The Importance of Brand Advocacy and How to Measure It Well

By Hilary DeCamp, Chief Methodologist at Material

Digital media – from blogs to online forums, review sites and social media platforms – have inserted a powerful force in the buying process: peer-to-peer word of mouth at scale. 

“Social proof” is when seeing others use a product leads you to think it must be good – prompting you to follow suit. It’s why most apparel brands display their logos on the outside of their clothing. In many of the more complex categories that require research or in-depth knowledge to make a good choice, often the only brand choice someone makes is to simply ask a trusted advisor what brand to choose.

It has been reported that word-of-mouth (WOM) impressions generate 5x more sales than paid media impressions, and that WOM is a primary factor behind as much as half of purchase decisions in some categories. Now, with the advent and growth of influencer marketing, who knows how much bigger its impact can grow?

But let’s focus on your market, not your marketing, for a moment.

The only thing people trust more than word-of-mouth is their own personal experience.  Levels of organic online advocacy both drive market share (through its direct influence or those exposed to it) and provide leading indicators of shifts in market share (by mirroring offline conversations that are also happening).

Online advocacy, as measured by social listening, is not the same as buzz or positive sentiment; it’s a more specific and nuanced type of comment typically found in community-based channels like blogs and forums. By analyzing where the recommendations are occurring and profiling those doing the recommending, you can gain additional insight into why and what to do next.

Tracking online advocacy may help you spot an up-and-coming niche competitor that’s either not yet in your brand tracking survey or is too small to be moving the needle much.

Speaking of your brand tracking…

Let’s focus on organic word-of-mouth that happens naturally when people advocate for a brand they’ve had a good experience with. Brands that create strong emotional connections with their customers are more likely to inspire passionate advocacy. In fact, research shows us that consumers with a high degree of emotional connection to a brand are:

• 5x more likely to follow a brand into new categories,

• 3x more likely to purchase a brand most often, and

• 2x more willing to recommend a brand to others.

The willingness to stick your neck out and tell others to make the same purchase decision you did is a clear sign of strong satisfaction. The desire to warn others away is an even more powerful signal, since it requires you to admit having made a mistake. Brand experiences that trigger strong negative emotions, such as anger or disappointment, are especially likely to trigger negative word of mouth.

Because people trust recommendations from friends and family (and even online consumer reviews) far more than they trust claims from advertisers or credentialed experts, getting your satisfied customers to advocate on your behalf can be a highly impactful, cost-effective marketing strategy.

The first step, though is to align on a system for measuring advocacy with accuracy and consistency.

The Right Metric to Measure Brand Advocacy in Brand Tracking

Based on seminal work published by Fred Reichheld roughly twenty years ago, many organizations have embraced “the one number you need to grow.” This is ostensibly a Net Promoter Score (NPS), defined as the percent of people with high likelihood of recommending a brand (“Promoters” rate 9-10 on a 0-10 scale) minus the percent of people with low likelihood of recommending it (“Detractors” rate 0-6 on that scale).

While many managers continue to embrace Net Promoter Score, I’ve found that insights professionals tend to be more skeptical of its value as a brand advocacy metric.

To explore why, let’s focus specifically on the face validity of the metric (not its reliability, cross-cultural comparability or other drawbacks) purely as a gauge of advocacy. It’s crucial to understand that failure (or low likelihood) to recommend – a key element of NPS – does not necessarily equate to actual detraction or even to low repeat purchase. Some people, particularly in some cultures, simply do not impose their views on others. When those people give low scores on this scale, they are mischaracterized as detractors.

A true detractor is someone who has, or would, actively recommend against a brand. These people can have an outsize negative impact on your business in today’s world powered by ratings and reviews sites and viral social media posts.

You can only identify true detractors in your surveys (in order to dig into their reasons) by directly measuring the propensity to share negative word-of-mouth.

In our research across dozens of categories, we find that over half of NPS-designated detractors are open to buying again for their own use. In contrast, the majority of consumers who explicitly tell you they would share their negative opinion with others are not at all likely to buy again themselves… they’ve learned their lesson and want you to benefit from it, too.

For a more complete view of brand advocacy, Material developed the Active Voice metric. Active Voice tracks advocacy (both positive and negative word of mouth), while NPS – in its focus on likelihood to recommend – can be better described as yet another measure of brand satisfaction.

With Active Voice, advocacy can be measured behaviorally (“have you recommended…”) for a more conservative but backwards-looking view, or attitudinally (“would you…”) for a broader and more future-forward lens. In categories like clothing, food or movies that are a matter of preference, it’s better to apply the behavioral lens and allow people to be classified as both promoters and detractors.

In addition to tracking the absolute levels of advocacy, and comparing yours to your competitors, it’s also critical to analyze the differences in perceptions or experiences of promoters, detractors and neutrals to diagnose root causes and plan remedies. While NPS has been praised for its simplicity and digestibility, Active Voice provides a more direct, focused lens on advocacy itself – a critical asset for marketers and brand leaders seeking to unlock growth through the power of word of mouth and social proof.

Track and Grow Brand Advocacy with Material

With proper tracking and measurement, you can harness and unleash the power of advocacy to build your brand. From online deep listening to Active Voice survey measurement, Material’s team of experts can help you develop a rigorous, dynamic understanding of consumer advocacy across numerous dimensions.

Interested in learning more about Material’s Active Voice metric, and how it can provide a foundation for improved advocacy for your brand? Reach out today to start the conversation.