How to build advocates from your audience
No matter what you’d like to call them: be it supporter, proponent, backer, follower, enthusiast, ally, champion, promoter, cheerleader, booster, tribe member, fan or advocate: these are people who like you, and willing to tell other people just how much they like you and why.
In today’s tight-knit internet-connected world, having advocates can help you grow your business by establishing your authority and by marketing your ideas for you.
Quite simply, people want to know what they are getting before they commit to it.
Whether this is visiting a restaurant, buying a book, or booking a speaker.
One of the ways to gain confidence before commitment is by seeing if other people liked it and would recommend it.
How we share these recommendations with our networks can be very varied, both online and offline. They could look like a star-rating review, a social media follower, an article share, a written testimonial or a even a name drop when having coffee with a colleague.
Before we jump further into what kinds of advocates there are (and how to get them), let’s explore the statistics - how much do we really value recommendations?
How important are recommendations when it comes to our decision-making?
Stats: Recommendations on general consumers and audiences
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84% of consumers say they either completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family, colleagues, and friends about products and services – making these recommendations the highest ranked source for trustworthiness.
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74% of consumers identify recommendations as a key influencer in their purchasing decision.
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68% trust online opinions from other consumers
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88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts. 32% feel this way if there are multiple customer reviews
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72% say reading a positive customer review increases their trust in a business.
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58% of consumers share their positive experiences with a company on social media.
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Millennials ranked recommendations as the #1 influencer in their purchasing decisions about clothes, packaged goods, big-ticket items (like travel and electronics), and financial products.
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Baby Boomers also ranked recommendations as being most influential in their purchasing decisions about big-ticket items and financial products.
Stats: Recommendations on B2B
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91% of B2B buyers are influenced by recommendations when making their buying decision.
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61% of IT buyers report that colleague recommendations are the most important factor when making a purchase decision.
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56% of B2B purchasers look to offline recommendations as a source of information and advice, and this number jumps to 88% when online recommendations sources are included.
While reading statistics is fine, we thought the way Ambassador visualized this information was very engaging, check out this shortened version of their infographic “Are Customers Really Influenced by Referral Marketing?”:
(Please note that this is a shortened version of the infographic created specifically for this blog post. For the entire infographic, please visit “Are Customers Really Influenced by Referral Marketing?”)
What kinds of advocates do you need?
Not all types of recommendations are created equal, but a variety can help your appeal.
When a fellow event planner who has worked with you in the past tells you that you really should book this speaker, it has more weight than a random testimonial on the speaker’s website: this being said, as a speaker, don’t focusing on getting one solitary kind of recommendation.
If someone likes you as a speaker, and wants to support your message, there are a number of ways they can get behind you.
5 main ways someone can advocate for you as a speaker:
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By becoming a social network follower and mailing list subscriber
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Share your content on social media or via email
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Give you a written testimonial you can use in your marketing
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Give you an online star review or recommendation
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Word-of-mouth: Directly suggesting you to someone in their network for a speaking gig.
Do not focus all your energy on building up any one type of recommendation, one type might not appeal to everyone.
For example, some event organizers simply won’t trust website testimonials, because they know you only put the most positive, glowing reviews on the site, but perhaps they are an active on Twitter, and they go to check out your Twitter profile. They see that you have thousands of fans with lots of retweeted content, and this is what will help you get their buy in. (This can work in reverse as well.)
How to get advocates from your audience
Generally, an impressed audience member won’t need an incentive to endorse you: if they like you, they will spread the word without much of a push.
But this doesn’t mean you should do nothing.
There are plenty of ways that you can encourage audience members to advocate you as a speaker, read below to find out how.
But no matter how you strategize, when it comes to making these connections, the best route is the simplest.
Top three tips:
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Ask them. Don’t imply or hope, just ask.
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Do it immediately.
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Make it easy.
Though this process is non-exhaustive, and you may have to tweak it to suit your particular style and marketing strategy, here is a framework for connecting with your audience after your presentation and building advocates for your speaking brand.
Step one: Start on stage
There are a few ways to start making connections while you’re on stage.
You can either be very direct: telling people exactly where to find you, saying “My Twitter handle is…if you’d like to connect with me.” or be more subtle, dropping hints throughout your presentation like “Someone tweeted me recently asking….” with your Twitter handle on the bottom of your slide.
Be clear on how you’d like to connect with people from the get-go, and start while you are on stage, building those connections.
Step two: Give them your details
At the end of your session, give them a way to connect with you.
Whether you ask them to come talk to you after the presentation, or you give them your social media contacts or email address- invite them to get in contact with you afterwards and be clear about how.
If and when they do get in contact with you, it is paramount that you respond. If they have taken the time to make the effort, they are already a potenital advocate, so nuture that relationship.
Step three: Get their contact
Assume the responsibility of contacting them, and making that connection valuable for them.
Start building a list of all your audience members and their email- whether this by collecting their business cards, by saving the email addresses of the audience members who email you, or by getting the email list from the event organizer- an engaged email list can be a valuable resource for building relationships with advocates.
Shared Folders on SpeakerHub
If you haven’t started using the Shared Folders on SpeakerHub, they can be helpful in helping you instantly get the contact information directly from the audience, while giving them something of value in return.
Find out more about the Shared Folders on SpeakerHub
By setting the privacy of your shared folder’s content to “Lead Generation Only”, it requires audience members to provide their name, email address and, optionally, company name before they can access your content.
You will be able to download each audience member’s contact information, and get in contact with them personally, or add them to your email list.
Step four: Give them something of value
“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.”
-Andrew Davis
Before asking for anything, make sure you give your future advocates something of value. In this, you can be creative: whether this is more resources on your topic, a how-to article or template, a way to get connected and make a difference in the cause, or a selfie of you and the audience member (or whole audience,) make sure you offer before you ask.
The Shared Folders will automatically help you give value to your audience, you have unlimited uploads catered uniquely for your audience, here are some ideas of content you can share with your audience
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Your presentation slides (.ppt and .pptx)
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Open Document Presentation and Open Document Text (.odp and .odt)
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Word Documents (.doc)
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PDFs (.pdf)
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Links to videos (YouTube, Vimeo, etc) , audio (SoundCloud, iTunes podcast, etc.), SlideShare, Amazon book list, or anything else on line they might find useful.
Step five: Make it clear and easy to promote you
Once you’ve established a relationship with them- simply ask them to recommend you.
Here are some ways they can help promote you.
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Written testimonial (also, other kinds of testimonials, like video or audio)
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An email that just says “Hi, did you like my presentation? Can you share how much you liked it with others” might get a few bites by people who will appreciate your directness, but for the most part, you may have to be more nuanced.
Ask them specific questions, like “Your opinion matters to me—would you mind sharing your thoughts about the presentation?” or “Was there one thing that impacted/challenged/delighted/helped you from the talk?”
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These can be taken from email, as added in a lot of places, like on your SpeakerHub profile, your website, your email signature, etc.
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Add or follow you on social networking (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube- wherever you are active)
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Joining your email mailing list
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Send them a link to a email sign-up page on your speaker website asking them to opt-in.
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At the bottom of your email, say something like “I would like to add your email address to my mailing list so I can send you more great content, if you don’t want to be added, hit reply to this email.”
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Share a specific piece of your content with their network
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Giving them a great visual image with a caption that says “Tweet this.”
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Add share buttons to your articles
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Give them direct quotes from your content that are prepackaged to share
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Word-of-mouth.
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Ask them if they know of any upcoming events that they think you’d be a good fit for,
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or simply to keep you in mind for the future.
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Be clear and specific clear about what you are looking for, and how they can help.
Remember to treat connection equally, people get promoted and change positions all the time.
Someone who is a student now might be running their own company in a few years. They might seem quiet in the room, but have a blog readership of thousands.
Do you best to foster all your connections, you never which doors they may open in the future.
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