It’s one thing for a brand to be used fre­quent­ly by its con­sumers. When a brand is able to turn their con­sumers into advo­cates who mar­ket their prod­ucts or ser­vices for them, they forge a more cer­tain path to suc­cess. This jour­ney begins with a sol­id prod­uct, ser­vice, or idea – but it most def­i­nite­ly doesn’t end there.

The qual­i­ties that make a brand love­able can vary, but there’s a trend in what sep­a­rates tru­ly engag­ing brands from the rest. It takes a qual­i­ty prod­uct, ser­vice, or idea cou­pled with smart dig­i­tal strat­e­gy and a gen­uine con­nec­tion with con­sumers for a brand to cre­ate advo­cates out of loy­al cus­tomers. We can all learn from four brands (Amer­i­can Express, Uber, Yelp, and Bad Yogi) that have trans­formed the way their audi­ences live their dai­ly lives and have cre­at­ed brand advo­cates out of con­sumers by uti­liz­ing mul­ti-chan­nel dig­i­tal strate­gies.

American Express Inspires Customers To Earn Rewards

Near­ly every Amer­i­can Express mar­ket­ing mes­sage that is cre­at­ed seems to act as a reminder of the end­less oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to us thanks to their cred­it cards and the rewards you accu­mu­late by using them. Time and time again Amer­i­can Express per­me­ates our thoughts with these mes­sages through email, TV ads, YouTube videos and microsites ded­i­cat­ed to telling touch­ing sto­ries of their cus­tomers. Amer­i­can Express has cre­at­ed a cul­ture around a piece of plas­tic that allows you to do the things you love. Their advan­tage is that they can afford to cre­ate count­less, authen­tic dig­i­tal touch points to tell the sto­ry of their con­sumers, but by find­ing low­er bud­get ways to demon­strate how your cus­tomers can use your ser­vices in a unique way you can inspire oth­er cus­tomers or poten­tial cus­tomers to do the same.

Uber Turns Riders Into Party Hosts

Uber runs many dig­i­tal­ly inte­grat­ed cam­paigns. For exam­ple, its part­ner­ship with Spo­ti­fy allows rid­ers to play their own music while they ride. Now, Uber Events is expand­ing so that host­ing an evening with your friends and secur­ing safe rides home for every­one at the end of the night is eas­i­er than ever. Uber has lever­aged its trust­ed email chan­nel to car­ry this cam­paign. Uber Events allows hosts to cre­ate an event, receive Uber pass­es via email, and dis­trib­ute them to friends in advance of their event. Hosts can use one code for all guests or cre­ate cus­tom codes and event details so the codes are used on the right day. This is a smart dig­i­tal strat­e­gy because Uber is using email and, essen­tial­ly, refer­ral codes (a dig­i­tal chan­nel and deliv­ery method that con­sumers know and trust the brand to exe­cute prop­er­ly) to encour­age con­sumers to use a ser­vice peo­ple may oth­er­wise find over­ly com­plex. Addi­tion­al­ly, Uber has found a way to get its con­sumers to tell oth­ers about its ser­vice by help­ing them host a fun evening. If your brand has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve cus­tomers in a way that is a bit uncon­ven­tion­al, then uti­lize dig­i­tal chan­nels and strate­gies that your con­sumers already trust and are famil­iar with to exe­cute the idea. Inno­vate with the lifestyle of your audi­ence in mind, but always build off of the things you’re already good at.

Yelp Incentivizes Consumers Online & Offline

Yelp entices its users to write reviews in a few ways. At its most basic lev­el, Yelp acts as a con­ve­nient record-keep­ing tool for users that tells users where they’ve been, what they liked and what they hat­ed all in one place. Not to men­tion it acts as a reli­able source for find­ing high­ly rat­ed busi­ness­es for its con­sumers to try. With Yelp Elite Squad the com­pa­ny encour­ages users to post real reviews, pho­tos and tips about what to do with­in their local com­mu­ni­ty, and then nom­i­nate them­selves or oth­ers to become part of the Yelp Elite. The ben­e­fit for the user is pret­ty straight­for­ward; earn a spe­cial Yelp Elite badge for your pro­file, get invites to exclu­sive par­ties, and meet oth­er Yelp Elites with sim­i­lar inter­ests. Yelp has cre­at­ed a sta­tus that pro­vides real ben­e­fits to its users in a way they love. By reward­ing actions that Yelp users would have tak­en with­out incen­tive at all, they’ve aligned cus­tomer inter­est with their busi­ness goals. An engaged user base and authen­tic reviews help Yelp gain more users and encour­age busi­ness­es to use their ser­vices. Yelp is using offline incen­tives to dri­ve online engage­ment, and it’s work­ing. In Yelp’s Q3 finan­cial update they report­ed page vis­its had grown 40 per­cent year-over-year and local adver­tis­ing rev­enue totaled $115.9 mil­lion – a 36 per­cent growth com­pared to Q3 2014. Your brand can recre­ate some of Yelp’s strat­e­gy, by deter­min­ing what aspects of your prod­uct or ser­vice are inher­ent­ly use­ful or cap­ti­vat­ing for con­sumers and cre­at­ing addi­tion­al online and offline incen­tives to increase engage­ment.

Bad Yogi Gives Its Audience What They Want By Asking For Their Participation

Bad Yogi was found­ed to rede­fine yoga cul­ture. It val­ues peo­ple and prac­tices that don’t fit the typ­i­cal “yogi” mold. The founders struck a chord with a group of peo­ple who obvi­ous­ly felt the same way. Ear­ly on the Bad Yogi mantra was an idea and a 30-day Yoga Chal­lenge host­ed on YouTube. It has evolved into more than 100 videos, cus­tomized yoga cours­es, swag and a fol­low­ing of more than 100,000 Bad Yogis. The founders like­ly had some indi­ca­tion that they were on to an idea that many peo­ple would agree with, and they quick­ly pur­sued a few dig­i­tal strate­gies which kept them on the right track. Since its found­ing in 2012, Bad Yogi videos have had more than 3 mil­lion views. Through engag­ing dig­i­tal tac­tics, they get at the heart of what their audi­ence wants from their brand. Bad Yogi reg­u­lar­ly takes advan­tage of sur­veys, email pro­mo­tions, and more recent­ly Live via Face­book Men­tions, which allows live video stream­ing capa­bil­i­ties for pub­lic fig­ures on the plat­form. Bad Yogi uses Live for Q&A ses­sions with their audi­ence. Some­times these ses­sions are more focused on what is hap­pen­ing in the lives of the founders, but they also focus on what the Bad Yogi audi­ence would like to see in future yoga-relat­ed videos that the team plans to cre­ate.

Making These Examples Work For You

The best brands, no mat­ter their size, bring a sin­cere lev­el of per­son­al engage­ment to prod­ucts or ser­vices that may oth­er­wise be con­sid­ered imper­son­al. Brands that find a way to make pur­chas­es a delib­er­ate and cel­e­brat­ed deci­sion for their con­sumers will always stay ahead of the pack. Find ways to con­nect with your con­sumers on a per­son­al lev­el. Then use the dig­i­tal tac­tics you’re good at, the tech­nol­o­gy you have on hand, and con­sumer feed­back and sto­ries to cre­ate even bet­ter expe­ri­ences that turn your con­sumers into active par­tic­i­pants in your brand’s sto­ry.