Word of mouth is a fundamental driver of purchasing decisions for every consumer, argues Paul Archer, the founder of brand advocacy platform Duel. 

Apart from the occasional item bought on impulse, almost every other considered purchase people make is because someone they know, love or respect has recommended or endorsed it, he says. 

Duel – used by more than 60 fashion and beauty brands, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria’s Secret, Pandora, Dove, and Elemis – empowers brands to develop advocacy communities, with a particular focus on micro- and nano-influencers. 

Archer, a self-confessed ‘brand-building nerd,’ was speaking with Inside Retail’s Amie Larter for an episode of the podcast Retail Untangled, recorded on the sidelines of last month’s Shoptalk in Las Vegas.

Back in 2018, when Archer founded Duel, almost zero per cent of any brand marketing budgets were allocated to encouraging advocacy and word of mouth. His motivation was to create a way to measure and manage advocacy, to scale word of mouth, in the same way you can drive other marketing channels.

He believes that today’s consumers are increasingly frustrated with macro influencer content, which is saturated with large brand endorsements. 

Most influencer marketing is by someone who is paid to like a brand for a price, but followers are growing wary of such endorsements, remembering the influencer was spruiking another brand just a day or two earlier. Consumers, he says, are asking why they should believe them. 

“We sniff out this bullshit every single time, so people don’t buy the product. Then it gets a bit of awareness – some vanity-like stats about how many people it has reached – but how many people have gone on to make the purchase?” 

Too many markets have completely missed the point. The reason influencer marketing works – when it works – is because it’s a true fan talking about a brand authentically.  

“We trust people who are real, who are authentic, who are talking about something with that level of passion and intensity that … drives us to make that purchase.”  

Smaller brands have learned to mine their customer base to drive reach, creating the largest opportunity – nano- and micro-influencers, who are more authentic and, because they have fewer followers, better priced.  

“A lot of brands don’t realise just how big an opportunity this is and the scale that they should be operating at,” he says. There are 16 million creators in the US alone and around 200 million in the world “and that number is growing”.

Duel works with some of the world’s largest beauty and fashion brands, each with a minimum of 100,000 such influencers, all fans who authentically love the brand and actively create content. Their followers range from tens of thousands to as little as 1000. But that is still meaningful, says Archer. “If you can get 100,000 people with 2000 followers to talk about your brand … you are made.”

Archer advocates that brands “start and end” with their own customer base as opposed to recruiting name influencers with millions of followers. 

The audience size is irrelevant compared to the passion they show, he says. “If you’re looking at people with a smaller audience or no audience, you need more of them to have as significant an impact as someone with larger audiences. But the principle is the same: It’s about authenticity. 

“So, if you are mining your customers to find that authenticity, you’re always going to be okay, because you’ll have real people talking about your brand.”

Five pillars of brand advocacy

During the podcast, Archer talks through five core principles or pillars of brand advocacy, with micro- and nano-influencer activity among them. 

“Firstly, brand advocacy is a philosophy as much as anything. It’s like a mindset and an approach of how a brand should be and how it should be built, and it starts with a very clear purpose and a why. Who is going to get behind your brand if they don’t know why you exist? If you don’t know why you exist, no one else does; they don’t care, they won’t talk about you.”

Next, brands should create a remarkable customer experience and brand essence that makes people feel compelled to talk about. Convey that brand nature in everything: The product itself, brand communications, how you engage in service and think about how you can make that magical. Be empathetic about the way you show up so that people feel that you recognise them. 

The third pillar, often overlooked is employees, who should be a retailer’s number one advocates because they are the brand’s voice. “If they don’t fully buy into your why and who you are as a brand, if they don’t live and breathe it … then you’re doomed. If your employees won’t do it, no one else will.” 

The fourth pillar is building a customer community, giving it a place to hang out that’s not just about driving sales. Brands usually try to build community by launching loyalty programs that give customers points and are centred on bombarding them with promotional messages encouraging them to buy products, usually with a discount. 

“That’s basically how CRM is done in most cases. They’ve got it wrong. It’s incredibly selfish; it’s all about the brand.” Instead, brands should reframe the message from a perspective of what they can offer customers. Think how to add value. It doesn’t have to be financial or product-related, it could be support or advice, or a place to hang out. It could be using stores as a location for events. 

“There are a myriad of different options to add value. But if you view it from a value-giving perspective, you’ll generally be onto a good start.”

The final pillar: Advocacy, the influencing or amplification stage, when you’re doing all that good work, and you push it out into the market through micro- or nano-influencers. 

• Listen to the podcast to hear Archer predict what brand marketing will look like in 2030, when more than 40 per cent of revenue will come from social commerce, the rise of socially native brands, and the dangers for brands that fail to evolve.