Zuberance Brand Advocacy Series: How to Turn Word of Mouth Into Sales

(Top to bottom: @consumingpr, @paulharrer, @jeanetteix, @jennakozel, @britopian)

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of attending the Zuberance Brand Advocacy Series: How to Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales.

The panelists included Michael Brito (@Britopian and britopian.com), VP of social media at Edelman Digital; Rob Fuggetta (@Zuberance), founder & CEO of Zuberance; Tony Lee (@TiVo), VP of marketing at TiVo; and Becky Brown (@beckyannbrown), director of social media strategy at Intel. Also, the panelist moderator was VentureBeat Writer Anthony Ha (@anthonyha).

Here are a few key takeaways from the panel discussion:

• Zuberance found 61 percent of their client’s customers are highly likely to recommend the brand. According to Rob Fuggetta, a brand advocate is defined as, “a highly satisfied customer who talks about the brand without paying them.”

• The panelists agreed that every brand has advocates and you find these people through drawing them out in a community. Michael Brito said it’s important to understand that “consumers trust each other.”

• Zuberance said that the “ultimate question” used to finding your brand advocates is, “How likely are you to recommend the brand to a friend or colleague?”

• Michael Brito explained the big difference between influencers and brand advocates is that “most influencers require an incentive” while brand advocates usually do not.

• Becky Brown at Intel made a great point when she said, “Social media gives you the ability to fail to repair and prepare to fail.”

After the event, my good friend Tori Herbst, who blogs at The Shopkeeper, boiled the discussion down to one important key learning when she said, “It’s all on a case-by-case basis.” From my experience, the route to finding brand advocates in social media is always going to be very different for each brand and/or company.

Becky Brown also said social media doesn’t have a specific formula – it’s like a party and all parties have a lot of different factors in creating a good time. Even Tony Lee from TiVo said that he’s made a lot of mistakes, but he’s proud of it because social media allows you to fail quickly and cheaply allowing you to learn a lot and create better strategy.

All in all, this event was jam packed with not only great minds, but also great food and wine – and you gotta love that! So, what is brand advocacy to you? And, what are the best ways to turn word of mouth marketing into sales? Share your thoughts here and comment on this post – I’d love to hear from you!

And, be sure to check out the video below to get Michael Brito’s take on taking action on the social web and creating advocacy. Also, for a full recording of the event, visit blog.zuberance.com.