What’s Love Got To Do With It:
Scaling Community and Brand Affinity
Through Advocacy
March 21, 2023 I 12:30 PM
The LA
HubSpot User Group
presents:

Which communities are you a part of?
What is community?

1. Current State For Many
2. Brand Affinity
3. Advocacy as a Growth Lever
4. Building an Advocacy Program
What are we discussing?

Current State For Many
Current State For Many
What is the common state for most organizations for their happiest and most
engaged community members?
What is missing from the current state to get us to the ideal state?

Where We Are
Top fans
underappreciated
Lack of connection
More focused on
negative behaviors
Lack of focused
behaviors
Where We’re Going
Advocates get value
and appreciation
Preferred behaviors
rewarded/incentivized
Brand love is
reciprocal
Advocates have
seat at the table
Current State For Many

Brand Affinity
How To Foster Brand Love
The biggest driver for behavior is emotion.

How do you scale
delight and love?

Esteem
Love/Belonging
Safety
Survival
Self
actualization
Meets expectations. You provide what they have paid
you for. If you can’t nail this, you can’t scale delight.
Customer support is your front line. Continue to build
trust as customers experience problems.
Love: Swag, acknowledge positive word of mouth on
social. Belonging: Connect customers to each other.
This is where most
brands stop.
Elite care that feels exclusive. BTS access, meetings with
leadership, VIPs, beta test/focus groups.
Make them the experts. Give opportunities to shine.
Give them resources to improve their knowledge.

Put Out The Fires
BUT ALSO
Water the Flowers

Brand love is created when it’s clear that you care about what
your customer cares about.

Love is built in the small moments that become
core memories.

Advocacy as a Growth Lever
How Does Advocacy Help
You Scale?

People Trust Strangers
Over Brands

KPI Desired Behavior Trigger/Friction
Advocacy as a Growth Lever
Think About Your Goals and Reverse Engineer

Advocacy as a Growth Lever
Rituals:
● High Fives
● Badges
● Milestone Markers
● Favorite Trainer(s)
Micro/Niche Communities:
● Hashtags
● Social Media Groups (Peloton Moms, etc)
● Group rides
Ways to Self Identify as Members:
● Merch
● Hashtag
● UGC
Multiple Points of Entry:
● App User
● Attend Live Studio Classes
● Purchase Tread or Bike

Your biggest fans want a closer
connection to you.
They get a seat at the table and
a sense of ownership.
You get to harness the power of
your advocates.
Their Success Is Your Success

Building an Advocacy Program
Let’s Build an Advocacy
Program

1. Purpose: Why do you want to create an advocacy program?
2. Identity: Who is the target advocate persona? How do you identify
them? What do advocates call themselves? How do they self-identify
as brand advocates? Does legal recommend they use a specific
hashtag or copy for social media?
3. Value: Why would someone want to join as an advocate? What
value do they receive from the program?
4. Success: Definition In the next 12 months, what are 3 milestones
that will define success for us? What KPIs will you look at to
determine success?
5. Experience: What can advocates expect from being in the
program? Do perks scale? What does the onboarding experience
look like?
9. Communication: How to we
talk to advocates? Newsletter?
Private community (Slack)?
6. Roles: Are their tiers/levels of advocacy? What do these advocates
do for the brand? What role do they play at events, campaigns, etc?
Minimum Viable Advocacy Program
7. Rules: What does advocate code of conduct look like? What are
the desired behaviors for advocates and what do they need to do to
qualify and maintain their advocate status?
8. Governance: Who is the
decision maker for the program?
If something needs to be added
or someone needs to be kicked
out of the program, who has
that authority?

Identifying and Empowering Advocates
Identify the desired behaviors/criteria you are expecting
from potential advocates. What KPIs or traits determine
success?
● Engagement rate in the community
● Social sharing and positive word of mouth
● Referral rate
● NPS or review participation
● Event attendance rate
● Level of job title
Current behavior is a benchmark for future advocacy.

Identifying and Empowering Advocates
Where Are The
Advocates?
Before you start looking for them, you need to know what you are looking for.
What does an advocate look like for your organization?
What makes a “good” advocate for you?

Identifying and Empowering Advocates
Now that you know what to look for, how will you do it?
What are your resources? What’s your tech stack?
● Community dashboard analytics
● Social listening tools
● Customer success tools
● External community monitoring
● Survey tools

Pick Your Own
Advocate
Adventure
People may love you but
they want to love you in their
own way.
If you only provide one way
to advocate for you, you
miss out an opportunity to
diversity what brand love
looks like for you and your
biggest fans!

The Habit Loop
Create advocacy processes that:
- Are as frictionless as possible
- Communicate desired behaviors clearly
- Provide a clear “what’s in it for me”
- Turn internal needs into external
opportunities
- Align with advocates’ motivations
How to make advocacy repeatable

This sounds great but I only have a small team…

1:many activations
Community tools
Make it easy to reach you
Set up Talkwalker Alerts
What are the three top plays you
want advocates to do?
When can you use workflows vs
personal reach out?
Determine 1:many vs 1:1 initiatives
Human vs automation
Small Team

“To be successful in a world where fans
rule, we must be convinced that
relationships with customers are more
important than the products or services
we sell to them.”
FANOCRACY
David Meerman Scott
Reiko Scott

Q&A
Wrap Up

Wrap Up
Let’s Network
@ThatChristinaG
/christinamgarnett

Thank you
● HubSpot Giveaway
2 HUG mugs
● MTR Giveaway
One hour strategic marketing call
● Feedback survey:
https://forms.gle/aiVfQs3RNd2Hv5ke6