Brandon Murphy

For Retailers, Advocacy More Important Than Ever

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us, retailers still face an uncertain holiday season and an expectedly tough 2009. Last week we conducted a flash study of 1000 consumers that revealed 61% of consumers feel personal recommendations are even more important in a rough economy.

 

We've studied advocacy in-depth in a few categories over the course of 2008. We studied 7 retail brands who all sell apparel (among other things), interviewing customers of each brand. The study included Macy's, Target, Wal-Mart, JCPenney, Kohl's, K-Mart and Sears. We looked at their advocacy levels, studied the relationships they have with their customers and outlined actions they can take to increase word of mouth. You can download the paper here. We also outlined 7 actions retailers can take to increase advocacy in a recent post along with some best-in-class recommendations.

 

Happy Holidays.

 

Seven for the Season

 

As people look to pay less, retailers have to figure out how to cut prices while providing more value. With conversation and word-of-mouth being critical to holiday success, retailers will need to add value with their communications viewing marketing as much as a service as it is a way to communicate sales.

Retail Banks Need Advocates, Bad...Unless your ING Direct

This year, we did digging on advocacy levels within specific industries. We studied apparel retailers, mobile service providers, personal care products, personal computers, airlines and retail banks. More importantly, we studied the relationships brands in these categories have with their customers. Our goal is to provide some advice, based in quantitative research, to help these brands increase the number of advocates in their customer base. The advice is rooted in behaviors that help brands earn advocacy.
 

Our first paper on this research is about six retail banks: Bank of America, Citibank, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Umpqua and ING Direct. For each brand, we spoke with over 200 customers. It shows that there is a high correlation between financial growth and advocacy rates, and that retail bank brands have the lowest advocacy rates (and highest critic rates) of any category we've studied (rivaled only by mobile service providers). Fortunately, there is one standout in the category: ING Direct. The paper takes a close look at why ING Direct has such solid customer relationships and advocacy rates while the rest of the category suffers from lots of negative word-of-mouth and customers who feel trapped.

Market Brands The Way People Make Friends

Check out the article Nichiketa Choudhary wrote for brandchannel.com entitled "People Buy Brands Like They Make Friends." It hits squarely on our core philosophy for marketing brands here at 22squared. So in the name of that philosophy, I thought I'd share some of our work behind the idea of brand-customer friendships. I'll offer it up in two parts, kind of a science and art approach to it...

 

Science: Quantifying friendships and modeling potential changes in advocacy

 

Art: How brands can behave more like friends and get consumers to return the favor

For Seven ways to Build Advocacy and more, read on.

Turning the funnel upside down