Be it celebrity marketing, influencer marketing, or a brand ambassador program- a massive part of brand building and marketing is having people advocate for your product, brand, or company. And who better advocates for your brand are those who work behind it every day to make it a better experience?
That is where workplace empowerment and employee advocacy come in.
More often than not, your employees will already be engaging on social media about their workplace. And since your employees know a lot about the ins and outs of your brand/ business, they can lend a unique and trustworthy voice to bolster your brand’s image.
In turn, this makes employee advocacy an easy program that can harness your employees’ platform presence and knowledge to establish a very high ROI. With employee advocacy software, you can take it even further.
Overcoming Challenges with Employee Advocacy Software
Pulling off an employee advocacy program is the most difficult part of putting together, managing, and tracking the promotion base. Employee advocacy software brings all of these tasks under one umbrella via Social Media Marketing and Employee Management Tracking tools to build pre-approved content libraries that brand advocates can access at any time. This makes it easier for your employees to spread the messaging via social media platforms, email, or mobile.
In the long run, this results in a more diverse social media presence for your brand and increases employee brand loyalty. A company’s social selling strategies and sales enablement modules can be much more strategically robust via the use of such technology. Brands can thus maintain a consistent reputation and analyze employee activity, making employee advocacy even more effective.
Benefits of Employee Advocacy Software- Backed by Data
- Re-sharing of brand content increases by over 24 times if the content is marketed through employee advocacy as compared to brand channels. (Source: MSLGroup)
- Employee-advocated content receives up to 8 times more engagement as compared to regular brand channels. (Source: Social Media Today)
- Customers that have been referred by advocates have a 37% higher retention rate as compared to those sourced through regular channels. (Source: Deloitte)
- An employee advocacy program regulated via purpose-built software costs 1/10th of paid advertising or less.
- In the case of top talent, a successful software-oriented employee advocacy program is likely to retain 58% more top talent as compared to competitors. The retainment rate also goes up by 20%. (Source: Prophet)
- 59% reduction in staff turnover due to software-based employee advocacy programs. (Source: Forbes)
- Leads generated by employee advocacy are 7 times more likely to close than other tech-based lead gen tactics. (Source: Gartner)
Top 5 Employee Advocacy Software
EveryoneSocial
EveryoneSocial is an impressive employee advocacy software aimed at empowering sales and driving communication. This software’s gamification makes the interface more employee-friendly and makes brand advocacy a fun task rather than a chore. Admins can track and report performance by employees and auto-generate reports via the mobile app.
Any smart sales team can drive increased revenue via social selling and generate leads via data accumulated within the app.
Notable Features:
- Direct content tracking via Salesforce
- Smart Integrations: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Adobe Analytics, Marketo, Bitly, etc.
- Direct content sharing via application interface to social media platforms
- Leaderboards and reward systems to track and update employee performance.
- Performance report generation within the mobile app
Hootsuite Amplify
Hootsuite allows admins to launch social campaigns and create simplified commercial experiences on the user end. The app can also access certifications from leading industry experts and training modules. The app is specialized for CPG, finance, tech, ed and tech services/ businesses.
Notable Features:
- Supported on Android and iPhone
- Deployment is Cloud, SaaS, and web-based
- In-person and online training
- In-app analytics and Single Sign-on
- Social media integration and social sharing enabled
Bambu by SproutSocial
SproutSocial is a platform that specializes in social media management, making Bambu an ideal online marketing advocacy tool. Curated content can be stored and accessed via the application and chosen exclusively by administrators. However, the interface is user-friendly, and its board can be accessed directly via social media accounts.
Posting guidelines can also be directly directed by administrators within Bambu’s board.
Notable Features:
- Simplified social sharing and employee advocacy via the app dashboard
- Approved post suggestions that allow message alignment among the entire workforce
- Metrics overview and branding approach optimization.
PostBeyond
PostBeyond is an employee advocacy software that works as a complete employer branding, advocacy, and social selling platform. Content performance can also be optimized by considering awareness and decision stages. The software also approaches recruitment in a data-driven way, alleviating pressure on HR leaders.
This software’s gamification makes the interface more employee-friendly and makes brand advocacy a fun task rather than a chore.
Notable Features:
- Engagements from multiple platforms can be tracked via web tracking and earned media value
- Leaderboards and reward systems to track and update employee performance.
- Allowed Integrations: SalesForce, Bitly, MS Office, MailChimp, and Marketo.
- Curated content sharing interface
Oktopost
This employee advocacy software is more than just an advocacy tool; it offers content curation, governance, and automation tools. While these are all valuable tools to have within such a platform, the social selling functionality is one of the best in the market. The software is specialized for the B2B space but works well in other markets as well.
The EA module is seamless, and Oktopost is definitely an apt software to increase operational efficiency.
Notable Features:
- Filtering, Curation, and Sharing functionalities within the application
- Allows management of multiple platforms
- Chrome Browser Extension
- Integration with SalesForce
Conclusion
While multiple great advocacy platforms exist, functionalities and integrations are often specialized to different sectors. While there are free advocacy softwares, their functionalities can hardly compete with premium ones.
However, the benefits of employee advocacy software can not be argued with. Research indicates more integration of such software within all scopes of business in the coming days. So what are you waiting for? Start today and multiply your ROI!