Customer advocacy is a powerful marketing tool that can help you build long-term relationships with your customers. It’s also something that every business should be doing, but many companies struggle to get it right.

Here are seven ways you can change the way you approach customer advocacy, so it works for your business:

1) Be Genuine and Honest

This is probably one of the most important keys to ensuring your customer advocates feel like they’re talking to friends. When you’re authentic, your prospects will see that you value them as people, not just numbers.

They’ll appreciate that when you make mistakes and don’t deliver what they thought you would.

When was the last time you did something nice or helpful for someone without expecting anything? If you never have, consider this an opportunity to practice being more genuine.

2) Tell Stories That Inspire Action

People love stories. And if your business has a story worth telling, share it! People want to know about things going well as much as they do about things that go wrong.

Share your company culture, achievements, success, failures—whatever suits your brand best.

3) Focus On The Customer, Not The Product Or Service

It may sound simple, but we often lose sight of this crucial point. We fall into the trap of thinking that our products and services are better than those of anyone else simply because we offer them.

But by focusing on our customers instead, we improve the quality of our products, services, interactions, and overall experience.

In addition, customer referrals are a great way to get new customers and grow your business. When you provide excellent customer service, people will be happy to tell others about it.

4) Make Your Customers Feel Important

Giving customers personalized attention makes them feel valuable and special.

This goes beyond sending out a newsletter once in a while, paying some social media manager to post pictures from their trip here or there, or even having live chat available 24/7. It means listening to what your customers say and caring about what they have to say.

5) Give Them Something Back

You give back when you show appreciation, take care of your customer’s needs first, or send thank you notes after a transaction. Customers like feeling appreciated, especially when they’ve made a purchase.

However, customer testimonials are a great way to boost your website traffic and conversion rates.

6) Keep Up With What’s New In Their Lives

You might think your customers already know everything about you because they’ve been coming to you for years. But the fact remains that you still need to keep up with their interests and activities outside of work.

What do they like to read, watch, listen to, play, eat, drink, use, etc.? Do they have kids? Are they married, single, in school, working, traveling? Is there a new baby in the picture? These sorts of details matter, and they come up again and again throughout your relationship.

7) Show Off The Best Parts Of Who You Are

You reveal who you are as a person by sharing fun facts, stories, photos, videos, quotes, and insights. People want to connect with happy, passionate, creative, curious, and optimistic others. You’ll attract clients who share these qualities by showing off the best parts of who you are.

Other things

8) Ask Questions To Get To Know Them Better

Doing client research lets you discover who your customers are, how they spend their day, what problems they encounter, and how they prefer to communicate. All of this helps you understand them better.

9) Provide Real Solutions Or Relief

There comes a time when people need help. Whether it’s figuring out how to get a refund (or the right to one), getting a loan, finding a job, getting through college, getting a license, or just fixing a problem they’re facing now, you can help. When you provide real solutions, your customers will appreciate it.

10) Be Honest About Problems

Don’t avoid acknowledging failure, mistakes, and other negative situations.

Talk openly about what went wrong so that you don’t repeat those mistakes next time, and apologize sincerely for any inconvenience caused. Once you own up to your mistakes, you become stronger and more confident.

Anyway, Voice of the customer programs is a great way to improve your business. The more you know about what customers want, the better they’ll like you—and that’s always good!

11) Don’t Expect Immediate Results

No one ever does, anyway. Even though you expect results from your customer advocacy efforts, you shouldn’t expect immediate ones. Instead, look at it as a long-term investment in building loyalty and trust among your clients.

12) Listen To Feedback From Clients And Other Stakeholders

It happens constantly: You hear something on Facebook or Twitter that’s bad about your company, but you ignore it because you don’t believe it.

Then, when things go south, you realize you did nothing about it. If you truly value your brand reputation, you need to address negative feedback by listening to it and doing whatever is necessary to correct the issue.

13) Make Sure Your Marketing Isn’t Selfish

It doesn’t matter if your customer marketing strategy is purely online; if you’re not careful, it could end up being self-serving instead of helpful.

There’s a big difference between letting your customers drive traffic to your website and sending them ads that aren’t relevant to what they’re looking for. When you market selfishly, you only hurt yourself and your business.

Final words

Hopefully, the post above has provided a clear, actionable list of ways to add customer advocacy to your business.

Is this all that you need to do? Of course not. But these are core principles from top businesses that have excelled in customer advocacy. With any luck, you can learn from their successes and incorporate similar approaches into your company’s culture.