People have a great influence on other people, sometimes this way of making them take one position or another is really incredible. The same happens in social networks. With the name of Brand Advocates or ‘brand prescribers’ we know users who give their opinion about companies, products and services to other users, helping them on many occasions to decide on one thing or another and not even charge for doing so.
Their recommendations move millions of dollars and their opinions can fluctuate from what is the best taco or what car you should buy and what not. A study carried out by Zuberance reveals some data about this new profile of influential consumer that companies start to take into account.
According to this study the main characteristics by which we can distinguish these Brand advocates are their high activity in social networks, their high number of followers and how they recommend products to both consumers and the companies themselves.
In a year 38% of these users recommend between 5 and 9 brands but 16% already recommends more than 15. Regarding the frequency, 38% affirm to recommend brands at least once a month. A little below, with 32%, those who recommend a couple of times a year.
As for the industries in which these Internet users are more active, there is a clear predominance of new technologies, with 25%, followed by restaurants with 15% and leisure activities and free time with 14%.
In relation to the second feature that we have exposed previously, the fact that they belong to quite a few social networks, the truth is that they are also quite popular in them, with an average of between 300 and 600 followers per network although 18% of them They have more than 500 friends in the networks.
The study also shows how 15% of Brand Advocates are even more active than the rest, recommend dozens of products several times a week and have more than 500 friends on social networks. The name that has been given to them because of this is “Power Advocates”.
And then, where do you recommend mainly? Against all odds, the most used method to recommend brands is, with 57%, email. It is followed by a 35% Facebook and a much smaller percentage, just 5% e-commerce websites such as Amazon.
The main reasons why these people recommend are in the first place, and with 50% of the votes, because they have had a good experience with that product and service. Second, with 37%, in order to help others with their purchase decisions. Only 1% do so to receive incentives from brands such as discount coupons or points. These results give us to understand that these users can not be bought by brands, but have to earn them by betting on products or services that are worthwhile.
All these data make companies have to rethink their strategy and include these Brand Advocates in it. How? First they must identify them, then offer their products and finally make a special emphasis on the Power Advocates due to their great influence on the networks.