The Rocket Newsletter

May 2009

While MP's have been getting their wrists slapped and summer has desperately been trying to push through, we've been beavering away to bring you to the final stage in our customer engagement journey: Advocacy. Or put differently, how to get your happy customers to tell Tom, Dick and Harry about their positive experience.

We've also got some great conversion-boosting tips that will turn your landing page into a lean mean selling machine. So make yourself a nice cuppa, treat yourself to that biscuit you've had on your mind all day and read on. 

The Customer Journey - Advocacy

Advocacy will turn your marketing strategy into a self-powered marketing machine

The other day my brother told me how happy he was with his Diesel jeans so I went out and bought two pairs, one of which  I'm wearing this very minute. That personal recommendation from my brother - a happy customer - spoke louder to me than any adverts I've seen and is what eventually made me reach for my wallet and get me some Diesel jeans. In that one simple comment, my brother was a brand advocate - a walking, talking free advert, with more persuasive power than any billboard, banner or TV commercial out there. 

Where does advocacy happen?

Now rewind a couple of stages in our digital brand engagement journey, to the customer experience stage. If you've done your job well and your customers have had a positive experience, the chances are they'll be singing your praises. It's up to you to give your customers a stage and a microphone so they can tell the whole world about you, not just their brother. Word of mouth is one thing, but the internet is crawling with advocacy platforms you can make good use of. Services such as blogs, forums, facebook, twitter, flickr (images speak louder than words!) and for the travel industry, the all important, ever-growing review site TripAdvisor.

Advocates create awareness and influence others

Put these advocacy platforms in the path of your advocates or direct your advocates to them and they can spread the love they feel for your brand to a large audience of potential customers. Ask them to share their thoughts direct to you and post these up on your website in the form of testimonials. Place them nice and big next to your calls-to-action and you'll see a lot more action than before.

To give you an example, we'll look at Amazon. By now you may be aware that we are in fact their advocates as we can't seem to stop talking about them in our newsletters and this is because they so often get it right (recent kafuffle aside!). The 'Rate this item' and 'Create your own review' prompts that are dotted throughout the site turn happy customers into advocates and they appear at various stages of the buying process, including post-sales.  You can now even make video reviews, a clever way to attract those who fancy 5 minutes of internet fame and turning them into advocates helping to shift books and DVDs.

Independent brand champions

But advocates can also come in handy when your brand needs defending. While the internet is a perfect tool for spreading good news about your brand, it also leaves it open and vulnerable to bad press. Enter your advocates. If they are passionate about your brand, they can answer naysayers with positive comments and act as a 'damage control unit'. A great example of this is the forum on the Basecamp website, a fairly small company providing project management and collaboration software. Their un-official support forum contains user-generated help for technical issues. Things go wrong, people complain and then happy customers answer with solutions and jump to Basecamp's defense, improving customer experience and in turn creating more advocates.

The un-vicious circle

So in a nutshell, advocacy, by shouting about positive brand experiences, helps to encourage those at the awareness and consideration stages to commit.  When you reach the point that your advocates are creating awareness and influencing others to commit, your digital brand engagement journey becomes a self-powered marketing machine, or an 'un-vicious circle' if you like."

If you're reading this and thinking "That's happened to me!" - then welcome to Planet Advocacy, population 10,000,000 happy customers all ranting and raving about your brand, and all transported here by your clever marketing efforts.  Well done you....have a pat on the back and a gold star, you deserve it. Otherwise, drop us a line at rocket@propellernetco.uk. or call 0845 601 9595.

...and I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of you are now considering those Diesel jeans.

Best regards,

Client Corner - Creating successful landing pages - Top Tips 

Following on from the popularity of last month's Top 5 Web Copy Tips, we thought this month we would share with you a winning formula for designing successful landing pages. Get them right to avoid killing your conversion rate!

Here are Eshe's top 6 landing page tips: -

1) Think Fast - make sure the landing page loads quickly.
2) Grab their attention - create a snappy headline and a short blurb.
3) Give your content room to breathe - don't underestimate the value  of whitespace.
4) Guide the user along - make the navigation clear  and systematic.
5) Show off your product - put your best images forward.
6) Persuade them to buy or enquire - make sure you've got multiple calls to action.

For a more in-depth version of these top tips, please check out Eshes' Blog Post:

How to Kill Conversions with your Landing Page!

Eshe Brown

Staff Profile

Name: Eshe Brown
Role: Search Consultant

Why Propellernet?
I've never worked anywhere where I've felt more encouraged and supported. The forward thinking nature of the company and the refreshing ideas that bounce around the office, mean a day at work is rarely ever boring! There's a great work ethic here, but it's balanced with a lot of fun too. Last year we all had a fantastic time at the Brighton races on Ladies Day, and I won the best hat competition with the prize of a Porsche for a week!

Interesting Fact:
I've been learning to drive for over 4 years! I've had 2 cars and a personalised number plate - but I'm taking my driving test for the first time on the 26th of May! Wish me luck.

 

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