Is there anything better for your company than having highly dedicated fans who will spread their passion for your brand? Not really.
It should come as no surprise that word-of-mouth marketing is a potent tool for businesses of all sizes. Companies often spend a lot of resources on increasing brand awareness through traditional marketing. However, while brand awareness is important, it’s not the only thing you should be focusing on. Simply having customers be aware of who you are is only the first step in creating a successful and robust marketing strategy. In 2021, it’s all about creating those passionate brand evangelists.
Brand evangelists are your incredibly loyal customers. In marketing, brand evangelism is a subcategory of word-of-mouth marketing. Here are some characteristics that define brand evangelists:
Lots of companies! Apple is an excellent example of a company that successfully employs brand evangelism. Fans of Apple products tend to be passionate about them. They will often jump to Apple’s defense on social media if someone points out that some competitor products have better specs. But why?
Here are some of the reasons Apple has managed to create so many evangelists:
One of the primary reasons people choose Apple devices is because “they just work.” This gives the impression of high quality and reliable products. Apple conducts extensive testing to ensure their devices have low failure rates. This helps avoid disasters like Samsung’s Fold phone, which, while innovative, has experienced widespread failures that have harmed the reputation of the product. Apple also tends to market the materials they use in devices, focusing on tough glasses and metal finishes that add to the high-quality image.
One of Apple products’ main negatives for many consumers is the lack of customization and control. However, for brand evangelists, it’s a plus. By limiting what users can do or what they can download, Apple can ensure that apps work seamlessly across the board. Developers have to jump through more hoops to get their app on the Apple store than the Play Store. This is reflected in the statistics too. There are 1.85 million different apps available on the iOS App Store and a whopping 2.56 million available on the Google Play Store at the time of writing.
So, why do Apple users prefer having fewer options? Probably for the same reason that you get suspicious when you go to a restaurant with too many options on the menu. It makes you think, “hmmm, can the chefs really be experts at cooking all of these things?”. In truth, they might be great at every meal. Unless you’re a chef yourself or have worked in that restaurant, you have no way of knowing where the chefs’ expertise lies. Maybe the recipes are simple and easy to execute, or perhaps the chefs have extensive training.
But there will still be that part of your brain that doubts the quality of the food. High-end fine-dining restaurants know this. You’ll never see a fine-dining menu with tons of options, and you can bet they have some of the best chefs available working there. It’s more about the perception of quality than quality itself…and also, the experience.
People who buy Apple products don’t just buy the product; they buy the Apple experience. They often buy into the whole ecosystem, getting many Apple products that all work together. Apple stores also play a part in creating this experience. People like to visit Apple stores just to play around with the latest gadgets.
No, absolutely not. Brand evangelism is essentially word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. For companies of any size, word of mouth marketing is both essential and effective. Here are some word-of-mouth marketing statistics you should know:
For small and medium-sized businesses, word of mouth marketing can help save costs on marketing. Typically, smaller companies don’t have big marketing budgets, but that doesn’t mean they can’t continually attract a steady stream of new customers. They just have to make their customers do the work for them by offering great experiences!
With that in mind, here are our top tips for creating brand evangelists in 2021.
There are two elements to creating customer evangelists. Firstly, you need to create loyal customers. And secondly, you should encourage these loyal customers to market your product for you. Some of this will happen naturally – loyal customers want to talk about their experiences and the products they use. However, you shouldn’t leave it all up to chance. Instead, you can use these tips to boost your chances of success. We’ve split this section into two parts to reflect these two essential ingredients to customer evangelism.
Did you know that 90% of Americans are willing to spend more money if they believe a business provides excellent customer service?
When you prioritize customer service, you’re telling your customers the following things:
The critical thing to take away here is that your customers want to feel valued and validated, and you can give them this through excellent customer service. Here are some quick tips on how to offer excellent customer service:
If you’re collecting customer data (and you should be), you need to use it to offer personalized experiences. According to research, 74% of marketers say personalization boosts customer engagement. This doesn’t have to be a complicated process – you can start by sending personalized emails complete with offers on products that your customers already buy.
It’s challenging to create loyal customers when the buying process has a lot of friction. If buying your products is needlessly tricky or time-consuming, even customers who love using your products will hesitate to recommend them. Customers have to be confident that their friends and family will have a good experience with your brand, and that means the whole end-to-end experience, not just the experience with the end product. Here are some tips on streamlining the buying process:
For your word-of-mouth marketing efforts to be successful, you have to give your customers something to talk about. This means giving them memorable experiences that they can’t get elsewhere. It can be fun gifts, quirky offers, unique hashtag challenges, and much more.
This is a strategy that has really taken off in Asia but is gaining traction in the rest of the world. User-generated content is any content created by users for other users. For example, when customers make video reviews of your product, do live sessions where they tell other users how to get the most out of it, and so on. You can encourage this activity by sharing posts by users who do this. Customers trust other customers.
Customer reviews are a great asset to your business. If you have a high number of positive reviews, then it’s a good idea to share these reviews or testimonials on your website or social media.
If you want to attract more customers, it’s good to start a customer referral scheme. You can give customers free products or coupons for referring people to your business.
An excellent way to get people talking is to talk more yourself. This means creating blog posts or videos about current hot topics in your industry. There are several benefits to this strategy: