Advocacy marketing is a powerful, adaptable, and economical variant of influencer marketing, that can yield potent, long-term results either in isolation, or when integrated into a wider marketing strategy. Also known as an ambassador programme, advocacy marketing steers hard into the important modern marketing trends of relatability, authenticity, and meaningful community-building.

Built around the maintenance of many long-term, mutually beneficial influencer relationships, advocacy marketing differs from straightforward, paid-activation influencer marketing via its ‘always on’ format and open-ended campaign structure. But beyond this persistent, ‘ambient’ approach to influencer marketing, advocacy is also a uniquely useful element in amplifying the power of more traditional strategies. Read on, and we’ll explain all.

What is advocacy marketing?

Advocacy marketing, simply, is a variant of influencer marketing that relies less on isolated, paid campaign activations with big content creators, and opts instead for a more persistent, grassroots approach. Advocacy marketing is about building a larger ‘army’ of often smaller, strategically chosen influencers with focused, dedicated audiences, and encouraging them to support and cover a product or brand over the long term.

Traditionally encouraging organic content rather than leveraging paid sponsorships, advocacy marketing incentivises coverage and product mentions not via direct financial boons, but in the way that it cultivates a genuinely supportive, nurturing culture that helps its participants build the profile of their content through special ‘insider’ opportunities and access afforded by the partnership.

Advocacy vs. marketing via more traditional means

Advocacy marketing can be seen as a kind of ‘soft marketing’ method, which eschews traditional paid spend models in favour of genuine relationship building, authenticity, and long-term partnerships. Like influencer marketing on the whole, it’s an altogether more human approach to amplifying your message with the right communities.

Whether you choose to work with YouTube influencers, TikTok influencers, or content creators on any other platform, advocacy marketing acts as a kind of perpetual VIP programme for creators. It’s about providing partners with diverse benefits such as early access to news and announcements, exclusive, money-can’t-buy gifting programmes, ambassador-only events and community activity, and special content and coverage opportunities that empower content creators with unique assets and formats, all in order to help their content really stand out.

While the costs of advocacy marketing are more open-ended than traditional, contained campaigns - in that they take the form of rolling, month-to-month management fees over longer periods - the overall costs can be lower. That’s because rather than applying a larger, traditional paid spend for specific, ‘big impact’ pieces of influencer content, advocacy marketing is more concerned with maintaining a higher volume of relationships for a lower-key but more consistent flow of awareness and conversation.

Gifting, events, and the like obviously have additional spot costs when implemented, but on the flipside, the widespread, ongoing word-of-mouth awareness that comes from a good advocacy marketing programme can deliver a whole extra level of value in return.

Advocacy in the marketing funnel

Advocacy marketing has several possible uses in the marketing funnel. Thanks to its lower-cost outlay compared to traditional, paid influencer marketing campaigns, advocacy marketing can be a great, standalone option for smaller and challenger brands looking to steadily build awareness and word-of-mouth market share over the long term. By a similar note, advocacy marketing’s inherently sustained nature can make it a great tool for brands looking to build strong communities and maintain ongoing visibility.

Advocacy marketing can also be blended with other influencer marketing techniques as part of bigger, multilayered campaign plans, in order to create powerful resonance. For example, a ‘top-down to grass-roots’ approach can be taken. Paid spend can be used to activate a limited selection of larger, tentpole content creators for big initial impact and mass awareness, before advocacy content brings more nuanced, sustained messaging directly to the communities who will really engage with and benefit from it. Transforming an initial hype drop into a more meaningful, ongoing conversation like this can be a very powerful technique, and really amplify the power of paid content.

Or you can also do things the other way around, steadily building a close working relationship with a broad fleet of advocates and ambassadors, before eventually picking out your biggest stars for paid activations. Getting this right requires careful and insightful attention to campaign data, but if you’re in the business of long-term community-building and the cultivation of trust and loyalty, it’s absolutely worth doing. The elevation of high-performing and engaged ambassadors in this way will confirm the authenticity of your support, and lay the groundwork for fantastic long-term partnerships working into the future.

And naturally, a combination of both of the above approaches can create a great feedback loop of retention, as advocates welcome newcomers into their community conversations following a big awareness drive, before eventually becoming high-tier awareness drivers themselves, through your support.