Your superfans are your best resource – here’s how to celebrate your biggest advocates
Everyone knows word of mouth is the ultimate form of marketing. Here’s how you can identify and reward your superfans – and get them talking.
Why rewarding your superfans is important to keep them on your side
There’s an old marketing term you’ll no doubt be very familiar with: the brand champion.
Also known as a brand evangelist, they’re the customers who love everything you do, and will get out there and sing the praises of your product or service to anyone who will listen — be it their family, friend or total stranger. If you were a basketball team, they’d be courtside for every game.
Ultimately, they’re one of your greatest assets. Despite the billions of dollars pumped into surrounding the world’s consumers with advertising, the most sophisticated campaign will always pale in comparison to a genuine recommendation from one person to another.
The stats back it up. 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influence in their purchasing decisions, according to Ogilvy Cannes, while Nielsen found two-thirds of customers trust online opinions from other consumers.
We like to call the most passionate brand champions Superfans.
Why? Because these people aren’t just customers — they’re bona fide fans for whom your brand has genuine emotional resonance. And they’re not just talking about you to their friends and family. They’re online, shouting your praises from the social media rooftops to anyone who will listen.
In a 2014 report, PwC identified the Superfan as a unique kind of customer, with different qualities to what we might once have associated with a brand champion. They have a “deep, emotional attachment to brands” which goes beyond firing off a positive tweet every once in a while — they’re actively involved, and want to help make your brand even better.
“Among any brand’s consumers, its superfans should be one of its top priorities,” PwC wrote.
Despite their clear value, it’s easy to take your superfans for granted. After all, you’ve likely already converted them into lifelong buyers. Shouldn’t you spend your effort bringing additional customers into the fold and finding new audiences? The more the merrier, after all.
That’s before you get past the simple fact that the finite resources of your customer experience team are often dragged elsewhere. Why spend time with your biggest fans when you could be identifying those customers who might not be having as positive an experience, and might need support to keep them onside?
Ultimately, you need to find a way to walk and chew gum at the same time. 62% of customers believe that the brands to which they are most loyal are not doing enough to reward them for it, according to Annex Cloud. Put simply: it takes a little work to keep even the most ardent Superfan on your side.
What you should be doing is giving your superfans unforgettable experiences and interactions which remind them why they fell in love with your brand in the first place, and reward them for being there with you.
The real challenge is sifting through the noise of social media and finding the true superfans who will be most responsive to your outreach. The people who are consistent boosters of your brand, or have the potential to be.
On the one hand, your customers are having these conversations out in the open, right where you can see them. The marketing executives of the forgotten pre-internet era would kill for that kind of transparency and insight into the minds of their audience.
But the flip-side of that is in the sheer volume of engagement. Identifying your ride-or-die superfans — the people who are truly as obsessed with your brand as they are their favourite football team or TV show — can be like finding a needle in a haystack.
How do you identify and reward your superfans?
This is where Pattr Superfans, our latest offering, comes into play.
Using general natural language processing and bespoke AI models, we can rapidly identify the fans and communities who are consistently advocating your brand and product online.
We find the users who are consistently interacting with your brand’s content and having positive conversations about you, and assign them a Superfan score through a rules-based points system.
We know there is no one-size-fits-all model here. Different brands will have different metrics for what constitutes a Superfan.
For example, maybe your brand runs a lot of share-based social media promotional campaigns. You can weigh your superfan score to target those who consistently share your content.
You might have a more organic definition of what makes a superfan, and would prefer to emphasise those who consistently have great conversations about your product without even mentioning or tagging you. (Imagine the surprise and delight moment if your favourite brand reached out to you with a neat little reward without you having to do anything.)
Once you’ve identified your superfans, you can take a range of actions to reward them. These rewards for your superfans need not be extravagant. In fact, they can be as simple as an acknowledgement of their contribution.
You just need to let them know that you value them. You could:
- Give them a shoutout on social media, or simply like or engage with their content
- Provide them access to exclusive benefits and “inside-the-ropes” experiences — like VIP memberships
- Offer them pre-sale access, free products or discounts
- Personally engage them in your brand’s loyalty program, if they aren’t already
- Ask for their feedback and opinions, giving them a real sense of ownership over your product and brand
Pattr takes the time commitment out of identifying your Superfans, so your customer experience team can focus on the enjoyable part: rewarding and engaging them.
Talking to your Superfans should be an organic part of your workflow — and we want to help you get the boring stuff out of the way so you can have genuine conversations with the fans who will be happiest for your outreach.
Want to know more about how Pattr can help you identify and celebrate your Superfans? Contact our team today.
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