Here’s a complete guide to brand ambassador marketing. People are smarter than ever—they prefer word-of-mouth or friend advice over ads. Nielsen’s latest report reveals that 92% of people trust brand recommendations by common people. Likewise, 80% of Asian social media users have been found to make a purchase following their favorite influencer’s recommendations.
This is the power of brand ambassador marketing. Yet, before deploying brand ambassadors for your marketing campaign, you must learn the ABC of brand ambassador marketing and the most effective strategy. Today, we are here with a complete guide to brand ambassador marketing. So, let’s dive in!
What is Brand Ambassador Marketing?
Brand ambassador marketing is a strategic approach where a brand partners with individuals (influencers, customers, or your company employees) who are passionate about the brand and can promote it to a target audience.
Brands choose their ambassadors with authentic fans. These ambassadors create content like photos, videos, and reviews to connect with your target audience genuinely. This builds trust and boosts brand awareness.
Brand ambassadors are your own team. Unlike influencer marketing, brand ambassadors need to only partner with your brand without pairing with any of your competitors. This exclusiveness lets them create an air of your brand’s authenticity.
Let’s take a few examples of what brand ambassador marketing is:
What happens when you listen to an honest movie reviewer praising a film on the top of mountains? If you’re a movie fan, this is likely the next film you’ll love watching. But do you know, maybe the filmmakers have requested or hired that reviewer to analyze their work and tell people about it? That’s called ambassador marketing.
The same goes when you recommend your friends the comfiest and most durable shoes, and they also tend to buy them. Here, you’re an informal brand ambassador of that shoe brand.
This is all what we call brand ambassador marketing.
Why Opt for Brand Ambassador Marketing?
Indeed, past years’ reports and stats tell us more exciting success stories of brand ambassador marketing success. But why should you choose brand ambassador marketing to promote your product?
Does it really have such a great potential to drive conversion?
Yes, below is a breakdown of the benefits of brand ambassador marketing:
More Targeted Reach
Traditional ads can be expensive as they target a massive audience, yet they miss the mark by reaching the wrong audience. In contrast, brand ambassador marketing lets you target people who are already interested in your brand precisely with the help of social influencers. Resultantly, this targeted approach gets you more conversions, leading to overall business success.
Better Engagement
The content shared by loyal brand fans, whether social media influencers or company employees, is more impactful. LinkedIn’s employee advocacy guide shows that company employees have 10X reach than the brand itself. It doesn’t end here. The content shared by company employees has been found to have 30% more engagement, leading to better ROI. The reason is trust that they dedicatedly build—so, can your social influencers do it?
Get Seen by More People
People trust their friends more than ads, according to a Nielsen study. Brand ambassadors act as trusted friends for their followers. By partnering with them, you tap into that existing trust and spread brand awareness organically.
Boost Your Credibility
Influencers who genuinely love your product and have the trust of their followers can convince their fans to buy it, too. Their authentic voice makes your product relatable and builds trust in your brand.
Create a Buzz and Keep Fans Engaged
Studies show that user-generated content (like photos and videos from your ambassadors) is more engaging than traditional ads! It gets more likes, comments and shares. This is because when ambassadors share their real-life experiences with your product, it builds trust, sparks conversations, and attracts potential customers. These engaged fans, when converted into loyal customers, keep spreading the word organically—the created impact is lasting.
Get Creative Content (for Free!)
Creating ads takes time and effort; also, they’re monotonous. In comparison, brand ambassadors can work as your most creative content-creation machines. They’ll create fresh and unique content for you by showcasing your product in real-life situations. This saves you resources and makes the content appear more authentic as it comes from a trusted source.
More Cost Effective
Brand ambassador marketing is cheaper than traditional advertising for a few reasons. First, you reach a wider but distinct audience by leveraging your ambassadors’ existing followers. Second, ambassadors create their own content—this saves your production costs. Finally, brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth marketing are more sustainable than short-term ad campaigns.
So, brand ambassador marketing can be a powerful tool for growing your business. Its targeted reach, engaged audience, and cost-effectiveness make it ideal for any business.
A Complete Guide to Brand Ambassador Marketing
You can start with brand ambassador marketing by building a team of brand ambassadors and managing them!
Here’s a step-by-step roadmap to guide you:
Step 1: Know your Core Business Values
The secret to creating a winning brand ambassador program lies in picking the right people. Why? MBLM Study shows that 60% of people connect with brands they believe in. So, if you’re vegan, find vegan brand ambassadors! You can do it by reflecting on:
- What are your business values and mission?
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What makes your product special and worth recommending?
Finally, select people who share similar beliefs with you.
Step 2: Identify your Ideal Ambassador that Aligns with your Values
The perfect ambassador isn’t just one with a massive following, but it can be any micro or nano influencers who:
- Share values and interest in your brand;
- Have an organic fan base on their social media or local community;
- Have genuine followers who engage with their content creator most (their comment sections can give a hint);
- Love your brand;
- Have some content creation skills like photography or videography.
The key to finding your ideal brand ambassador is careful research of their reputation, followers’ behavior, and content quality.
Step 3: Build Your Team of Brand Ambassadors
After finding the right brand ambassadors, the next step is to recruit them to build a team. For this purpose:
- Use open application forms;
- Target social media followers of your brand who have a good fanbase;
- Use customer loyalty programs to hire your existing loyal customers.
Step 4: Build a Strong Program Through Training and Setting Clear Goals
Once you’ve found your ambassadors, it’s time to educate them about your brand so that they can resonate with your business. You need to build a strong foundation for your program. To onboard them:
- Give them a warm welcome!
- Teach them all about your brand: what you do and what you aim to achieve.
- Let them know what you expect from them.
- Give them what they need: product info, brand guidelines, and examples of what kind of content you want (photos, videos, etc.).
- Explain how you’ll measure success (likes, mentions, website visits).
- Train them on your products and create great content.
This will set them up for success and make sure everyone’s working together.
Step 5: Empower Your Ambassadors for Success
Now, when everything is at the execution stage, ensure that your brand ambassadors promote your brand with motivation. Here’s how you can keep your team motivated:
- Talk openly: Train them on new stuff and listen to their ideas. This makes them feel like part of the team.
- Give them the tools: logos, pictures, tutorials – anything to aid in the easy creation of excellent content.
- Reward them: Offer discounts so they can try your products and promote them with confidence.
The happier your ambassadors, the better your campaign does!
Step 6: Measure and Track Results
Finally, track the results to assess the effectiveness of your program and improve it! For this purpose, track:
- How many people talk about your brand on social media?
- How many people like or comment on your ambassador’s posts?
- And how much website traffic comes from those posts?
You can use tools to analyze your brand ambassador campaign performance on social media and other marketing platforms. Some tools also allow you to guide and manage your brand ambassadors. By checking this data, you can improve your plan and get the most out of it.
A Complete Guide to Brand Ambassador Marketing: The Final Verdict
Brand ambassador marketing, more than an ordinary “marketing” strategy, is the actual way to have a precise reach, build trust, and drive conversions, which translates into your business’s overall and long-term success.
Following the strategy we shared in this guide, you can start with brand ambassador marketing.
Do you want to save time on manual training, communication, and tracking KPIs? Get started today with our Brand Ambassador APP!
