HD voice provider Ooma knew it might be difficult to compete with larger VoIP providers such as Vonage (News - Alert), which spend tens of millions of dollars on awareness and demand generation.

So the company looked to social media marketing firm Zuberance to level the playing field with an intelligent word of mouth campaign.

Ooma’s flagshop product, the Telo, connects to a broadband connection and allows consumers to make free high-definition calls anywhere in the U.S. using VoIP technology. It includes free caller ID and call-waiting at no charge, too, as well as voicemail that can be accessed through a web browser or through any phone in the house.

Zuberance decided to create an Ooma Advocates program to get the word out about the product.

The results have been dazzling. Ooma enlisted a brand army of 27,194 brand advocates and cut customer acquisition from $154 per customer to $78, according to a case study.

“By energizing our Ooma Advocates, we’re amplifying positive Word of Mouth and cutting customer acquisition costs,” said Ooma’s VP of marketing, James Gutske, in a statement.

This army of self-identified Ooma Advocates represents 63 percent of Ooma customers, according to Zuberance, the highest percentage the firm as seen in the telecommunications products and services space. Of that number, more than 10,000 have been energized to take action in actively promoting Ooma.

For starters, Advocates have written 3,713 reviews in the program’s first year, with an average 4.7 rating out of 5, according to Zuberance. Roughly 34 percent of the Advocates who have written reviews have then published them on Amazon.com (News - Alert), Sears.com, Facebook and Twitter. Ooma also is displaying the reviews on its website.

Advocates also have written 302 stories about Ooma since the program began, with 61 percent of those who have created stories then publishing them on their Facebook (News - Alert) or Twitter feeds.

Further, Advocates have shared 8,354 offers on Facebook, Twitter and by E-Mail, reported Zuberance. It has generated more than 6,305 inbound clicks from the shares, an almost one-to-one influence ratio. Zuberance notes that during a recent Advocate campaign, Ooma had a sales conversion rate of 6.25 percent on offers shared by its Advocates.

Ooma is facilitating the advocate-prospect relationship by connecting prospects with Advocates when they have questions about purchasing an Ooma VoIP system. 2,442 Ooma Advocates have opted in to answer prospects’ questions. More than half of these Advocates have answered one or more questions asked by Ooma prospects..

“We’ve been able to leverage our Advocates to post their honest reviews on Amazon,” Gutske noted in a recent YouTube video. “Overall they are overwhelmingly positive, they have a huge impact on our prospects to leading them to the purchase.”

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