Leaders have the perpetual challenge of finding, retaining and developing the best staff, all too aware that spending just a year or two in a role is now largely considered the professional norm. Perhaps the pressure to cling on to star performers, has left the idea of customer advocates somewhat neglected. But your most loyal customers have the potential to become your most credible sales people – especially when it comes to small businesses.
You may shudder at the thought of asking your customers to do your work for you but egos aside, they could provide a sense of credibility that you will never be able to. As part of your organisation you have a motive to promote its product and advocate its success – prospects are bound to take what you say with a pinch of salt. But from their peers, it’s a different story, confirmation of a product’s quality in its purest form.
What’s in it for them?
But why, you ask, would time-poor small businesses take the time to advocate your product when it’s hard enough to get them to respond to an email? The answer: the benefits of advocacy can be a two-way street.
Small businesses and start-ups can have it tough, making them some of the most motivated, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when it comes to any activity that propels their brand into the spotlight. For them, advocating a brand through a case study means easy coverage and and an opportunity to hang on the coattails of your established brand and reputation.
This is something KPMG embraced when it began the task of expanding its small business customer base. When I spoke with him earlier this year, Dan Roche, former head of marketing at KPMG Small Business Accounting told me: “Small businesses are really keen to help out with references and case studies because it’s good PR and promotion for them. It helped us show we had clients in that sector and that we were a trustworthy brand, we weren’t corporate or expensive.”
Earnest’s conversations with small business owners during research for its Think Small report also pointed to small business’s attitude to help businesses out in exchange for coverage. “We’re happy to give recommendations – we want to do well by our supplier if they’re good,” said Maeve, a finance director from an events company.
Identifying an advocate
Before taming a wild advocate into a neatly summarised case study or quote, you have to spot them. But first, it’s important to recognise there’s a difference between a happy customer who received a good service and customer that truly believes your brand offers a first-class service or product that they couldn’t find anywhere else. So what characterics should you look out for in a wild advocate operating in their natural B2B environment?
- They’re part of the sector you want to target: If you’re eager to target small businesses within a particular sector then try to find an advocate in that field. Word will get back to the ecosystem that you’re a reliable company to work with and relevant to that sector.
- They have a large following or are part of a network: Small businesses are beaming with connections. They tend to be part of networking groups, so if one of them approves you, it gives the nod to the rest of the group that you’re a good egg.
- They’ve already advocated for you: They may have already advocated your brand on social media or a review site without you realising. Get in touch with them; this could be a great opportunity to expand a positive tweet into a full blown case study or video interview.
- They’re a loyal customer: They might not be loud but perhaps they’ve been with you a long time. In a society where it’s become the etiquette to chop and change, there must be a positive reason they’ve stuck around. Even if they’re not keen to advocate you publicly, you’ll be able to hear your strengths straight from the horse’s mouth.
Incentivised vs organic advocacy
Organic advocacy is the gold dust B2B brands yearn for; positive comments that have blossomed from nothing more than great customer service. But fear not, if you don’t receive customer feedback organically from your small business clients it doesn’t necessarily indicate your service is inefficient. A small business owners’ speed of thought is probably travelling at 100mph while juggling an endless to-do list of tasks the company needs to tick off to stay afloat – so forgive them for forgetting to give you a review that you haven’t even asked for. The simple answer here is get in touch.
And Kathrin, a chief technology officer of a therapist portal, supports this point. “I wouldn’t write reviews on the internet off my own back. I only do it if someone asks me to,” she told Earnest.
But be aware, no matter how good you are some small businesses may really not have any time. “I’ve just no time to leave positive or negative reviews online,” admitted Thierry, owner of a finance boutique.
Some businesses believe the best encouragement for small businesses is to offer discounts to those who decide to get behind the keyboard and bash out a gleaming review. In most industries offering money in exchange for an opinion will always cause a reason to doubt, and marketing is no exception.
Instead look at other methods that can exert genuine advocacy rather than forking out for half-hearted reviews by customers only interested in a discount. Embedding sharing options into your content is just one of the easy ways to bring advocacy front of mind for busy readers.
Experimenting with how you present your advocates can also pique interest in involvement. Advocacy can go far beyond a quote about how efficient you were. Dan Roche, mentioned case studies which involve some form of interview. This is golden, spending time talking to your loyal clients about your strengths as a company. What’s more, if you need some inspiration for you SME-targeted marketing, align your messaging with your advocates’ comments – focusing on the strengths that are clearly winning over customers.
Take the good with the bad
Think about how many times you’ve reviewed a company? Why did you review them? It was likely because you experienced one of the extremes; an out-of-the-ordinary marvellous service that left you in a state of euphoria, or a diabolical service that forced your fingers to the keyboard in rage. People don’t write reviews unless they’ve experienced something radical.
It’s not uncommon for businesses to struggle to grasp the right approach with small businesses, so don’t be surprised if you get little traction or even bad reviews. The bad reviews should shape your activity and the good ones should guide your direction. The most unproductive thing you could do is put your rose-tinted glasses on. So many companies think they have good customer service that they believe it, when in reality without doing any of the work to maintain an excellent standard you could be losing a dismal amount of small business accounts. Those well-established companies who truly have mastered good customer service for the biggest and best, aren’t necessarily going to satisfy the needs of their smaller and just-as-important accounts either.
Unlike corporations, small business owners are dealing with their own hard-earned cash. So if you’re customer experience is unresponsive, slow, or doesn’t show any knowledge beyond the basic sales chat you might as well not bother. Rod, owner of a textiles importer highlights this in the Think Small report. “We considered three or four options. Most didn’t pick up, were expensive or too rude,” he said.
Advocacy is clearly the end goal, but as Rod shows, the majority of the vendors he called didn’t cut it. Look at advocacy as a later stage of building good CX. Once you’ve constructed the solid foundations for a perfectly attentive service, then you can begin collecting your reviews advocates. As the saying goes: don’t walk before you can run.
