• Ambassadors promote you on their own channels in the long term, with authentic stories.  Say, they might post about you on their own social media or their blog.
• Meanwhile, references are customer stories used to promote you on your own channels, like your brand’s website and social media accounts.

However, a reference program works best if you combine it with an ambassador program of sorts.

• Find your best customer-advocates, and ask them to give testimonials.
• But also give them trackable sales links to promote your brand on a more formalized level, as ambassadors.

Designing an effective customer reference program

Designing an effective customer reference program requires a deliberate and strategic approach, with careful attention given to every stage of the program’s development. It is essential to follow a structured customer reference management process that encompasses all the critical elements, from identifying potential advocates to ongoing engagement and program evaluation.

Identify ideal customer advocates

The first step is to identify ideal customer advocates. These customers are not only satisfied with your product or service and customer support but also loyal to your brand and willing to share their experiences with others. You can identify potential advocates by looking for customers who have already made referrals through your referral program. Or, reach out to the customers who have left positive reviews on your website, social media pages, or third-party review platforms. You can also look for customers who have high levels of satisfaction and loyalty, by using surveys such as the NPS score or the CSAT.

After you’ve found advocates, reach out with a message like the sample email below. 

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Create compelling customer stories

The next step is to create compelling customer stories. There are several formats for customer stories, including written testimonials, case studies, video interviews, and social media content. Whatever format you choose, make sure to craft a narrative that highlights customer success and the role your product or service played in it. Remember that the customer is the hero of the story, and your brand or product is the guide. 

It’s important to showcase the impact of your product or service on customer achievements to resonate with potential clients. For instance, you can discuss the problem or challenge your customer was facing, the solution you offered, and the results that your company produced for them.

Incentivize customer advocates

Once you’ve identified potential advocates, approach them and recognize their loyalty and satisfaction. Explain your customer reference program and how they can participate. You may also want to incentivize them to become advocates by offering exclusive offers, discounts, or other rewards. Forbes suggests inviting them to speak at industry panel discussions and conferences, giving them exposure, and highlighting their success.

When designing your incentives, it’s essential to balance the value you provide to the customer with the contribution they make to your program. Offering overly generous incentives can lead to a high cost per acquisition and attract customers who are primarily motivated by rewards rather than genuine advocacy. You’ll also need to continuously engage and nurture customer advocates to maintain their loyalty and commitment and keep them enthused about championing your brand. 

Implementing and managing your customer reference program

Implementing and managing your customer reference program effectively is crucial to ensure its success. This involves identifying and recruiting potential advocates, providing ongoing incentives and rewards, regularly assessing program performance, and adapting the program as needed to align with industry best practices and trends.

By effectively implementing and managing your program, you can build a strong community of brand advocates, strengthen customer relationships, and drive sustainable business growth. Here are our top tips for sustaining a customer reference program. 

Set up a system for tracking and measuring success

To track customer references, you can use CRM systems, marketing automation tools, or reference software. It’s important to set KPIs like conversion rates, customer engagement, and advocacy reach and analyze data to measure the success of your customer reference program.

In addition, tools like Referral Rock can help you launch an on-brand referral or ambassador program, so you can more quickly start taking advantage of referral opportunities and find the best advocates to ask for references. It’ll also help you optimize and improve the program based on actionable insights.

Promote your customer references

To promote your customer reference program, you can adopt both internal and external strategies. Internally, you can train your employees to identify potential advocates and encourage them to share success stories with stakeholders and partners. This can increase the visibility of your program within your organization and foster a culture of advocacy.

Externally, you can showcase customer stories on your website, social media, and email marketing campaigns. This can help you leverage the power of social proof and reinforce your value proposition to potential customers. By highlighting the experiences of satisfied customers, you can provide a compelling reason for prospects to choose your brand over your competitors.

In addition, you can use customer stories in your sales and marketing collateral. This can help you personalize your messaging and demonstrate the real-life impact of your product or service. By incorporating customer success stories into your marketing materials, you can provide proof of the value you offer and increase the credibility of your brand.

Continuously improve and evolve the program

Regularly assessing the performance of your customer reference program is critical to ensuring its effectiveness and driving sustainable business growth. Without continuous evaluation and improvement, your program may become stagnant and fail to achieve its goals.

Assessing performance goes beyond setting KPIs and analyzing data, though these are important in tracking tangible numbers behind your program. To take things a step further, gather feedback from your customer advocates. Ask them what they like and dislike about the program, what motivates them to participate, and what incentives and rewards they find most valuable. Use this feedback to make necessary adjustments and optimize the program based on the needs and preferences of your advocates.

Staying up-to-date with industry best practices and trends is also crucial for maintaining a competitive edge and adapting the program as needed. Keep an eye on emerging technologies and changes in consumer behavior, and adjust your program accordingly. Attend industry conferences and network with other professionals in your field to stay informed and gain new insights.

Wrap-up

A well-designed and effectively implemented customer reference program can have a significant impact on your business growth. By utilizing the power of customer advocacy and leveraging their stories, you can strengthen your brand reputation, increase customer lifetime value, and build long-term trust and loyalty with your customers.

Moreover, a data-driven approach and continuous assessment of your program’s performance will help you identify areas for improvement and keep up with industry trends and best practices.

Remember to remain open to feedback and new ideas to optimize your program and stay ahead of the competition. In time and with the right strategy and approach, your customer reference program can be a valuable asset in driving sustainable business growth.

If you’re looking to grow your business faster through customer advocacy, Referral Rock can help. Schedule a demo with us to learn how we can help you get more referrals and lay foundations for a customer reference program.

This shared media strategy guide will cover what shared media is, what sets it apart, and how you can take advantage of shared media within your digital marketing strategy.

What is shared media?

Shared media is content related to your brand that is shared by people independently, typically through social media platforms. But it could also be created in places like forums, chat groups, Discord servers, and other communities where media is shared. 

Shared media can be memes featuring your brand, word-of-mouth mentions, photos of your products, or even shares of content that was originally posted by your brand. What makes it shared media is that the content itself takes off as a cool and fun thing to post, re-post, link, and spread by the community, instead of through a brand-powered channel.

What sets shared media apart?

What makes shared media unique is that you have no control over how it’s shared – and the vast potential reach of something if social sharing goes viral. Shared media is more organic and has far greater reach than almost any other type of media that your company can influence.

However, there are ways to influence and encourage shared media through the motivations behind sharing.While you do not have direct control over what your audience shares, a brand can influence shared media to great benefit by understanding its channels and audience.

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Why is shared media so important?

Shared media is a powerful form of content because it is organic. It’s cool, fun, and has social motivation to propel it forward. While you don’t control the conversation, you’ll still increase brand awareness sharply should shared media take off, as the reach of just one popular shared media post could easily be in the millions. But it’s not just reach and brand awareness that make shared media so powerful. Here are some other factors that make shared media so important for your brand:

Social currency

People only share what makes them look cool and content they believe their friends or followers will enjoy. Like posing with designer sunglasses, posting content about your brand is about making themselves look amazing. Sharers put their own reputations on the line by associating with your brand, which, in turn, makes your brand look powerful and appealing. 

Once this begins, the “cool factor” applied to your product or content will gain momentum, and others seeking reputation through social currency may start sharing their own content featuring your brand.

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Social proof

Shared media also has the power of social proof behind it. Seeing others, especially trusted friends and favorite influencers, using your products will inspire others to do the same. Each time someone broadcasts a piece of shared media about your company, their social circle is more likely to join in to be a part of what their friends and influencers are doing.

Trust factor

People trust a product if they’ve seen it in action, if a trusted friend or influencer has recommended it, or if there is a growing body of positive reviews. Shared media in which people pose with and/or promote your brand is as good as a 5-star review for most. It’s validation that proves someone has used your product and found it to be worthy. Others are then more likely to trust and buy your product as a result of every piece of shared media they see.

Community

Shared media also creates a fun source of engagement for your online community. Posting pictures and memes about what your audience already loves about your brand brings people together, and those hoping to join the community may join in trends like posting pictures and ideas featuring the product for fun. This creates engagement and social connection through loving your brand.

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Potential for virality

Lastly, shared media has the greatest potential of all your PESO media to go viral. A viral post is something that is seen and enjoyed by so many that it can spread to reach thousands or even millions of people over time with share after share, social circle after social circle. If you’re fortunate (say, the content becomes a meme) it may even begin to duplicate at the viral level, and reach millions of people with a single share!

Types of shared media

There are many types of shared media, but they primarily fall into these three categories: User-generated content, social media referrals, and content reshares. Each plays an important role in your shared media ecosystem.

User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is 100% original and created by your community. It might be snapshots with your product, memes created using your brand, or funny/meaningful blurbs about you. Some user-generated content is stunningly beautiful, some is simple, some is funny – whatever makes it catch wind and sail out into the community. It often displays how much your current users love your product, or gives examples of how your product is used.

Most UGC is impromptu, but through events like art contests and hashtag prompts, you can encourage your audience to create and share new UGC. You can also reshare UGC on your own accounts with the creator’s permission (and the prospect of potentially being featured will inspire fans to create even more UGC).

Social media referrals

Social media referrals are direct recommendations of your brand or products on social media. They may be shared by an existing customer for the benefit of their friends and followers, often vouching for your brand as a favorite solution or experience. For example, a customer may spontaneously recommend a brand of water bottles as the best they’ve ever used while camping, or a piece of art software as their favorite for creating their original artwork.

Because customers tend to refer spontaneously, it’s best to have a social media referral program ready so you can give them credit and rewards for spreading the word. Social media referral programs are awesome for other reasons as well, including the ability to incentivize successful social referrals, motivate sharing, and build trust in the social proof surrounding your company.

Content reshares 

Content reshares are when you know your brand’s marketing is on the right track. These are community shares of brand content that you created. In other words, this is when owned media becomes shared media. When your audience reshares a blog post, infographic, video, or social media post you have made on their own page, they are providing organic support by showing that they love your original content.

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Sharing original brand content with friends and peers gives your brand more credibility, displaying that your audience not only enjoys your content, but also agrees with what you say about yourself. And when your fans link directly to your content or website when sharing on social, their backlinks send signals that help improve your SEO optimization, increasing the chances that you’ll be found via search engines. 

While you cannot control which of your brand’s owned media becomes a popular piece of shared media, you can increase the number by crafting content that meets the tastes, needs, or humor of your target audience. 

What makes shared media different from other media types?

Every brand’s online presence is made up of four types of media, PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned), which represents all the ways in which your brand’s content gets out to your audience. Shared media plays an important role in your publicity ecosystem because it reflects your audience’s responses and attitudes – and it can also incorporate every other type of media by re-sharing anything that your audience enjoys or agrees with.

Because of this, shared media both contrasts and relates to each of the other types of media within your brand’s publicity sphere.

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Shared media vs. Paid media

Paid media is content crafted by your brand that you have spent money to broadcast. Paid media today begins and ends with Google Ads (PPC ads), but traditionally has also included things like television and radio ads, billboards, product placements, and print publication ads. With online marketing, paid media typically takes the form of sponsored search results or banner ads.

Paid media is typically the least trusted because people know your primary goal is to promote a product. However, social resharing can give your paid media more weight. In contrast with paid media, shared media typically costs nothing because others create or promote it for you. However, some shared media can also be paid, such as paid influencers, affiliates, and brand ambassadors. You can also incentivize social media referrals with a referral program.

Shared media vs. Owned media

Owned media is any media created by your brand and broadcasted on channels controlled by your brand. This includes your own content marketing, including blog posts and your own social media posts. It also includes whitepapers, webinars and podcasts that you host, and press releases that you create and publish yourself. 

When shared media consists of UGC, it is considered the opposite of owned media. Where you have the most control over owned media, you have the least control over shared media. That said, a great deal of shared media begins as owned media. As soon as someone shares something that you originally posted, it becomes shared media. 

Shared media vs. Earned media

Traditional earned media includes news articles, awards, best-of lists, recommendations from bloggers, and other publications that feature your brand but are created by other people. Referral marketing (no matter where the referrals are made) also count as earned media, since a customer or fan tells others about your brand.

In the modern environment, earned media and shared media overlap considerably, as social posts and UGC created by fans count as both earned and shared media. 

Earned media is when you are featured and promoted by others based on merit rather than your own promotional efforts. Therefore, all shared media is earned media (you have earned the share) but not all earned media is shared media.

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Referrals, reviews, and publications that occur away from social media channels do not fall under the definition of shared media, though they can be linked in part or in whole to become shared media.

Shared and earned media are both highly trusted, because they are inspired by natural sentiment instead of being promotional material from your brand. 

Social media referral programs: paid, owned, earned, and shared media

At the center of the PESO media Venn diagram is social media referral programs. These give you an opportunity to encourage, inspire, pay for, and take control of the media published about your brand. A social media referral program draws from elements of every media type in order to help create and reward the creation of media featuring your brand.

What is a social media referral program?

A social media referral program is when you incentivize earned and shared content featuring your brand, primarily in the form of referrals.  Customers who choose to speak highly of your brand because they already love your products can generate their own referral link to win incentives and rewards for every new customer who is persuaded by their praise.

Program-linked referrals also give you the opportunity to track where your new customers are coming from and which referrals have the greatest impact, as well as offering greater control over messaging through incentivization.

Incentive payments

Social referrals become both shared media and paid media when you offer incentives in the form of payments or valuable rewards to those doing the referring. The paid nature allows you to encourage your audience to create shared media and to broadcast their shares to a wider audience for everyone’s benefit.

Controlled channel

Social media referral programs take place primarily on a channel that you own (the referral program), which can transform shared media into owned media. By participating in the program, you also ask your audience to give implicit permission for you to use their original content for the sake of the brand. This gives you greater control while rewarding the original creator.

Earned praise

Another great thing about social media referral programs is that the media is still earned. Social media referrals are highly trusted because they are coming from peers who are sharing their genuine reasons for recommending your brand to others.

Tracked social reach

Lastly, because the program takes place on social media sites, you gain all the benefits of shared media’s social reach, social currency, and social proof. But thanks to the referral program’s tracking features, you’ll be able to measure the direct impact of every share in sales.

Conclusion 

Shared media is a powerful avenue for online visibility, social proof, lead generation, and acquiring new customers. Each share reflects how your customers enjoy and interact with the brand, with both trusted and far-reaching impact. While you cannot fully control who shares or how far it goes, you can encourage shared media, track reach, and reward those who successfully bring in new customers through a social media referral program.

Referral Rock can help you build a social media referral program that ties in naturally with your community, gives you access to trusted ambassadors, and provide insights on just how effective your brand’s body of shared media can be. Contact us today to explore the possibilities.

Such integrations are quickly becoming pervasive online, helping tech companies fill gaps between their products and other products, grow their audiences, improve customer retention, and streamline the customer experience. 

Integration partnerships have the potential to deliver huge value for tech companies. 95% of Microsoft’s revenue, for example, flows through its partnerships, while Shopify’s partner ecosystem generated over $6.9 billion in 2019. 

This article will explore SaaS integration partnerships, their benefits, the value they can deliver to your business, and how you can begin finding technology partners.

What are integration partnerships?

Integration partnerships form when two or more SaaS companies connect, or integrate, their software solutions together to provide an enhanced user experience.  The two software programs work together effortlessly to move data back and forth in real time, leading to streamlined workflows and a smoother customer experience.

When two software programs have formed an integration partnership, a user won’t need to hire a developer to connect their systems. Instead, it’s easy to connect the programs together without much technical experience.

How do integration partnerships work?

Integration partnerships are usually formed between two complementary products with distinct features. The products are connected in a way that lets the two programs communicate with each other. (Often, but not always, that’s through API – an application programming interface). The partners will then list each other’s offerings on their marketplace as integrating services.

Establishing valuable integration partnerships takes time. It requires two companies to properly connect their products so they communicate with, and pass information between, one another seamlessly. 

Why should you form integration partnerships?

On average, only 28% of a company’s tech stack includes software that integrates with other tools. So, there’s an extremely valuable opportunity for forward-thinking firms to build extraordinary value through strategic partnerships with the right SaaS companies – those where an integration would deliver more user value.

Benefits of integration partnerships

One of the biggest benefits of establishing integration partnerships is that they allow companies to solve problems and add features without investing heavily in technology. These partnerships lend themselves to the realization of several other benefits, including:

• Improved customer satisfaction: Integration partnerships help enhance user experiences because your product meshes well with other complementary products. Customers will stick with you long-term when your integrations improve their experience and add to your product’s functionality. As a result, you’ll see a healthier customer lifecycle, where more customers move to the retention stage and may even recommend you to their peers. 

• More growth potential: The improved customer satisfaction from integration partnerships can help you scale your business more quickly. Through the other business’ advertising their integrations with you, you gain the opportunity to reach a wider audience of highly qualified leads. Potential customers are likely to see that your software integrates with what they already use, and that they’ll be able to conveniently meet their current business needs by using it.  This will lead to increased conversions.

• Boost your product offering: Integrating your software with a partner to offer additional features is much easier than engineering new features. Integration is particularly important to start-ups that want to scale their feature set but don’t necessarily have the capital to do so in-house.  It’s much quicker to integrate with a partner than to develop features yourself (or outsource development within your own product). 

• Develop industry relationships: Building industry relationships is key to achieving long-term growth, as it helps to create mutually beneficial alliances. By building a network of trusted partners, you can rely on each other for referrals, co-marketing campaigns, revenue sharing, and establishing integrations. 

• Stand out from the crowd: Despite all the positives or integration partnerships, less than one-third of SaaS solutions and apps available today are integrated. Developing relationships with integration partners is one of the most effective ways to stand out against competitors without integrations.  

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Are you ready for an integration partnership?

Integration partnerships can deliver unparalleled value for SaaS companies. But that’s not to say that every SaaS operator is in a position to begin their foray into building them. There are indicators to show you’re ready for an integration partnership. 

You’ll need an established product ready for an integration partnership, freely available to users and past any alpha, beta, and pre-release stages. You will also need the budget to invest in an integration with another company and, perhaps most importantly, the drive and willingness to maintain the partnership; it won’t be a one-and-done situation. 

The best time to start an integration partnership is when you have the need for features that aren’t core to your product, but that would clearly enhance it, and that you’d benefit from having more urgently. As a rule, you’ll generally be ready for an integration partnership when organically looking to scale up your product with additional features or capabilities. Emphasis on organically; you shouldn’t be forcing things. Things should flow naturally. You need to be able to walk before you can run!

Finding integration partners

There are thousands of potential integration partners with complementary product offerings to your own. This number of potential partners is both a blessing and a curse; narrowing them down can be difficult. 

It can take quite a while to research and select potential partners, and then you’ve got everything else to take care of: negotiation, agreements, and engineering. It’s safe to say that you won’t be deploying an integration overnight. You’ll therefore want a potential partner who will bring value and is just as dedicated as you to the cause. 

When hunting for integration partners, consider the following:

• Do you share a target audience? Integration can only deliver value if it’s relevant to your customers. One of the biggest indicators of a solid potential partnership is the overlap between your customers and the customers of your potential partner. 
• Will your customers use their features? There’s little point in going through the motions to develop a partnership when your customers have little to no use for your partner’s features. Don’t just establish ongoing partnerships for the sake of it; it’s better to pick a few partners with the most potential to improve your feature set. 
• Will your partner benefit? Integration partnerships should be mutually beneficial arrangements. If you’re the only side gaining from a potential partnership, getting the other side on board may be challenging unless you offer substantial compensation. 
• Do they already have an integration with one of your competitors? This could be a dealbreaker, but not always – it often pays to integrate with more established SaaS programs, even if competitors did first. This is especially true for integrations with leading providers, like CRMs, that many companies naturally have in their workflow. 

Best practices for maintaining integration partnerships

The success of any partnership boils down to how well it’s managed. It’s not something you can work to set up and then forget about. Let’s look at a few best practices to help you establish and, more importantly, maintain positive partnerships. 

Choose a partnership point of contact

It’s best to nominate one person as a single point of contact for managing each partner program. They’ll be responsible for running the partnership and managing the relationship with your partner. This choice helps to ensure a consistent, smooth approach conducive to positive relations. 

As growth comes, consider putting together a dedicated partnerships team, with employees from your product, customer success, and marketing teams. However, you’ll still want to ensure that there’s one individual responsible for taking ownership of each partnership, even if they have a team supporting them. 

Figure out monetization

Every successful partnership is formed because of the incentives each party has. No SaaS company will partner with you if they get nothing for their efforts, and you shouldn’t either. Incentives should appeal to your partner and increase in value as your partner generates more business. 

One of the most impactful incentives is monetization, and there are many ways to achieve this. 

• Will your partner get a share of revenue when people buy your software via the links on their site?
• Will they be able to offer their partners a discount, as long as they drive a certain amount of sales for you?
• Will higher amounts of sales unlock higher tiers of commissions?

You might also require your partner to invest in the partnership, to ensure that you get concrete benefits from the integration. 

• Will partners need to commit resources with a clear value, such as designing an integration landing page, creating co-branded resources, or hosting webinars showcasing your integration?

Use PRM software

Partner relationship management (PRM) software  is a vital collaboration solution for maintaining any integration partnership.  This partner management system makes it easy to monitor the overall success of a partnership by creating unique tracking links. It also automates processes, and enables day-to-day management for both parties through a centralized portal. 

PRM software can also incentivize potential partners by simplifying the end-to-end partnership process, making operations on both sides more efficient. With PRM software, you can combine co-marketing strategies, submit information about referrals, and develop an ecosystem where stakeholders can achieve full visibility into the partnership. 

Write and sign a partnership agreement

Partnerships can only be successful when both parties are on the same page regarding expectations and requirements. The simplest and most effective way to do this is by creating a partnership agreement that both parties consent to. 

In your partnership agreement, you should include information like the following:

• The duration of the agreement (if limited).
• Each party’s requirements for maintaining the integration.
• What features will each party supply to the other?
• Incentives and any commission structures.
• Grounds for termination (notice period to voluntarily stop the partnership, questionable activity that immediately terminates the partnership, etc.) 

Onboard and train partners

Partner onboarding provides insight into your product, your customers, their problems, how you solve them, and what you expect from your partner’s team. When onboarding new partners, you need to do things like:

• Provide a comprehensive introduction.
• Explain how everything works (expectations, incentives, etc.)
• Introduce them to the partner portal/PRM software.
• Give an overview of the workings of your platform.
• Explain what resources are available to them (such as high-res images, or training docs to explain the integration to customers).

The idea of onboarding is to hit the ground running with a positive first impression, provide training, and help them get the most value from the partnership. 

Hold regular check-in meetings

Along with onboarding and training, you’ll want to check in regularly with your partners. Take this time to look at the ROI being produced by the partnership, and review key performance metrics. Co-marketing opportunities (like webinars on your integrations or resources for customers) can be identified and presented, so reviewing sales and marketing plans is also essential during these meetings. And if the integration partnership isn’t performing how you expect, decide on a course of action together. 

Be ready to invest in the upkeep

If you’re looking to scale your business using multiple partnerships, you’ll need resources to maintain them. Without the proper process, you risk spreading yourself too thin and damaging partner relationships. 

As you do scale through partnerships, it’s crucial that your product team still has the support and time they need to focus on new developments and initiatives. You don’t want to detract from new features of your products by overburdening your product team with so many different integration partners. 

Ready to find an integration partner?

Integration partnerships are an extremely valuable yet under-utilized way to generate organic growth for your SaaS company. By partnering with complementary businesses, you can benefit from increased exposure and access to new customers. 

Before pursuing integration partnerships, it’s important to determine whether your business is ready for this type of collaboration. Once you have identified potential partners, establish best practices for maintaining successful partnerships, such as designating a partnership point person, regularly holding check-in meetings, and investing in the upkeep of your integration partnerships. 

PRM software is the key to building strong integration partnerships when push comes to shove. Referral Rock’s world-class software automates every step of the process, allowing SaaS businesses to scale and measure the success of partnership programs.