Brand advocacy is an essential ingredient contributing to a company’s success. With the right engagement programs in place, it is expected that employees advocate for their company. It only makes sense that the company should in turn be encouraging and positively reinforcing their engaged employees’ brand advocacy efforts. There are various ways to cheerlead a team to a brand advocacy victory, and believe it or not, it doesn’t all involve money. While a simple “thank you” is a great start, a little more can go a long way when it comes to showing employees they’re appreciated. Here are three more ways leaders can continue to encourage their star employee brand advocates.

Honor Top Dogs

Honoring brand advocates with some form of an “Advocate of the Week” program is a great way to encourage advocacy without paying for it. It’s important to shine the spotlight on engaged employees who are bringing the brand to life within the organization. This kind of program would allow a company to recognize an employee with a plaque, a bio in the company newsletter, a “congratulations” email, or recognition on the break room bulletin board. This encourages brand advocates to keep up the good work and also shares concrete examples to inspire other employees to get involved.

Utilize a Leaderboard

Competition is predominant in the workforce. This is why encouraging friendly competition is an effective way to promote and encourage a company’s brand advocates. Maintaining a leaderboard based on employee activity on social media will recognize those who are doing the best with top leaderboard placement. The leaderboard will be visible to all employees and managers, showing which employees are seriously advocating for their brand. This type of gamification principle will not only recognize a business’ star advocates, but also provides engaged employees who may be having some trouble getting results a teacher to monitor. Small companies may only need something as simple as a daily updated whiteboard, whereas larger organizations would benefit from an employee advocacy platform application that tracks data for them. However teams choose to keep score, leaderboards can help a company visualize, recognize, and measure brand advocate successes.

Give to Charity

While performing charitable work can seem as though it is a completely selfless act, it is also good for business and morale. To show appreciation for a fantastic employee brand advocate, a company can allow the honored employee to choose a local charity to which the business will to donate. Studies repeatedly show that performing acts of goodwill is good for the soul, and encouraging employee participation will improve workplace morale, as each person feels they are making a difference in the community. Additionally, charitable giving for businesses has the added benefit of providing networking and marketing opportunities while also increasing the business’ presence in the community.

As outlined above, the rewards businesses dole out may not be extravagant. Appreciating employees in the appropriate ways can be better motivators than monetary rewards. Recognizing employee brand advocates will go a long way in showing employees that they are appreciated, which will make them happy, and in turn, empower them to become constantly-improving brand advocates.