Be an advocate

Reaction to Session 3 - Personal insights

It was a very interesting session today as I was the only one present in Rockwell class today. Everyone including our Professor were off site or at Sta Rosa campus. After listening in to the 2 presenters and reflecting on my earlier presentation, what is clear is that Digital Marketing is the way of the future. We must move into the Advocate stage.

I always find myself on the Aware stage and Act stage but never advocate. This session made realize that Advocacy marketing is very important.According to SOCXO.com. Advocacy marketing is worth investing because:

• Boost word of mouth

• Creates ROI

• Fuel your sales

• Improve your products and service

• You have the potential

I really believe is that by using social media this can easily strengthen your presence in the marketplace. Bloggers/social media have that knack in promoting their various views on a certain topic.

Today's class made me google and research topics on advocacy marketing for me to understand it better. I came across this particular blog.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2012/06/rush-to-revenue-marketing-innovation/

Lee Odden also showed a very interesting slide on the cycle on awareness to advocacy.

This session made me realize that I have been following the Marketing of the past (AIDA). I should be focus on the 5As and 4Cs now.

When I joined Petron, what i noticed compared to San Miguel employees is the act of volunteerism that they show compared to my old company. There are advocates on education and Lakbay Alalay series. It was only recently that San Miguel came up with its own "MALASAKIT" program which i think they copied from Petron. Nothing beats the original.

Going back to the lessons discussed, I further appreciated the insights of Kotler on how he realizes that after only a few years from releasing Marketing 3.0, he knew that Marketing 4.0 was needed already. My last marketing class including my MARKMA class seemed to still focus on a cross between Marketing 2.0 and Marketing 3.0.

This is why the lessons discussed further intrigued my mind on how my company can advertise our plans and programs at the least cost possible. It is actually free to be advocate but how you can convert that customer to be one is the most difficult part of them all.

Digital Marketing is a game to me. You have to entice the soon to be advocates to be loyal and eventually they will migrate into being promoters of your own brand.

I am excited to learn new strategies from Kotler on how you can promote your company using Brand Awareness as the gate to the customer path on the digital platform