Conversions. That magic part of your website where a casual site visitor crosses over and becomes a lead, prospect, or (even better) a paying customer! Conversions are why you even have an online presence. Simply put, they are the desired action you want your website visitors to take when visiting one of your digital properties. Increase your web conversions and, theoretically, the larger your business grows. As your biggest, loudest supporters, your advocates are in a unique position to not only drive more awareness and traffic to your website but also help you get those sweet, sweet conversions.
How you ask? Let’s pull back the curtain and take a peek to find out.
Advocacy Marketing: When An Advocate Speaks, Their Network Listens
New site visitors that come to a website from a social channel are 129% more like to convert compared to other channels.
129%.
In an advocacy marketing program, your advocates are regularly sharing your content on their social channels. Every time they share your content, they’re also signaling their personal endorsement of that content. Their fans and friends engage with the content already knowing it was vetted and approved by their friend.
This personal endorsement adds an extra shot of trust to the user experience. In fact, 92% of would-be converters trust recommendations from their friends and family more than from any other marketing source. On top of that, people pay twice the attention to social posts from their friends and family than they do from brands or publishers.
More Trust + More Visibility = More Conversions
The math checks out.
What Conversions Are We Talking About?
Short answer, all of them.
Long answer, whatever you deem to be the highest priority for your organization, including:
- Purchases
- New Business Prospects
- Phone Calls
- Email Subscribers
- Social Followings
- Advocacy Marketing Program Growth
- High-Interest Remarketing Audience Growth
Every business has their own priorities regarding the conversions that matter most to them. However, in general, most conversions tend to be oriented towards sales-driving or revenue-generating efforts.
4 Tips to Leveraging Advocates to Increase Conversions
Time to get to the good stuff. Let’s explore some best practices for turning your advocates into your top conversion-driving channel.
1) Create Content That Supports Your Top Conversions
Not all content is created equal. If you wanted to pound some nails, you’d pass out some hammers, right? Same goes for your content. If you want your advocates to drive conversions, you need to give them conversion-driving content.
Specifically, create content that speaks to the benefit of an advocate’s friend taking that conversion step. For example, use your advocates to share a sample of the type of content they can receive if they sign up for your email list. Or have your advocates share testimonials or reviews to help them in their decision to make a purchase.
2) Create Content That Empowers And Educates To Help Your Advocates Advocate
84% of brand advocates are asked questions that buyers wouldn’t ask a company’s own customer service team. Maybe they’re embarrassed about the question or they might not trust the brand’s customer response team to deliver a candid, honest response. Regardless, once your advocates start sharing your content, they’re going to become a go-to answering machine resource for these would-be converters.
To help your advocates advocate, create content that gives them the answers they need to address common questions. Educate them a bit. If your products are built with a specific material or through a special process, make sure that your advocates can speak to those points.
3) Create Content That Drives To A Landing Or Squeeze Page
If your conversion list includes having a prospect interact with a lead magnet, download a form, or simply subscribe to your email list, consider building a dedicated landing page or squeeze page that focuses solely on this one action. No navigation links. No social links. Just great copy and a strong call-to-action that compels visitors to convert right there on the page the first time someone lands on it.
For these desired landing page conversions, you’ll want to create content that drives people directly to said landing page (no-brainer, right?). Protect against a high bounce rate by clearly setting the expectation on what offer, lead magnet, or incentive the landing or squeeze page is communicating.
4) Use Your Advocates To Share A Discount Code
Lastly, don’t be afraid to chum the conversion waters. If your primary goal is to drive sales, use your advocates to spread the word on newly created discount codes, sales, or specials. Being individuals, your advocates’ posts are blessed by the Facebook gods with a higher organic reach than your business page posts receive. By using your advocates to share a discount code, you can increase the visibility of the code without having to pay to promote that content.
Let SocialToaster Help Leverage Your Fanbase
We all know advocate marketing campaigns excel at ensuring your content gets seen by your target market; however, if you’re not also using your advocates to drive conversions, you’re only getting half the benefit of an advocacy marketing program. Half is never enough. Go for gold and start using your advocates to increase your conversions.
Ready to start driving conversions through an advocacy marketing campaign? Contact us at 855.62.TOAST or send us an email, or schedule a free demo with one of our marketing specialists today to learn more about developing a dedicated advocacy marketing program of your own.
