With a pool of advocates available, you can run various advocate marketing campaigns. A campaign is something that you essentially ask an advocate to do. There are dozens of campaigns that advocates can support, but it's important to keep in mind that all campaigns are not created equal - some may be better suited for newly-onboarded advocates while others are best for experienced advocates. Some common examples include:

• Refer new customers
• Contribute to a piece of marketing content
• Follow or mention the company on a social network (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Review products
• Contribute to a community discussion
• Participate in a beta program
• Take surveys
• Participate in research
• Act as a reference for the sales organization
• Read and share a blog post

Regardless of the types of advocate campaigns you choose to run, there are a handful of best practices you should follow to ensure the success of a campaign.

Specify your campaign objectives

You should specify two types of campaign objectives:

1. Define the business objective that the campaign will support, such as new customer acquisition or improved customer satisfaction.
2. Define the tactical objectives, such as the number of advocates that will need to respond to the campaign. It's often helpful to think of these tactical metrics as conversions in a funnel, starting with the total number of available advocates and ending with the number of advocates who respond to the ask.

Target campaigns to specific advocate personas

Successful advocacy campaigns send specific, targeted "asks" to specific target segments.

Specific "asks" should be designed for specific advocate personas. For example, you might create an industry-focused white paper and the "ask" is for advocates to submit two or three paragraphs. The promotion for these "asks" should be sent only to advocates from that industry.Consider the advocate experience

There are three foundational elements that must be included in each campaign that will define the experience the advocates will have as they complete the various campaigns:

1. What you will ask the advocate to do
2. What will constitute valid participation in the campaign
3. How you will reward advocates who participate in the campaign

There are other elements that impact the advocate experience and you may wish to include the following details within your campaigns as well:

• Popularity of the campaign or type of campaign
• Time commitment required
• Level of difficulty or effort

Spend time on converting advocates
Many marketers make the mistake of assuming that advocates will simply want to participate in campaigns. They don't spend much time creating compelling asks that drive high conversion rates. Asks should be presented like any marketing offer with good copy and a heavy emphasis on a compelling reason "why" the advocate should participate.

Use deadlines and limits to create a sense of urgency

Your advocates may set the ask aside as they go through their busy days. Creating urgency will help motivate your advocates to take the time to complete a particular "ask" right away. One effective tactic is to set a date when the "ask" will expire. Another approach is to limit the number of people who can participate.

Mix campaign types to maintain high engagement

While you are building your advocate program to increase the effectiveness of your marketing and sales conversions, not every campaign should represent an ask. Mix high value campaigns with purely informational or even entertaining variations. These can be surveys, contests, puzzles or trivia. You can even promote campaigns that profile active members of the community to contribute to that 'social capital' that advocates desire, while also encouraging other members to increase their participation.

Alert your advocates about campaigns

Recruiting advocates for participation in each campaign is the single biggest determinant of advocate marketing success and a one-size-fits-all approach simply won't work here. How you alert your advocates about specific campaigns is dependent on their level of value or difficulty: