Advocacy Advertising: 3 Advocacy Advertising Examples

Advocacy advertising uses paid advertisements to promote a cause or interests of a specific group rather than sell a new product or service. The methods and strategies for advocacy advertising are similar to traditional advertising, but nonprofits or political campaigns utilize advocacy advertising to increase awareness for a specific cause or social justice issue instead of selling something.

While advocacy advertising refers to cause-based or social issue ads, advocacy marketing uses customer advocacy to help promote a product or service. By investing in positive customer experiences, companies leverage their consumers to engage in brand advocacy by posting reviews, telling friends about the company, and sharing posts on social media.

Here are a few examples of advocacy groups that leverage this type of advertising and ad campaigns they might create:

1. 1. Nonprofits: Organizations use advocacy campaigns to raise awareness about their cause. For example, a nonprofit that works to recycle plastics may create an ad that shows the broader impact of recycling and how plastics affect the environment when put into landfills. This ad format promotes recycling in general, not the nonprofit specifically, making it advocacy advertising.
2. 2. Public interest groups: Lobbyists or public interest groups may run advocacy ads around a single political issue to get voters out. For example, a group may place a billboard ad around a social issue without directly referencing a political campaign to remind voters of the importance of voting if they have strong feelings about this issue.
3. 3. Social activists: Social advocacy groups often run campaigns to spread awareness about their cause. For instance, a social activist group can run a magazine ad with clear takeaways about real-world public issues and encourage their audiences to take a specific action.

Advocacy marketing strategies utilize customers to help promote products or services. Examples of advocacy marketing campaigns include:

1. 1. Referral programs: Companies can offer incentives to happy customers who share their experiences with friends. These referral-based advocacy programs can increase retention rates for loyal customers, as they get rewards for spreading information about the company’s products or services to new customers.
2. 2. Social media: Make your content easy to share for your target audience and post your content under related hashtags so potential customers can find your content. Incentivize your followers to share your posts with their friends and prompt them to create their own user-generated content (UGC). Share this UGC on your social media marketing channels and use marketing tools to track the impact.
3. 3. Word-of-mouth marketing: If you invest in building a base of loyal customers, they can become brand advocates who share information about your products through word-of-mouth marketing by telling their friends about your product.

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