What Is Dealer Advocacy and Why You Need It

What is dealer advocacy?

Dealer advocacy is a subcategory of the more widely known employee advocacy – except that now it’s not your employees who are advocating for you and promoting your brand online, but it’s your dealer, reseller, or franchise network. 

It’s safe to say that no matter what type of company you are, having an advocacy program is a very fundamental part of content marketing — one that offers endless benefits for both companies and advocates. If you’re an organization with a dealer or franchise network, dealer advocacy is the way to ensure your brand presence is consistent, providing a unified experience throughout all the available channels. And, of course, you wouldn’t be the only one who benefits from it as your dealer or reseller network will also reap countless advantages because of it. 

How dealer advocacy works

Dealer advocacy plays out mostly on social media – as your resellers promote your company’s content on their own social media channels and pages. The overarching idea defining dealer advocacy is that by actively involving dealers or partners in its marketing efforts, a brand can expand its reach, make its message more impactful, and enhance brand presence and awareness.

On a practical level, with a dealer-reseller advocacy program, the dealer offers its reseller network a platform to enable resellers to access an online content hub, always full of pre-approved, branded, and ready-to-go content to either download and use on their channels, directly share onto their pages, or engage with in a meaningful way by liking or commenting on it.

Additionally, the Ambassify platform offers the possibility to go beyond the sharing of media and content on social media. In fact, it allows you to take your advocacy program one step further and create an actual collaborative relationship with your reseller network by launching surveys, gathering feedback, sharing documents and campaigns, ideating upcoming campaigns, and so much more.

Plus, of course, you’ll be able to track results and progress and monitor ongoing campaigns and the overall performance of your advocacy program. Ambassify has built-in analytics and tracking tools, allowing you to measure engagement, clicks, and other relevant metrics, gaining valuable insights into the program's effectiveness and progress.

The value of a dealer advocacy program

Focusing on generating real engagement with your reseller network will generate valuable data and insights on your network. Every campaign you create and collaborate on with them allows you to learn more about the types of content your network likes to consume, what they are willing to share with their own network, and what gains more traction with them. In turn,  you’ll quickly identify those who are most willing to promote your company as brand advocates and provide valuable feedback, and thus, the advantages that they bring you.

Remember that your competitors also see the value in focusing on generating engagement with their reseller network, creating a group of advocates who promote the company, and building a solid brand and awareness on their channels, which is why installing a formalized dealer advocacy program will put you ahead of your competition and allow you to orchestrate advocacy efforts more consistently and monitor results at the same time.  

Your resellers are willing to help you improve your processes because it also benefits them — be it directly or indirectly — but they lack a platform that offers them a formalized way to voice their thoughts and facilitates the creative process. The creative process is indeed one of the sore spots for many resellers who lack either the time or the skills to put together elaborate posts to amp up sales of a specific product or brand.

By offering them a platform to share their ideas on how to improve processes, share your branded content with your branded messaging on social media, and give feedback on different company initiatives, you’ll discover new ways to further improve how your company operates, generates sales, and increases productivity.

3 reasons why you need dealer advocacy in your company

I’ve already mentioned some of the more value-based advantages of installing a formal dealer advocacy program and thus solidifying your relationship with your reseller network to increase and enhance your brand. So now let’s sum up 3 of the more evident reasons why you need dealer advocacy in your company:

• Increase bonding and loyalty. With dealer advocacy, you can strengthen and increase the connection with your reseller network by not only providing them with information and ready-to-share social media posts about your brand but also surveying them and building a collaborative relationship to improve your processes. 
  
  
• A more consistent customer journey. 78% of a brand’s follower base visits the store at least once, so by helping your resellers keep their social media pages up to date, you’re directly helping them make their (and your) customers’ journey more consistent and reliable, helping them build trust and loyalty with their own direct customers.
  
  
• Unified brand experience. Making sure your reseller network consistently posts about your brand on their social media pages is one thing; making sure the messaging and branding stay unified across the network and in time is another. Dealer advocacy will solve both these problems and ensure you’re delivering a unified brand experience across all channels that involve you, with the correct messaging to impact your customers.
  
  
• Network and reach expansion. With dealer advocacy, you’ll be able to leverage the resellers’ already established network to easily get your message out and reach a whole new audience, thereby increasing brand awareness and generating direct sales.

Are you ready to own your brand experience and engage with your reseller network?