Best Brand Advocacy Software Shortlist
Here’s a list of the best brand advocacy software I reviewed to help you decide which is suitable for your business.
- Influitive AdvocateHub - Best for real-time engagement scores
- Ambassador - Best for automated referral optimization
- Birdeye - Best for competitive advocate benchmarking
- GaggleAMP - Best for compliance management and monitoring
- Yotpo - Best for user-generated content amplification
- Haiilo - Best for employee advocacy gamification
- Braze Advocacy - Best for AI-powered content recommendations
- Firstup - Best for mobile advocacy apps
- Sprout Social - Best for employee advocacy content library
- Refersion - Best for affiliate and advocate link tracking
- Sociabble - Best for internal and external advocacy integration
- PostBeyond - Best for content approval workflows
Many businesses rely on other individuals to let others know about their brand because the most credible advertising can come from people we know. People naturally trust business recommendations from their peers over paid advertisements from the organization itself. There’s an entire form of marketing that’s dedicated to turning people into brand advocates for your company. It’s known as advocate marketing and is primarily handled by brand advocacy software. Mobilizing as many people as possible will provide the most significant impact but will likely be a challenge to manage at first, which is why I researched the top brand advocacy software to help you find the right platform that fits your needs.
What Is Brand Advocacy Software
Brand advocacy software is a powerful tool that helps companies harness the enthusiasm of their most loyal customers and employees to spread the word about their products or services. It’s like a digital megaphone that amplifies positive experiences and encourages these advocates to share their genuine love for a brand on social media, review platforms, and other channels. In essence, it transforms satisfied customers and dedicated team members into trusted brand ambassadors, amplifying a company’s message and reach organically.
Overviews Of The 12 Best Brand Advocacy Software
The following are my reviews of the best brand advocacy software available for your business. In each, I detail what makes them worth consideration, pricing, and more.
1. Influitive AdvocateHub - Best for real-time engagement scores
Influitive AdvocateHub offers real-time engagement scores using advanced algorithms to help marketing teams track and measure advocates’ engagements.
Why I picked Influitive AdvocateHub: I decided to start this list with Influitive AdvocateHub because it provides your business with advanced algorithms that track and measure your advocates’ engagement levels within your program. The real-time engagement scores will help you identify your most active and influential advocates and give you actionable insights to help you improve engagement. These scores empower you to reward and nurture advocates effectively, ensuring they stay motivated and active in promoting your organization.
Influitive AdvocateHub Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include social sharing tools that encourage customers, employees, and partners to share, comment on, and like existing posts and track engagement through social listening to identify your best influencers and measure success. The platform also offers customer loyalty capabilities that track customers across multiple touchpoints as they engage with your brand.
Integrations include connections with top business tools to ensure the platform fits efficiently with your existing tech stack, such as Domo, Eloqua, Hubspot, Khoros, Marketo, Salesforce, Segment, Skilljar, Vidyard, Wistia, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations through the platform’s API or a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: From $1,999/month.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Quick, helpful support team
- Easy to use
- Regularly adds new features
Cons
- Older features can be improved
- Some performance challenges
2. Ambassador - Best for automated referral optimization
Ambassador helps marketing teams optimize to enhance brand awareness in real time to drive revenue.
Why I picked Ambassador: What makes Ambassador stand out from the other options throughout this article is its automated referral optimization tools. Ambassador uses machine learning and predictive analytics that recommend the best channels, times, and methods for your advocates to refer new customers. This empowers your team to eliminate all the guesswork from referral marketing, ensuring your advocates maximize their impact and increase successful referrals.
Ambassador Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include multi-language tools that remove regional complications and barriers to secure your business’s global presence. With Ambassador, you can also create branded customer portals that allow you to maintain complete control of your brand image and messaging.
Integrations include native connections with the tools you’re likely already using in your organizations, such as Campaign Monitor, Hubspot, Magento, Mailchimp, Recurly, Salesforce, Segment, SendGrid, Shopify, WooCommerce, and other software options.
Pricing: From $250/month.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Many customization options
- Enables beneficial referral marketing campaigns
Cons
- Additional features have an extra fee
- Sometimes, reporting is unclear
3. Birdeye - Best for competitive advocate benchmarking
Birdeye offers competitive benchmarking capabilities that advocates marketing teams can use to get an overview of advocacy campaign performance.
Why I picked Birdeye: The platform provides insights into advocates and how their efforts compare to other advocates, helping them see where they stand in your campaigns. This feature from Birdeye encourages some healthy competition between your advocates, motivating them to shine and improve performance. Also, this allows you to identify top-performing advocates and reward them appropriately.
Birdeye Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include referral templates to help you save time and easily customize messaging and designs, increasing conversions and effectively reflecting your brand. Birdeye also offers referral rewards capabilities that help increase response rates and maximize referral conversion.
Integrations include over 3,000 native connections to simplify advocate programs, such as Acuity Scheduling, AgencyAnalytics, Constant Contact, Hubspot, Invoice2go, Power BI, QuickBooks Online, Salesforce, ShippingEasy, Zoho CRM, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations using Birdeye’s API or a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Excellent customer service
- Omnichannel capabilities
- Simple to use
Cons
- Reporting can be limited
- Can be slow to load
4. GaggleAMP - Best for compliance management and monitoring
GaggleAMP helps users maintain compliance across social media channels, ensuring advocates stay on brand when sharing your business.
Why I picked GaggleAMP: I added GaggleAMP to this article because it specializes in brand advocacy compliance management and monitoring. The platform provides comprehensive tools to ensure your advocates’ social media content adheres to regulatory guidelines and your brand’s standards. This is especially crucial when operating within an industry that has strict compliance requirements, such as finance and healthcare.
GaggleAMP Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include AI-powered tools that help your advocates create social media posts, generate alternative messaging, and foster genuine engagement. GaggleAMP also helps you demonstrate ROI through real-time reporting and analytics capabilities.
Integrations include the ability to connect the platform to many third-party applications to improve workflows, such as Google Analytics, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Marketo, Microsoft Teams, Okta, OneLogin, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Salesforce, Slack, and other software options. If you need custom integrations between GaggleAMP and your current systems, you can use a paid Zapier account or the platform’s API.
Pricing: From $458/month, billed annually.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Excellent for greater reach
- Prompts help advocates write content
- Reporting offers valuable insights
Cons
- User interface is cluttered
- Challenges with the mobile app
5. Yotpo - Best for user-generated content amplification
Yotpo offers user-generated content management and amplification tools to help brands showcase advocates’ photos and videos to enhance future shoppers’ experiences.
Why I picked Yotpo: The platform deserves a place in this article because it offers marketing teams a user-generated content amplification tool. With Yotpo, you can automatically identify and promote high-quality user-generated content from your advocates across multiple marketing channels. This will leverage authentic content created by advocates and customers alike, allowing you to take advantage of the trust and credibility of user-generated content.
Yotpo Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include tools to help you create and handle loyalty and referral rewards programs to engage with advocates and convince new ones to work with your brand. Yotpo also empowers your organization to use customers as advocates by leveraging authentic reviews and displaying them where they will have the most significant impact.
Integrations include connections with leading third-party applications to help your brand create engaging experiences, such as Builder.io, Drip, Gorgias, Justuno, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Ometria, Slack, Tray.io, Zendesk, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations when needed through Yotpo’s API.
Pricing: From $9/month.
Trial: Free plan available.
Pros
- Email templates enable consistent branding
- Collects reviews using loyalty rewards
- Significant number of integrations
Cons
- Customer support needs work
- Can be buggy
6. Haiilo - Best for employee advocacy gamification
Haiilo helps marketing teams enhance employee advocacy by gamifying the experience to show employees how they perform compared to other team members.
Why I picked Haiilo: I decided to add Haiilo (formerly Smarp) because it uses a gamification system to help enhance your employee advocacy strategy. Haiilo transforms employee advocates into active, enthusiastic brand ambassadors by introducing functions such as challenges, leaderboards, and rewards. This will help foster healthy competition among your team and increase employee engagement through advocacy efforts.
Haiilo Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include employee surveys that help you understand what matters most to your employee advocates through intelligent insights and automated analytics. Haiilo also offers multichannel communication tools that foster a connected workforce between you and your employee advocates.
Integrations include connections with a small number of tools to extend Haiilo’s functionality, such as Drupal, Google Drive, Hubspot CRM, Microsoft Teams, OneLogin, Salesforce, Slack, Telekom MMS, Trello, WordPress, and other software options. You can also create custom integrations with the platform’s API when needed.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Simple user experience
- Easy to use
- Allows brands to connect with every employee
Cons
- Sending large files can be difficult
- Not many native integrations
7. Braze Advocacy - Best for AI-powered content recommendations
Braze Advocacy helps enhance brand advocacy campaigns with its AI-powered content recommendations that will help your ambassadors create engaging experiences.
Why I picked Braze Advocacy: The platform offers artificial intelligence to recommend and share relevant content with your brand advocates. Braze Advocacy’s content recommendation engine analyzes your advocates’ behavior and preferences to generate and share personalized content that aligns with their audience. This feature ensures your advocates consistently share high-impact content, increasing your program’s effectiveness.
Braze Advocacy Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include data and analytics tools that enable you to take advantage of real-time data to enhance your brand advocacy campaigns. The platform also provides tools to help your advocates create customer-centric journeys.
Integrations include the ability to connect with over 140 business systems and tools to make the most out of your time, such as Actionable.me, Amplitude, Contentsquare, Heap, Looker, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Segment, Shopify, Twilio, Zendesk, and other software options. You can use the platforms or a paid Zapier account to create custom integrations.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Allows engagement across multiple channels
- Intuitive to use
- Users can customize customer journeys
Cons
- Can be slow
- Not suitable for small businesses
8. Firstup - Best for mobile advocacy apps
Firstup allows marketing teams to create branded mobile advocacy apps they can use to comment, like, and share approved content and manage conversations.
Why I picked Firstup: Firstup helps you develop mobile advocacy apps for your ambassadors to use to engage with your brand while on the go. This mobile-centric approach ensures your advocates can share content and take part in advocacy programs from their devices, making it convenient and accessible for modern, mobile workforces. To ensure your advocates are performing as expected, Firstup allows you to easily track and prove value across channels with customized reports.
Firstup Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include collaboration tools that help you unify your workforce on a centralized platform and connect with your team. Firstup also provides a design studio that enables you to create campaigns at scale via pre-built journeys and an asset library.
Integrations include connections with a small number of tools and systems to help you create straightforward experiences, such as Facebook, Google Analytics, Instagram, Marketo, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Slack, Tumblr, WordPress, Yammer, and other software options. You can also use Firstup’s API to create custom integrations with your current tech stack.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Pushes content to multiple channels
- Makes it easy to communicate with advocates
Cons
- Reporting can be complex
- No templates available for use
9. Sprout Social - Best for employee advocacy content library
Sprout Social’s employee advocacy capabilities enable marketing teams to share content libraries so their employee brand advocates can quickly and easily post to their preferred social network.
Why I picked Sprout Social: I added Sprout Social to this list because the platform sets itself apart by offering an employee advocacy content library. Sprout Social provides a centralized repository of pre-approved content your employee brand advocates can share, allowing you to simplify content distribution and ensure consistent brand messaging. This can help you streamline content management and make it easier for your team members to become advocates.
Sprout Social Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include tools to help you draft and send message ideas so you can ensure advocates stay on-brand. Your employee advocates can also use Sprout Social to explore and follow relevant tops and suggest content.
Integrations include connections with tools and systems to help you and your team access all the content they need to promote your brand, such as Dropbox, Feedly, Google Analytics, Hubspot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Shopify, Slack, Zendesk, and other software options. Sprout Social also allows you to create custom integrations using its API or a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: From $249/month.
Trial: Free 30-day trial.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Helpful customer service team
- Easy to publish content across multiple channels
Cons
- Not suitable for small businesses
- Limited automation capabilities
10. Refersion - Best for affiliate and advocate link tracking
Refersion helps organizations create advocate campaigns by enabling ambassadors to sign up as affiliates and track their links to see clicks and conversions in real-time.
Why I picked Refersion: What makes Refersion an excellent addition to this article is its ability to efficiently integrate affiliate marketing with brand advocacy. Refersion allows you to track and manage advocate and affiliate links in a centralized platform. It’s beneficial if you engage in advocacy and affiliate marketing, allowing you to create a cohesive approach to managing relationships and tracking performance.
Refersion Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include an all-in-one platform to help you support brand ambassadors, create campaigns, and manage an unlimited number of affiliates. Refersion can also help you ensure your affiliate payments are on time and accurate.
Integrations include native connections with tools such as AnyTrack, Attentive, Carthook, Klaviyo, Littledata, Magento, Mailchimp, Segment, Upfluence, Yotpo, and other software options. Refersion also provides an API you can use to create custom integrations, or you can use a paid Zapier account.
Pricing: From $99/month.
Trial: 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Easy to set up
- Requires no technical expertise
- Simple user interface
Cons
- Customer support needs work
- The affiliate marketplace is too small
11. Sociabble - Best for internal and external advocacy integration
Sociabble is an employee advocacy tool that helps marketing departments integrate relevant external content with internal ambassadors and social selling campaigns.
Why I picked Sociabble: The platform excels in integrating internal and external advocacy efforts to create effective campaigns. Sociabble provides a platform where your employees can engage in advocacy programs while connecting with external brand advocates. This holistic approach helps your brand encourage advocacy from internal and external stakeholders, resulting in a comprehensive, unified advocacy strategy.
Sociabble Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include data security tools that meet GDPR compliance regulations, protecting corporate offices and remote workers. Sociabble will also provide a customer service management team to help you implement strategies when using the platform.
Integrations include the ability to create custom connections between Sociabble and your current systems using its API.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Easy to use and navigate
- Good for engaging employees
- Responsive support team
Cons
- Content distribution isn’t always accurate
- Limited keywords can be used for posts
12. PostBeyond - Best for content approval workflows
PostBeyond helps marketing teams simplify employee brand advocacy by empowering them to create clear paths for social sharing via content approval workflows.
Why I picked PostBeyond: The platform takes a place on this list because it distinguishes itself by providing content approval workflows for your marketing team. PostBeyong offers a structured process for reviewing and approving advocate-generated content before employees share it, ensuring your branding is consistent and complies with regulations. This is a valuable capability for teams that need a level of control over the content their advocates share while encouraging advocate engagement.
PostBeyond Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include personalized, shareable content feeds for advocates that allow admins to order content from most important to least. The platform also offers real-time analytics and reporting tools to help you measure advocacy impact against your business objectives.
Integrations include connections between PostBeyond and the tools you use most, such as Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, Hubspot Marketing Hub, Mailchimp, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, Okta, OneLogin, Salesforce, Slack, and other software options.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Easy to use
- Motivational leaderboards
Cons
- User interface needs work
- Can be difficult to find content to share
Other Options
There are more brand advocacy platforms available, too many to give a detailed evaluation. However, I added the following list of other options that are worth your time and attention.
- Amplifinity - Best for multi-tiered advocate referral programs
- Campaigned - Best for CRM and marketing automation software integration
- Reputology - Best for multi-location reputation management
- Extole - Best for advocate-generated campaign ideas
Selection Criteria For Brand Advocacy Software
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best brand advocacy software for this article:
Core Functionality
When searching for brand advocacy software, you’ll see a specific commonality between each option that makes them a brand advocacy tool. The following details the core functionality of brand advocacy platforms that act as a foundation for every solution in this article:
- Motivate advocates; brand advocacy software can help encourage employees, vendor suppliers, customers, and other partners to aggressively promote your brand.
- Focus on power advocates; brand advocacy tools can show special attention to top advocates and use their actions to motivate other promoters by sharing their strategies and organizing them into best practices guides.
Key Features
The brand advocacy solution you choose to implement will need to fit your business’s unique needs. To help you meet these needs, I looked for software that offers the following key features:
- Contact Information Management: Communication is essential in any outreach program, and your brand advocacy software can accurately collect and track your advocates’ contact information, allowing you to send immediate follow-up messages.
- Data Collection and Tracking: Brand advocacy software can store collected data in a centralized area or send it back to a CRM, allowing you to easily analyze it and identify what’s working in your campaigns or what needs improvement.
- Participation Incentive Management: You can use your brand advocacy tool to encourage new advocates to join your program using anything from special offers or unique gifts, such as swag or free merch.
- Advocacy Campaign Tracking: Using the best brand advocacy tools can help you get insights into performance, allowing you to optimize when necessary.
- ROI Tracking: Using this feature will help you determine your advocacy program’s effectiveness, helping you learn from ROI metrics and optimize for future campaigns to improve your advocates’ sales, number of brand mentions, or how many people see your organization.
Software Integrations
Brand advocacy software typically works best when connected with other types of platforms and systems to enhance productivity. I look for solutions that can integrate with customer relationship (CRM) systems, survey tools, project and task management platforms, email marketing applications, and financial tracking systems. Connecting these tools with your brand advocacy software facilitates efficient handling of your brand advocacy efforts, such as ambassador communications, event planning and management, fundraising activities, analytics and reporting, and more. Connecting these tools with your brand advocacy solution will enable access to resources in a centralized area while simplifying processes.
Rewards System
The rewards system within your brand advocacy software is a significant capability that you’ll need to consider. Many of your advocates aren’t joining your campaign out of the goodness of their hearts; they’ll typically be in it for your referral rewards. This means they’ll want their rewards to arrive on time, and allowing this process to be handled manually can cause some rewards to be missed. So, I look for brand advocacy software that automates reward systems that adapt on a case-by-case basis, sends without complications, and keeps your advocates happy and enthusiastic.
Engagement Tracking
Other than using typical communication channels, you need to be able to have direct conversations with brand advocates. Sending individual emails is nice personally, but it can waste your time when doing this at scale. I look for brand advocacy tools that enable you to send broadcasts to all advocates simultaneously, in segments, and individually when necessary.
Ease of Use for the Brand Advocated
When deciding what brand advocacy software to implement, choosing a solution that’s easy to use is essential. So, I looked for tools that offer a simple advocate onboarding process that sets expectations to help you maximize results. The platforms also need to allow users to easily track and record likes, views, posts, and more and present them in easily digestible formats. Efficiency when using your brand advocacy platform will allow you to develop new strategies quickly and empower you to see what’s working immediately.
People Also Ask
Brand advocacy software and the benefits it can provide your organization can be challenging to understand, and you might have some questions. To help, I added a section below to answer the most frequently asked questions other people have about brand advocacy software to help you see the value of adding these platforms to your current business tech stack.
How much does brand advocacy software cost?
How do you track brand advocacy?
What are the benefits of brand advocacy software?
Other Social Advocacy Software Reviews
There are many tools that can help you create and manage your brand advocacy campaigns. You can implement any of the following types of advocacy platforms if you’re looking for something more specific that meets your requirements.
- Affiliate Marketing Software
- Brand Management Software
- Marketing CRM Software
- Employee Advocacy Software
- Influencer Marketing Software
- Social Listening Tools
- Customer Advocacy Software
Conclusion
Brand advocacy marketing consists of getting more people talking about your brand. As you may already know, there are many aspects involved when operating a brand advocacy strategy, and advocacy software can help your business grow with audience segmentation, marketing automation, and real-time statistics. Brand advocacy software is an effective tool for increasing brand awareness and customer acquisition via employees, customers, or partners. The process of finding the right brand advocacy platform can appear overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be—all you need to do is use this article to weigh the benefits of several options and identify one that fits your budget.
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