Identifying Brand Advocates for Libraries

Here are highlights from the June Panel presentation by Silicon Valley American Marketing Association chapters.  The event was titled:   “The Next Step in Social: Beyond Listening and Engagement”.  I'll try to relate this marketing discussion to library advocacy.

Moderator: Chris Arens [Catalyst s+f], influencer, author and marketing/ad agency veteran

•         Chris is revising his textbook on advertising 101, Contemporary Advertising.
•        His company, Mindtime, is focused on understanding the drivers of consumer behavior.
•        He says now is the Age of Enlightenment II, with major institutional changes in several big industries: Music, Photography, Publishing, Personal computing, Advertising & Marketing. Librarians are well-aware of these shifts, especially in publishing and personal computing.
•        There is a fundamental shift in our world, thanks to 3 revolutions: technology revolution, data revolution, and transparency revolution.
•        Companies now need to think of individual people, not market segments or groups.  People have brand relationships, so businesses need to learn about individuals, especially brand advocates.
•        Brand advocates self-identify themselves, go out of their way to recommend products (like book recommendations) or businesses, and they move business!  Learn how know who the advocates are because 90% people buy based on recommendations from people they know; 70% buy based on consumer opinions posted online.  It is about building lasting relationships.
•        Give your advocate a platform from which to address people.  [CSLA Bestsellers, CCfSSL supporters, FRIENDS of the LIBRARY members need to be given a platform so they can passionately advocate for libraries.]
•        Tenets of good relationships: RESPECT, trust, honesty, accountability, and support.

Panelists: 

Maria Poveromo, Director of Social Media, Adobe: Her goal is to identify the most passionate Adobe advocates.  In PR, she used to identify gatekeepers and journalists, but now she brings in the voice of the customer.  Adobe has a CS Ambassadors group on LINKEDIN.  CS=creative suite, the name for its suite of design products including Illustrator, In Design and Photoshop.

Laura Messerschmitt, Senior Marketing Manager, Intuit: Brand advocates are in the company’s “Intuit Inner Circle”.  They identify brand advocates via their Net Promoter Surver, where the key question is “On a scale of 0-10, how do you feel about the product (QuickBooks)?” Anyone who scores 9 or 10 gets followed up and asked to post a recommendation to Amazon Reviews.  This is a popular and easy way to identify top advocates and give them a specific way to advocate for the product.  Survey membership each year, invite members to use your advocacy tools.

Recently, Intuit pre-briefed their brand advocates before an ad campaign so they could help defend the company if needed.  In the old days, the company used to only pre-brief journalists. Library associations could pre-brief members about upcoming news releases; Public libraries could pre-brief FRIENDs or Donors, give sneak previews of upcoming events or news.

Rob Fuggetta, Founder and CEO, Zuberance:  - Apparently his company is very well respected as a company that studies and tracts social media.  Uses R.O.A – return on advocacy (media value) rather than ROI.

Susan Etlinger, Consultant, Altimeter Group: – Her paper on how to measure softer metrics, like relationships (social analytics) is about to be published.  It will be on the Altimeter website and available via Creative Commons.    She says a lot is measurable:

1. Brand health
2. Marketing optimization – cmo person
3. Top line revenue – are we getting benefit from Facebook, Twitter
4. Bottom line operating efficiency – people “sell” to one another via social networking
5. Customer experience – was customer happy?
6.  IDH – innovation, crowd sourcing ideas 

__________

Other/Observations:

           Do not “brand” your advocacy program and urge people to “JOIN”.  Better to say something like “If you like libraries and librarians, let us know” or “If you like libraries and librarians, here are tools for you to help share our message."  or "Say "YES" to libraries!  Read how you can add your voice...."

·      

      Give brand advocates tools so they can better advocate for you.  A tool could be an online forum, a way to submit comments.  It could be key messages and research findings.  How are you helping your library brand advocates?

·      Brand Advocates go out of their way to recommend.

·      Don’t just focus on ROI (return on investment).

Questions:

·      How to identify brand advocates for strong school libraries, the Campaign LIBRARY STORE, or any library?  Survey?  Put you thinking caps on.

·      CSLA and CCfSSL site and FACEBOOK pages – what do visitors get in terms of an experience when they visit the page?  Is it rewarding, interesting, engaging? How to turn Facebook “likes” into something more.  "Like" is not necessarily a recommendation, let alone an indication of a brand advocate.