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Study: Retailers must mobilize the brand advocate

A retailer's best friend these days may just be the consumer who is loyal and willing to spread good things about the brand.

March 11, 2016

A retailer's best friend these days may just be the consumer who is loyal and willing to spread good things about the brand.

A new Needle study reveals such "advocates" are critical to boosting online sales but a good majority of retail marketing teams, just one in four, aren't mobilizing such brand loyalists into action. The study of nearly 300 advocates from top brands, including Newegg, Coach and Norwegian Cruise Lines, reveals 93 percent of brand advocates believe they are a better marketing asset for the brands than sales associates.

One reason may be that advocates are active and vocal. For example, the study reports Needle advocates interacted live with online consumers more than 56,000 times over the Black Friday weekend, generating $3.6 million in sales.

"Our advocates, a community of golfers and golf equipment expert brand loyalists, enable TaylorMade to deliver custom, personal experiences to each shopper on our website,” said John Gonsalves, VP of direct to consumer at TaylorMade, in an announcement on the study results. TaylorMade is using Needle's Advocate Marketing Cloud, which is focused on mobilizing advocates to acquire new customers and provide tailored content. "The value of Needle's marketing technology not only provides an invaluable resource to our shoppers, but has also had a measurable impact on our average order value, conversion rate and customer satisfaction scores."

Needle states brand advocates are valuable as their hands-on product experience enables them to relate to customers in an authentic approach. According to the survey, 83 percent of advocates say their biggest value comes from sharing personal anecdotes as a result of using the product everyday (62 percent) and several times a week (29 percent). Advocates' ability to create a more personal and trusted connection is another benefit for marketers as 84 percent say they receive personal questions that shoppers would never consider asking a live sales associate.

According to the survey, 42 percent of advocates state a shopper converts to a sale 25 percent of the time, and 30 percent of advocates say it converts to sales 50 percent or more of the time.