• by Nina Lentini , August 14, 2007

Brand marketers face a conundrum. They know there are scads of consumers online talking about their products, but much of the commentary is merely noise. What they're looking for are the consumers who are real advocates for their brands, even though these types rarely blog.

Now, JupiterResearch has published a report that gives social marketers pointers on how to reach that influential second group.

"Brand Advocates: Creating Rewarding Relationships" suggests marketers give brand advocates--those consumers who spend a lot of time online researching information about products--exclusive information such as product preview and entree into special online groups or microsites.

"If you give them these kinds of things, then when a neighbor or a co-worker asks their opinion, they're likely to spread the news by word of mouth," says JupiterResearch analyst Emily Riley. "It's a smaller circle, offline, but extremely influential."

Riley says marketers want to take advantage of the changes in online behavior, but don't want to get caught up in time-wasting chatter. "The 'newly influential' are those who are enabled and empowered [by social media]. They blog, but they're not product experts. They're mostly spreading information that already exists."

Influential brand advocates, on the other hand, are more likely to consume content than to generate it, preferring mainstream rather than social media when gathering information.

Riley cites the Kraft Foods recipe Web site as an example of a successful approach. "These are people who like to cook," she says of the site's visitors. "They can save recipes to a recipe box, for example. It's a richer experience than the consumer who has a coupon in her hand."

How do marketers find such brand advocates? Riley says marketers can survey consumers through Web sites or hire a company to do so.