9 Best Customer Advocacy Software Platforms To Try in 2024 [Advocate Marketing Software]

Have you heard the term “brand advocate” before? A lot of businesses actually rely on their customers to help spread the word about their brand.

Why? Because it works. A study by Nielsen found that recommendations from people we know are still the most credible form of advertising. It makes sense – we naturally trust business recommendations from peers over a paid ad from the business itself.

But how can you turn your customers into brand advocates? There’s an entire arm of marketing dedicated to this. It’s called advocate marketing, and it primarily runs through customer advocacy software (also called advocacy marketing software or advocacy marketing platforms).

In this article, we’ll help you choose the best customer advocacy software for your needs by reviewing nine top picks.

What is customer advocacy software?

Customer advocacy software (advocate marketing software) helps you find the best advocates to engage with and encourages them to spread the word for you – whether that’s by sending referrals, writing a review, or even participating in a survey.

Advocate marketing software helps you amplify your reach through your existing customer base. Some main features of advocacy software are:

• Gathering recommendations, reviews, or testimonials
• Sharing brand information with advocates
• Monitoring all advocate interactions, and tracking the results of those interactions
• Engaging advocates by issuing rewards (like discount coupons and gift cards to your business) for their advocacy

Through these and other features, advocacy software helps you increase your social proof and expand your brand awareness through authentic peer-to-peer connections.

How we evaluated the customer advocacy software

Do you think your business could benefit from customer advocacy software? We’ve researched and compiled the best advocacy marketing platforms.

Read how we evaluated our list, and then browse through the reviews below:

The best customer advocacy software (advocacy marketing platforms)

Our top list features popular advocate marketing software for businesses of all sizes, from small businesses and startups to agencies and enterprises.

Note: The software is not listed in any order of rank or recommendation. Our aim is to put together a carefully selected source of advocacy software, and give an accurate picture of the available options.

Referral Rock

“Give your best fans an on-brand sharing experience. ”

Referral Rock is an an all-in-one referral marketing platform that allows you to launch an advocate program in days – no developers required. The software engages advocates at the perfect time, inviting them to promote your brand in exchange for incentives.

By automatically communicating with your best customers, and then sending them instant rewards whenever their advocacy brings in a new sale, you can build long-term relationships with a growing customer base.

Plus, Referral Rock offers plenty of integrations with the tools and processes you already use, to create a consistent referral engine that enables you to scale. Run customer referral, affiliate, partner, ambassador, and employee referral programs all from one flexible platform.

Referral Rock will work for you even if you have a multi-step sales process. It tracks detailed metrics (including brand visits) for the full picture of advocates’ ROI, and will let you customize your program to your business’ unique needs. And thanks to a dedicated onboarding specialist, you’ll have everything you need for a smooth launch.

Extole

“Customer-led growth for marketers.”

Extole’s marketing platform helps larger companies encourage customers to become brand advocates. This turn-key brand advocacy platform offers plenty of options to tailor the program to your business needs. And thanks to the detailed advocate profiles, you’ll always know which referrers are bringing in the most revenue.

However, this completely custom solution is only meant for enterprises. Although Extole doesn’t list out its pricing, we’ve heard that it’s priced at over $3500 per month.

NiceJob

“Easily get more reviews, referrals and sales.”

With NiceJob, companes can encourage customer advocacy through its review collection and referral features. Send timed review and referral invites when customers are most excited about your brand, and drive reviews on Google, Facebook, and top industry review sites. Plus, use widgets to feature top reviews and put customers’ advocacy to work on your website and on social media.

Keep in mind: Although NiceJob bills itself as a referral tool, it’s focused more on the review part of customer advocacy. The software is not optimized to run a full referral program. Rather, it only runs a bare-bones widget.

Influitive AdvocateHub

“Give advocates what they crave: exclusivity, recognition, and rewards.”

Influitive AdvocateHub helps businesses create a community of advocates by offering a personalized game design and challenges and using gamification to make advocating a rewarding experience.

Its functionality includes being able to design challenges to help educate, get customer feedback, and collect NPS surveys. Different tasks or missions to complete include providing a testimonial, a reference, or even writing blog content. Influitive is focused on helping B2B companies become successful by using the voice of their customers and employees to build recognition.

Zuberance

“Turn your customers into advocates and brand ambassadors.”

Zuberance describes itself as “a complete, full-service advocate marketing solution.” It allows brands to collect reviews, testimonials, and referrals, as well as mobilize ambassadors. Plus, customers can even answer prospective clients’ questions.  Identify your best advocates, mobilize them to promote you, and monitor the results they deliver with this turn-key solution.

Birdeye

“Collect reviews, convert leads, run surveys, get referrals – all with messaging.”

Birdeye uses conversational messaging to ask customers to leave reviews and send referrals. Messages can be sent across a variety of channels from a single inbox, and can be automated. Birdeye also supports messaging for loyalty and retention purposes, such as sending customer surveys. Plus, track customers’ advocacy in detail from an easy-to-use dashboard.

ReferralCandy

“Grow your sales by word-of-mouth marketing.”

ReferralCandy offers a simple tool for ecommerce businesses to drive customer advocacy through referrals. Set up your program and rewards quickly, and “nudge” customers to make referrals at the right time.

The tool won’t work for businesses with multi-step sales processes, though, and it only covers the basic share process. So if you aren’t an ecommerce business, it won’t be a good fit. Also, keep in mind that ReferralCandy charges commissions on every sale, on top of the monthly fees to use the software. So, it could get expensive quickly.

Annex Cloud

“Connect, engage and grow your customer relationships.”

Annex Cloud’s robust loyalty platform nurtures happy customers across all channels, then takes things a step further to encourage reviews, user-generated content, sharing with friends and more. It appears that you’ll need to purchase multiple products to take advantage of all the advocacy features, though (and this white-label structure is meant for larger businesses only).

Brandbassador

“Tap into the influential sales power of your loyal customers, followers, and fans.”

Brandbassador is an app-based platform that gamifies customer advocacy programs. Customers can apply to become official ambassadors of your brand. Once they’re accepted, the platform will equip them with everything they need to represent you, reward their efforts, and track their progress. And since the whole advocacy process works like a mobile game, it’s easier to keep advocates engaged.

Customer advocacy software FAQ

Still have questions about customer advocacy software, the different types, and how to select the best software for your needs? Our FAQ will help you out.

What is advocate marketing?

Advocate marketing (advocacy marketing) is a strategy that motivates your customers or employees to spread the word about your brand.

Advocate marketing starts by making sure people are happy with your product or service, and with the customer service you offer. And only then tapping into this sentiment to grow your business.

There are various forms of advocate marketing. For example, if you ask customers for reviews, testimonials, or referrals, you may already be seeing the positive effects of advocate marketing.

In this way, advocate marketing is considered word-of-mouth, as its overall aim is to share your business with a wider audience.

What is an advocate in marketing?

An advocate in marketing is someone who actively shares and promotes your brand to others. Whether a customer, partner, or employee, an advocate is typically any individual who’s had a positive experience with your brand and is passionate about expressing that to others.

What are the benefits of customer advocacy software?

A successful advocate marketing program offers many benefits. The primary one being increased referrals (or word of mouth). But there are a few other benefits this type of program can bring:

• Greater brand recognition and brand awareness
• A dedicated channel for customer engagement
• A shorter sales and onboarding process (since people will already hear good things about your business and be “warm leads”)
• Customer feedback from advocates to create a more customer-centric product
• A comprehensive marketing platform to streamline advocate and customer experience

By using advocacy marketing software, a business can automate specific workflows to easily track and scale their entire advocate program.

There are many different types of software that can help in your advocate marketing efforts, like referral marketing software, review management software, brand mention software, and more. We go over these in more detail in the next section.

What are the different types of customer advocacy software?

Many different software platforms can fall under customer advocacy software. Generally speaking, if a tool helps you manage and communicate with your customer advocates, it can be categorized as advocate marketing software.

Below are a few of the different types of advocacy marketing platforms:

1. Referral marketing software

Referral marketing software is often connected to advocacy marketing software because it also uses the power of existing customers, partners, and even employees to spread the word of a business.

Individuals who participate in referral marketing programs are incentivized to share your business, while new customers can also be given incentives to make their first purchase.

Referral marketing software helps by automating the routine steps in this process: inviting customers to join your program, giving them a unique referral link to share with friends, and sending them a reward for every successful sale they bring.

This type of advocacy software can help you run a referral program without all the manual hours and effort, and leads to a growing pool of brand advocates for your business.

2. Affiliate and partner software

Maybe your biggest advocates actually aren’t customers, but are individuals or companies that can get your brand in front of their audience. Or, maybe you’d like to leverage customers who also create content, in a more formal way than through a referral program. In this case, affiliate and partner software can help you run a program that engages and makes the most of these relationships.

Affiliate or partner software often comes with ready-to-use templates, reward and messaging automation, and all the data you need at a glance. By having a single platform that engages and give your advocates access to all the resources they need, you can help any partner promote your company in the most effective manner.

3. Brand mention tools

Brand mention tools are often categorized in advocate marketing because they aim to do the same thing – brand awareness.

Most brand mention tools will send you alerts whenever someone on a social platform or forum posts about your brand (or any related keywords or hashtags). From there, you can track any ongoing conversations and monitor how the market is engaging with your brand.

Staying informed about all relevant conversations can help you identify the best advocates for your brand.

4. Influencer marketing software

Influencer marketing software is another type of tool that overlaps with advocate marketing software. Instead of more general brand advocates (by definition, anyone who advocates for your brand), influencer marketing software helps you manage experts and social media personalities with a trusted following as they spread the word about you.

Influencer marketing works because influencers carry a lot of weight with their followers, and use their high-profile status to promote and endorse products.

Influencer marketing software will help you find these types of advocates, and manage a specific program just for them.

5. Brand ambassador software

Brand ambassadors are usually advocates who engage in a long-term agreement with your brand. In these cases, brand ambassador software can help you find and manage these types of long-term advocates.

The tool can help you find your biggest fans on social media, based on how often they mention you and their overall engagement, so you can potentially recruit them as brand ambassadors.

After you’ve recruited your brand ambassadors, the software also helps you manage and track the results of your advocacy marketing campaigns.

6. NPS software

Net Promoter Score (NPS) software makes it easy to run an  NPS survey, where customers are asked how likely they are to recommend your brand to others (on a scale of 0-10).

People who respond with a score of 9-10 are your promoters. (On the other hand, those who respond with a 0-6 are your detractors.)

Being able to easily identify these promoters lets you know who you should ask to join your referral program, write a review, or possibly become one of your long-term brand advocates.

7. Review management software

Review management software is a type of reputation management software that specifically helps you ask for reviews. By pinpointing the right customers at the right time, you’re more likely to get positive reviews for your business.

Some review management software also alerts you to new reviews as they happen, so you can easily see your top reviews and thank the advocates who wrote them.

In most cases, people who leave positive reviews are some of your best advocates. Many potential customers look to the opinions of existing customers before they decide whether to purchase from you.

By using review management software, you can make sure your brand has a growing number of positive reviews and a strong online reputation.

8. Customer loyalty software

Although customer loyalty software is often categorized as a type of advocacy marketing software, it doesn’t necessarily help businesses get customers to share with others. It gets customers to come back.

Eventually, loyalty programs help customers become advocates for your business.

Starbucks, for example, increases customer loyalty with its Rewards Program. Every time a customer makes a purchase, they earn stars they can use toward future treats. This is led to a mass of loyal customers who visit the chain with their friends, post photos and user-generated content (UGC) online, and act as ambassadors for the brand.

Wrapping up

As you can see, a lot of things go into running an advocacy marketing program. Advocacy software can help a business grow faster with marketing automation, easy audience segmentation, and real-time statistics. It’s a way to help businesses increase their brand awareness and customer acquisition through customers, employees or partners. The best part is that, with the right customer advocacy software, you can mobilize employees and partners as well as customers – all through the same platform.