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Ambassador marketing is an effective, measurable and highly profitable strategy to reach your target audience through their peers, in the most authentic, credible and trusted way possible.
For this guide, we partnered with the experts behind Socialladder, an industry leading ambassador marketing solution.
Drawing on their experience with some of the most successful ambassador campaigns, and their technical expertise, this guide covers:
Simply put, an ambassador is anyone who markets a brand, product or service through grassroots, face-to-face or “word of mouth” marketing campaigns, especially on social media.
These can be existing customers or “superusers” who have been identified and invited to join a program, the employees championing a brand, paid influencers and industry experts, or anyone else who is passionate about the brand, its products and its values.
Check out this video by Influencity:
Smart brands incorporate ambassador marketing campaigns into their budget because it’s a win-win strategy!
Ambassadors produce results through communication with others, either publicly or privately. This can include social media, like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, or emails, direct messaging and one-to-one marketing strategies.
Leveraging brand ambassadors for your marketing creates marketing channels are trusted, authentic, credible and highly effective.
Ambassadors spread the word about your brand to a connected, engaged audience that trusts them. With numerous ambassadors, your reach is exponential.
Summary: Who is a Brand Ambassador?
A brand ambassador is any individual who promotes a brand, product, or service to their network of connections, in person or on social media. Brand ambassadors can be customers, fans, influencers, your employees, industry experts or anyone who loves your brand and wants to recommend it to other people.
However, best thing about ambassador marketing is that it is a cost effective approach with a great ROI/ROMI – all it takes is a solid strategy and the help of a great ambassador marketing software solution.
Sold? Let’s jump into the details and learn how to leverage ambassador marketing for your brand:
Broadly, there are two types of brand ambassadors – Influencers and True Fans:
Ambassador marketing is a cost-effective and highly impactful marketing strategy.
It leverages the power of word-of-mouth marketing, referrals and personal recommendations to achieve a level of trust, credibility and desirability that other marketing methods cannot match.
Paid advertising on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube can be highly effective, but they’re lack the level of authenticity, credibility and trust that you get from an ambassador’s recommendation or tacit endorsement.
Leveraging an ambassador’s established reach and network of relationships, allows you to connect with an exponential number of people, in the right target audience, through a trusted and credible channel.
However, according to the experts at Socialladder, a key aspect of successful ambassador marketing is being able to track and measure your results.
This allows you to see what is working best for different ambassador segments, and different locations.
You can then adapt your strategy accordingly and see the ROI/ROMI for each assigned task or activity.
It is also a cost-effective marketing channel – you only pay for concrete, measurable actions or outcomes, which cuts down your marketing spend and ensures that you’re paying for results!
Payment is often in the form of free merchandise or access to services you offer, which further cuts down your marketing spend.
Summary: Benefits of Ambassador Marketing
The benefits of ambassador marketing are huge. Maximizing those benefits comes down to having a solid strategy, that is best suited to your business and your brand.
Let’s look at some of the strategies you can use:
There are many ambassador marketing strategies, which can broadly be categorized into three main types:
Ambassadors on social media share content relating to a brand on their various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
In many cases, they are remunerated with product bundles and free samples.
They may also be paid to post pictures or videos, like an Instagram reels, TikToks or YouTube videos featuring the brand they’re promoting.
Online review sites are extremely useful platforms and participants in your program can review your business on those sites.
If you want to improve your reviews online, all you need to do is enlist the help of your ambassadors and generate unique, authentic, reviews from real people.
You can in return, pay them per review or send them gifts.
The emergence of affiliate and referral software has made it easier than ever to manage and scale your ambassador programs.
With these tracking programs, you can track the activity of each ambassador, their value added to your brand and incentivize them appropriately.
However, the distribution channel doesn’t really matter, as long as you can track the results, measure the ROI, and reward them according to their contributions.
Much like affiliate and referral programs, a brand ambassador program is a formalized program designed to recruit and manage ambassadors to promote a brand.
Promotional activities are performed in exchange for incentives in the form of a commission on sales generated, a flat fee per action taken (like sign-ups or clicks), free products/services, or exclusive access to other benefits.
Broadly, there are four types, including affiliate marketers, informal brand ambassadors, college ambassadors, and requirements-driven influencers.
This involves a partnership between a brand and some individuals, usually influencers or bloggers.
These individuals function as affiliate marketers.
This means that they promote a brand and in exchange, get a commission whenever a purchase is made through their promotion.
Commissions can also be paid for any desired action taken, including things like sign-ups or website visits.
This type program is a win-win for both sides as both the brand and affiliate marketer profit from the purchases.
Pura Vida Bracelets is a great example of a successful program of this type:
This is a partnership between a business and college students, who are recruited to leverage their internal connections to raise brand awareness and increase sales.
Other student-focused marketing strategies that fall within this type of program include branded sporting outfits, hosting on-campus events, handing out product samples, putting up posters or coming up with ingenious ways to promote the brand, such as interactive TikTok challenges.
These programs are ideal for brands whose target consumers fall within the college or university demography.
Brands that have leveraged the promotional power of students include Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Victoria’s Secret.
Referral programs are a more informal type of program as they’re often is less structured.
Anyone who loves your brand or demonstrates customer loyalty can join as an ambassador and be given a unique link to share with their connections and earn a commission or benefit when someone they have referred uses their link to connect with the brand.
All they need to do is spread the word about the brand to friends and families and earn benefits when their efforts result in new business for the brand.
Participants in a requirement-driven program must complete certain actions within a specific time frame.
This is an economical approach to brand building since the company only gives out free products or stipends to ambassadors, who must achieve the requirements in order to earn them.
Most of the time, requirement-driven brand ambassadors are influencers with high content engagement rates and some experience in influencer marketing.
Summary: 4 Types of Brand Ambassador Programs
Before you invest in this kind of marketing campaign it is important to make sure that your website or online store is optimized for conversions. Conduct an audit to make sure the path to purchase is clear and fast!
Look at things like:
Do you want to change a brand or product perception in the market, or do you want to drive high quality leads to your e-commerce store?
It’s important to create a sound strategy that aligns with your business objectives and clearly defines how ambassadors can help you achieve them. It is also important to define the key performance indicators (KPIs) you will use to measure progress.
This choice will depend on your objectives, budget, timing and in-house resources. Pick the model that best suits your immediate needs but also consider how it will scale as your business grows.
Here’s where the fun starts! It’s time to start identifying your truly influential customers and advocates. There are a number of ways to find them:
Once you’ve created a few lists of potential ambassadors, review each one to pull together the best of the best.
Consider the following:
If they’re an influencer, there are tools you can use to help you assess their track record and successful past campaigns.
Your program participants need to know what’s in it for them. Decide on the kind of remuneration you will offer and how you will structure your rewards system.
This can be in the form of free products, early access to exclusive offers, monetary payments, referral bonuses etc.
Once you have your shortlist, it’s time to engage with them. You can connect with them using any channel available, such as sending personalized email inviting them to join your program or reaching out directly on their social media platforms.
Before you implement your ambassador marketing strategy, make sure all your analytics and tracking codes or pixels are in place right from the beginning.
Also outline which metrics you will be tracking such as Reach, Engagement rate, clicks, purchases etc.
Empower your program participants with as many resources as possible.
Here are some quick and easy ways to do so:
There will come a time when your efforts require the use of a tool or platform. Doing things manually is quite time-consuming, consider using an Affiliate Management Software or an Influencer Relationship Marketing tool to help manage and scale your program.
Why do you need a good tool for your program?
Some of the biggest challenges faced by marketers are related to how time-consuming the process of identifying, managing, and processing influencer campaigns can be:
According to industry experts, a great ambassador marketing tool will offer a comprehensive suite of features, that allow you to manage your ambassador program from end to end.
When you’re evaluating different tools, look out for the following key features:
These key features are the foundation your program needs to be successful.
There are many great tools available to choose from and we recommend looking into each one to compare your options and find the best fit for your business, the size of your program and your industry niche.
Ambassador marketing is a type of referral marketing strategy, used by a brand to market themselves through a credible person, such as a loyal customer or “superuser.” An ambassador will typically use marketing channels, such as social media and online reviews to make promotions. This marketing approach can lead to many new business opportunities. Read our full guide on how to successfully implement an ambassador marketing program.
A brand ambassador is someone who represents a brand, product or service to the public and is used primarily as the “face of the brand.” There are usually two types of ambassadors: either an influencer or a true fan. Discover how to find suitable ambassadors for your program and see how a successful ambassador program can bring great rewards to your business or brand.
Start by conducting a full digital audit and health check of your online customer experience and see if there are any glitches needing your attention. Then begin by setting your unique goals and objectives, related to your brand ambassador program. Want to see our full guideline on how to set up a successful ambassador marketing program? Well go on ahead and check out our article.
Trying to find a suitable ambassador marketing software can be very frustrating. No need to look further! These are some of the top ambassador software available to you: Ambassador, Refersion, LeadDyno and Viral Loops. Check out our post for the complete list and see how to successfully implement an ambassador marketing program.
Adam Erhart: How to Build Brand Ambassadors – The Modern Marketing Show (Ep 3)
Robert Allen: Creating a Successful Brand Ambassador Program
Wikipedia: Brand Ambassador
Alicia Thomas: Campus Rep Jobs: What They Are & How to Get One
Brittni Wright: Brand Ambassador Marketing Strategy: Is it Worth It?
Cameron Brain: The Brand Ambassador: Who Are They?
CrewFire: The Ultimate Guide To Brand Ambassador Marketing
Mercy Rop: The Data-Driven Marketer
Nicholas Kinports: What is Brand Ambassador Marketing in 2017?
Tricia Hussung: 5 Best Brand Ambassador Programs
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