Q&A: How do you turn app users into brand advocates?
Q&A: How do you turn app users into brand advocates?
Getting users to sign up is hard. Getting them to stick around is harder. But getting them to advocate for your brand? That’s a prize worth fighting for.
This is the third in a series of Q&A-style posts where I answer common questions we get from CEOs, CMOs, and CTOs of prospective clients. If you’re interested in the first two posts, they are:
This question is the natural evolution upon solving the first two questions:
Now that we have our users signed up and using the app regularly, how can we leverage that to deepen the relationship?
Companies today are aware of eroding customer loyalty and the need to make users sticky and create brand evangelists. But how? Can technology even do that?
Yes, it can. Many leaders in high-trust industries think this is the domain of their human workforce. Here are a few reasons relying solely on your people to do this is a mistake:
Your users will likely interact with your technology platforms an order of magnitude more than they do with your human team members.
Moreover, technology is far more consistent than humans (or at least, without a large investment in training and retraining).
When properly set up, you can adjust messaging in a tech platform far more quickly than you could change direction with your human workforce (see point above about training and retraining).
There is an entire generation of users who do not want to engage with your human workforce and will resent it, even if they do the best job possible. This proportion is only increasing.
Let’s say you agree that technology has a critical role to play in deepening that user relationship — whether you’re trying to influence them to sign up for more products or say nice things about your brand to their friends and family. How exactly does a platform accomplish this?
In the previous articles, I used the analogy that convincing a user to sign up is like getting a date to the prom, and enticing them to keep coming back is like nurturing a long-term relationship. I think I’ve pushed this dating/relationship analogy about as far as it will bear, so we’re going to mix things up: trying to get a user to deepen their relationship with your brand is like asking for a promotion. By the way, the insights I’m sharing here are strong principles and examples that hold generally true, but every brand and situation has nuance, so if you want an analysis of your specific situation, that’s what we’re here for. Drop us a line.
Have you done a demonstrably good job with the original assignment?
If you’ve ever managed people, you’ve probably been in the situation of evaluating internal hires for promotion. What’s the first thing you look at? If you’re a bit like me, you look at their performance in their current role. While I might swap someone to a different role if they’re struggling in the current one, it would be exceedingly rare for that to be a promotion. Most likely it’s a lateral or backward move, trying to get them to a position where they can demonstrate success before moving them up. If your app is going to ask for that “promotion,” say trying to upsell to an additional product line, you want to be sure you’re nailing the current experience.
Surprisingly few brands in highly regulated industries are doing this, and it hurts them. Let’s look at how the disaster unfolds.
Several months ago, I went through our mortgage provider’s process to change autopay — a common task in their portal. It took me nearly 30 clicks to even find the right spot. Already annoyed, I was told I had to cancel my existing autopay before setting up a new one. I did, only to find the new setup wouldn’t go through. Each attempt bounced me to a chatbot that ignored the problem and tried to upsell me a mobile checking account instead. At that moment, there was zero chance I’d deepen my relationship with the company. They were asking for a promotion while dropping the ball on their current role — and no self-respecting boss is going to reward that.
The brand may have assumed their portal experience didn’t matter. A mortgage is a sticky product (especially if interest rate fluctuations make refinancing unlikely). But in this case, the brand was making an attempt to use the portal as an asset to deepen the relationship, and it fell completely flat, because they weren’t doing a credible job of showing competence in the mortgage portal.
We do a lot of work helping companies clean up their foundational features, and I could write an entire article on various aspects of this, but the synopsis is this: find the critical, mundane activities, and deliver an experience in the 75th percentile before you ask for a promotion by attempting an upsell or a referral request.
By delivering a noticeably positive experience first, you build credibility and trust for your later requests. If your app wants the promotion — the upsell, the referral, the glowing review — make sure it has first earned the right to ask.
Have you read the room?
Once you’ve proven competence, timing becomes your next lever. If you were going to ask your boss for a promotion, would you spring it on them when they’re in a bad mood because their team lost the big game and you were just late with an important assignment? Or would you choose your timing strategically, catching them in a moment where they are in a receptive mood and you’re in good standing? If you’re like most people, you’d read the room and time your request accordingly.
It’s remarkable how many apps forget to consider timing. When a user is in the midst of an important task, that’s not the time to ask them to do something for you. Don’t ask for a review the second someone logs in. Don’t ask for a referral on their way to download their ID card. Time your request after they’ve gotten what they need. There’s a reason those charity round-up requests at retail stores show up when the user is almost done with their errand. If they bombarded you while you were shopping in the aisles, it wouldn’t work nearly as well.
One tip: wait for a positive interaction to be complete (or nearly complete), and then ask. Maybe that’s when they’re close to reaching an important savings milestone, when their portfolio is doing well, or when they’ve completed or almost completed an account checkup.
Have you positioned the ask so the user feels good about saying yes?
Once you’ve established credibility and chosen your moment, the next piece of the puzzle is getting to yes.
We’ve previously discussed letting the user be the hero of the story. That extends to situations where we are trying to deepen the relationship through a referral request or upsell. In a referral request, you’re asking the user to recommend your product to a specific friend or group. In a review request, you’re asking the user to publicly recommend your product to anyone. And in an upsell request, you’re trying to get the user to upgrade their plan or sign up for more products and services. In all three cases, if you are to succeed, the user must feel good about doing this.
How do you do that? Bribe them with $10 Starbucks gift cards? Just like bribing your boss for a promotion is likely to backfire, we wouldn’t advise bribing your users is. The offer of the bribe actually makes people lose motivation, in a phenomenon called the Overjustification Effect.
Beg? That’s also ineffective. The harder you push, the more the user will assume this is not in their best interests.
Instead of bribery or begging, change the main beneficiary from you, the brand, to someone the user feels at least a moderately strong drive to help. This is akin to making sure your boss sees promoting you as not only the best thing for you, the requester, but also the company.
The mechanics of executing this shift look different depending on the brand and request, but here are a few examples:
If you want your user to invite friends to join an online community: “You have the power to make this community even stronger. Our top members invite an average of 3 new members each month. Do you know someone who would be a great addition to this community?” You are shifting the beneficiary to the community (and also throwing in a dose of benchmarking for good measure). The user then feels good about being the hero who is strengthening the community.
If you want your user to recommend your product to a friend: “Know a woman who deserves to feel more confident about her finances? Refer a friend and we’ll give her 10% off her first year.” This shifts the beneficiary to the friend — the user is then the hero who is helping the referred person.
If you want your user to provide a review: “Do you feel better since joining our platform? Help us spread the word to parents just like you by providing your unbiased review.” This shifts the beneficiary to “parents just like you,” and the user becomes the hero who is assisting them.
If you want your user to upgrade or sign up for another product: “Stressed out about next year’s taxes? We can help with that. Sign up for Bill Organizer Plus now, and never search for a receipt again. Smart.” This is the trickiest one. You are shifting the beneficiary back to the user, and making them the hero of their own story.
Have you made it easy for users to say yes?
You’ve shown you can do the job, selected the perfect moment, honed your ask to make the user the hero, and made a compelling request. Your job is done, right? Not quite.
It’s surprising how often there are subtle barriers in place — forcing a user who’s currently interacting via an app to talk to a person to complete their upgrade, for example. This is a deterrent and a waste of all the effort that brought the user to the point of saying yes. Clear out the barriers. Let them pay to a card already on file, or invoice them later. Provide a quick referral system where they can see exactly what will be sent to the person receiving the referral. Let them preview their review and choose how their name is listed (or see that it’s anonymous). Study the process, find the friction points, and neutralize them.
Just like in the workplace, promotions aren’t handed out because you asked loudly enough — they’re earned through consistent performance, well-timed conversations, and making sure your growth is a win for the whole team. Your app is no different. Nail the fundamentals, read the room, position the ask so the user feels like the hero, and make it easy to say yes. Do that, and you won’t just get the “promotion” you’re hoping for — you’ll build a loyal advocate who’s ready to champion your brand for the long haul.