How can you reward customers who are effective brand advocates?

To echo Robyn, we also use Influitive. We just launched our portal, but already have some great feedback from the small customer base we invited for the first round. We need case studies, references, champions - people buy from people, and the best way to promote your brand is to have a company successful in your product do it for you, by just telling their story. What we've found is that customers also like (and need) to promote themselves, and how "cutting edge" they are in using our product. It's a win-win - promote us and you. And in using Influitive, we incentivize these type challenges with points, which in turn the customer can buy the reward of our choice. We had a big hit this past holiday with sending charity donations in the names of customers - the customer could choose the charity they wanted us to donate to in their name. That's a "gift," but a gift in a philanthropic way, which I think avoided the tacky nature of "buying someone." This is now a reward in our Influitive portal. And we're having fun with the rewards! We're seeing good traction this model, and we're looking forward to seeing what people buy with their points, we're watching our twitter gain followers and tweets, and we're getting some great calls with customers to begin the case study process.

The net net is that we have amazing clients, that we have great relationships with. And it's not all about us - listening to their stories, and picking their brains highlights how sophisticated they are in their own brand. We want to take their stories and share with clients who just aren't at that level yet - to promote us (of course) but promote them in their own right as game changers in the market.

We have created an advocate community using Influivite. It has been a great and effective way to engage and reward our advocates. They get points for challenges they complete (a challenge would be "do a case study, answer a question, give a review".. etc) and they can redeem their points for rewards. Rewards range from a dinner with our CEO to a gift card. It has helped us develop stronger relationships with our advocates while making it fun for them.

It is great when customers share positive stories about you. I think at the very least a personal hand written thank you (If you have their address) or an email that says thank you is important. The letter should be a sincere expression of your gratitude.

I, personally, am uncomfortable about offering gifts, especially monetary gifts. When you reward with money the testimonials become "Paid Advertisements" and I believe lose their value.

The way too obvious answer is the typical affinity program--discounts, prizes, free stuff. But, a more powerful way is inclusion--finding ways to get their input, suggestions and feedback. Figure creative ways that surprise customers--naming something after them, contributing to something important to them, inviting them to be a part of a special group! What if they were invited to special seminars or summits? Just as inclusion increases commitment with employees (people care when they share) it applies equally to customers.

It's easy to overlook the obvious: Say "thank you." A few years ago, Microsoft was looking for a way to reward the top performing MVP's in their community (http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ ) These are volunteers from the customer base who answer thousands of questions about Microsoft products for other users. Basically, Microsoft, said "Thank you!" to the MVP's and in return, these already top members of the community boosted their output, measured in number of questions answered, by 30% for over a month.

Now, this is not to say that special brand items, certificates, being honored at events and so forth are not good ideas: But make sure you do the basic thing. Say "thanks!"

All great ideas. I agree with Roy that saying "thank you" is so important. Monitor your brand online and respond when someone says good things about your business. Hold customer appreciation events and invite them to participate. Feature them on your social media sites as a "fan of the week". Test market your products and services and get their feedback first. It comes down to this - they will share more the more you engage them.

We use Influitive (disclaimer: I am also an investor in Influitive). Influitive helps organize your customer advocates, employees, investors, etc. to be better brand advocates and it assigns them points and prizes for completing tasks. The CEO of Influitive was the founder and original CEO of Eloqua

Other options:
* Exclusive access to your c-level team and the opportunity to influence your road map
* Free attendance at your annual customer conference
* Free engagement with your professional services arm for best-practices advice
* Opportunity to be a beta tester for forthcoming product/service
* Nominate the customer for a relevant industry award

Customers who act as brand advocates often consider themselves "part of the team." One of the best ways to reward them is with "insider" information.

It really depends on the nature of your relationship with the customer(s). But I agree that fostering a sense of being "part of the team" is important.

For small-scale customers and close relationships, personal invites to relevant events (such as product/service design forums, product/service testing, launch events, etc.) can help achieve this. For larger-scale customers, consider creating (private) online communities where they can be rewarded for their active participation. Turn your most valuable customers into "virtual employees" and brand ambassadors.

I am an advocate for some organisations. My biggest concern is my reputation - that these organisations live up to the promise that I am advocating. So the best reward is that they prove me right and I keep / build my face in the community in which I am advocating.

After that it would be great if the organisation considered me a part of its wider community and engaged with me on important issues on which I can contribute.

I am distinctly unhappy with financial rewards of any kind. That is because I pride myself on independence and I do now wish to blur the line between 'service' and 'advertisement'.

The kind of financial reward that I am open to and excited about is one where the financial reward is passed on to the people I refer. It would be great if the company were to say "Thank you Jane for doing business with us. On behalf of Maz we are giving you a discount of $x. Maz is not getting anything financially by referring you to us."

Now I do not know how representative I am of the wider population. One rule that I follow is to simply ask. If I want to know what you want then I simply ask you.

Here's an interesting article about ranking reference activities to determine the level of reward: http://www.customerreferenceinsights.com/2011/02/07/rewarding-customer-refere...

Thank you does go along way however, depending on the sevices your providing for your custmers such as any kind of discount card, it would be another way of saying thank you by showing it. That could be by rasing their discount percentage to an good agreeable rate.

Everyone wants to have their input to be valued and many people want to be recognized publicly. Recognition by providing name and contribution on a public platform (public forum, website, at a seminar) can go a long way.

One form of advocate recognition that can be effective is providing a special learning experience just for loyal customers. Using the session to also solicit customer input can go far in making advocates feel like partners with the brand.