Building customer loyalty is the biggest asset any e-commerce store can have. To use it in favor of the business, you should learn to turn customers into brand advocates.
These brand advocates can actively promote your store, drawing in new customers and strengthening your brand presence. Apart from increasing brand affinity and visibility, your store’s sales and conversion will also increase.
By offering exclusive member perks and personalized user experience, you can instill customer loyalty. This will ultimately increase repeat purchases. Creating customers as brand advocates is essential for customer retention in Shopify, as it solidifies trust and loyalty.
This comprehensive guide will show you proven strategies to turn customers into brand advocates while building a strong loyal community around your brand.
With Brand Advocacy using Afflr, you can reach 60% more potential customers.
Who Are Brand Advocates for a Shopify Store?
Brand advocates are customers who will promote your store through word-of-mouth, social media, and reviews of their own will. Often, in return, for successful sales, these brand advocates will be given rewards in the form of loyalty points, store credits, discounts, etc.
In other terms, you can also categorize turning customers into brand advocates as part of referral marketing or loyalty programs.
For Shopify store owners, turning happy customers into brand advocates offers numerous benefits:
- Increased Word-of-mouth Marketing: Advocates share their positive experiences to organic brand growth.
- Cost-Effective Marketing: Brand advocacy minimizes your dependency on paid campaigns, thus saving money.
- Higher Conversion Rates: Peer recommendations are more trustworthy than advertisements. 92% of people are likely to trust brand recommendations from people they know.
Steps to Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates for Shopify
To turn customers into brand advocates, you need a systematic approach. Customer experience optimization is the key to pursuing customers to join your squad in promoting your brand value.
Here’s how to implement strategies to turn customers into brand advocates:
- Implement Easy-to-use rewards systems: Offering rewards and setting up flexible commissions will motivate customers to promote enthusiastically and bring quality leads.
- Develop personalized marketing strategies: By personalizing messaging, you can easily approach your loyal customers to become brand advocates.
- Create effective customer feedback loops: Product review apps in Shopify can be used to create an automated workflow to collect reviews that can form brand trust.
- Establish multi-channel engagement strategies: You can use multiple ways of reaching out to customers like SMS, email, etc to reach a wide range of customers to become your referral partner.
- Focus on enhancing post-purchase experience: You can conduct post-purchase surveys and maintain relationships with customers to build loyalty.
- Provide Outstanding Customer Service: When you encounter abandoned carts, post-purchase service queries, and any other customer issues, allot to a prompt support team to address them. This will enhance the customer experience.
How to Create a Shopify Brand Advocacy Program?
To create a Shopify brand advocacy program to help turn customers into brand advocates, the most important step is to use the right Shopify tools for advocacy.
Afflr is the simplest and most cost-effective Shopify affiliate app to create a brand advocacy program for your customers to turn into brand advocates.
Referral marketing in Shopify is a proven strategy to use your loyal customers to promote your products in return for incentives.
Your customer advocacy program should include:
- Attractive and competitive commission
- A unique referral code for customers
- Regular means to communicate with customers
- Easy payout of rewards to the customers
- Performance tracking to optimize the program
Afflr provides means to handle all this in one place with a user-friendly interface and easy execution.
You can create your brand advocate program effortlessly and create different commission models based on your needs.
Promote the Benefits of Being a Brand Advocate
Promoting the benefits of being a brand advocate will hugely contribute to recruiting brand advocates. To promote widely, you can use email, SMS, social media, a dedicated landing page, online forums, etc.
To successfully convert your loyal customers into brand advocates, clearly communicate the value of becoming part of the program.
Highlight these benefits:
- Exclusive Rewards: Discounts, free products, or loyalty points.
- Recognition: Feature top advocates on your website or social media.
- Early Access: Offer previews and access to new products or services.
These incentives make it easier to build brand advocates on Shopify while strengthening emotional bonds.
Creating a visually inviting signup form using Afflr can increase the registration of brand advocates.
Recruit Customers as Brand Advocates
With Afflr, you have two easy ways to recruit your advocacy program.
(i) Signup form
(ii) Thank you page
1. Signup Form
By creating a visually attractive signup form for your brand advocacy program, details of your program can be shared with your customers. You can easily create and embed the signup form in your Shopify store using Afflr.
Once you add it to your Shopify website, you can share the link across various platforms to reach more audiences.
2. Thank you Page
After your customers complete their shopping, you can nudge them to become your referral partner by displaying details regarding your brand advocacy program on the order confirmation page.
This Thank you page feature of Afflr will allow you to convert all customers into brand advocates for high sales and conversion.
Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates Automatically
One of the highlighting features of Afflr that sets it apart is the ability to turn customers into brand advocates automatically.
As soon as the customer completes their purchase with you, a unique referral code will be generated for them. They will added to your brand advocacy program automatically.
Automating this process will reduce manual intervention as your business scales. You can increase customer engagement and provide a good customer experience throw rewards and incentives.
Streamlined Communication With Brand Advocates
Once you turn customers into brand advocates, effective communication will keep your advocates engaged.
Strategies to keep communication alive include:
- Share with them the updates of their advocacy program like referral codes, commission payments, etc.
- Regularly updating them about new products or campaigns.
- Thanking them for their contributions publicly.
- Using platforms like Slack or email groups for easy interaction.
With Afflr, you can automate email communication for some important events like commission approval, payment initiation, etc. This will help keep your brand advocates in the loop.
These are automated emails you can send with Afflr.
Apart from this, Afflr can be integrated with Klaviyo and Zapier. You can automate workflow to trigger emails with Klaviyo and use Zapier for 700+ app integration.
Ensure a Smooth Payout Process for Advocates
A transparent and hassle-free reward system motivates advocates to continue promoting your brand.
Afflr offers 5 types of payout:
- Offline
- PayPal
- PayPal Classic
- Coupons
- Store Credit
- Tremendous (for Gift Cards)
These options will enable you to offer variety to your advocates and they will be interested to join your program.
With one simple click, you can send payouts to your brand advocates. Every transaction will be recorded to help you keep track. Additionally, you can send bulk payouts based on your need.
Tips to Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates in Shopify
Here are some additional tips to maximize your advocacy efforts:
- Leverage Social Proof: Highlight reviews and testimonials to increase brand credibility.
- Incentivize Referrals: Offer attractive rewards for recommendations.
- Focus on Emotional Connections: Share your brand story to inspire loyalty.
- Engage on Multiple Channels: Use email, social media, and in-store experiences to connect with customers.
- Track Metrics: Measure advocacy success with tools like Google Analytics or Shopify reports.
By following these best practices, you can turn customers into brand advocates who actively promote your store.
Increasing brand authenticity with social proof using brand advocates is smooth and effortless with Afflr.
Conclusion
By implementing these strategies to turn customers into brand advocates, your Shopify store can build a powerful community of supporters. Polish your Shopify customer engagement strategy with the help of Afflr, and your brand community can grow.
With the right approach, you can turn customers into brand advocates to achieve sustainable growth and sales through authentic brand advocacy.
Further Reading
- How to install the Afflr app on your Shopify Store?
- How to create an affiliate link in Shopify?
- A Complete Guide on Affiliate Email Marketing for Shopify
- How to set up your Instagram affiliate marketing?
To get brand advocates, you have to deliver exceptional customer experiences. You can offer personalized rewards, and engage your audience with referral programs. Use social media to encourage satisfied customers to share their positive feedback and promote your brand authentically.
A brand advocate will promote your brand by sharing positive reviews, recommending your products, and influencing others to become customers. For these word-of-mouth referrals, you can award them an incentive. Through this, you can improve your brand’s credibility and reach.
A brand advocate is a satisfied customer who promotes a brand organically, motivated by brand loyalty and fair rewards. In contrast, an influencer is usually a professional content creator paid to promote your products to their audience.
