A brand ambassador is a person you can hire to help increase sales and brand awareness. A brand ambassador‘s job is to represent a particular brand through word-of-mouth marketing. They usually use social media platforms to create content that can increase sales and increase your customer base.
Why Are Brand Ambassadors So Important?
If you are used to traditional marketing, it may seem strange to trust other people to do your marketing for you.
Companies have historically paid a lot of money to have experts create marketing strategies for them.
Building Trust
Traditional marketing is not as effective as it once was. The past few years have shown that people are more likely to trust social media accounts than traditional advertising. In fact, only 1 in 3 people say they trust what they hear from a paid advertisement.
Effective brand ambassadors can drive sales and recruit customers faster than billboards and commercials.
A good brand ambassador is not necessarily whoever has the most social media followers. Of course, an ambassador with a large social media following reaches a wider audience, but engagement and trust are what you are after.
A large following doesn’t always build trust.
An ambassador with a high engagement score is in a perfect position to build trust with your consumers. Someone who shares and interacts with their followers often is seen as a credible source of information.
A brand ambassador’s job is to promote a brand positively. They uphold a company’s reputation and tell potential customers why they believe in the brand.
When brand representatives frequently engage with their followers, they build trust and gain clout with potential consumers.
Long-term Commitment
When you hire ambassadors, you are hiring for the long-term. A brand ambassador is hired to represent your company over time with consistent marketing and social media posts.
Brand Advocates
Ambassadors are people who truly believe in your company and want their friends to enjoy your brand. Most ambassadors start out as customers and request to become brand ambassadors.
This is very different than an influencer who is contacted by your company to promote a product.
Brand ambassadors care about your product and your customers. They are less concerned about marketing their own personal brand and more likely to create content focused on your brand image.
How Brand Ambassadors Grow Brands
Using a brand ambassador program can be an effective marketing strategy for any kind of product. Many popular and successful brands rely solely on social media marketing. User-generated content gets 10x more views than commercially produced content.
The Brand Ambassador Role
For many customer ambassadors, their entire social media focuses on the products or brands they represent. Their entire focus is to produce content that shows consumers why they should use your product
Some brand ambassadors may even attend special events to promote your brands.
Effectiveness of Brand Ambassadors
Nearly 75% of consumers make purchasing decisions based on social media posts.
92% of consumers will trust a person they follow on social media more than a brand that advertises on their page.
User-generated content results in 4x more click-through rates and double the sales of traditional advertising.
People are much more likely to spend money on a brand that comes highly recommended by a friend. Ambassadors provide marketing that is effective and well worth the cost.
Cost of a Brand Ambassador Program
On average, businesses make $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.
There are several options for paying brand ambassadors. You can choose to have your ambassadors be paid hourly, paid directly, or given cash bonuses.
Some brands choose to use employee brand ambassadors and include social media marketing as part of their standard salary.
Many brand ambassador programs do not pay with cash but with free products. This usually works well for ambassadors with smaller social media accounts.
Brand representation through an ambassador can range from a few hundred dollars per year to several thousand dollars per social media post.
How to Find the Right Brand Ambassadors for Your Brand
Define Your Brand
Before you start looking for brand ambassadors. You need to be clear about the image you want for your company. A company’s image is just as important as its product. A brand image should align with your values and desired customers.
Choose Brand Ambassadors Who Fit in With Your Brand
Be careful who you choose to be an ambassador for your product. A brand ambassador definition is someone who represents your company. You need to choose a brand ambassador who aligns with your brand identity.
You want to choose people who fit in with your company culture and will uphold your company’s reputation. Choosing a vocal vegan to represent your hamburger company isn’t wise.
Choose someone whose social media presence matches your brand. Someone with family pictures all over their social media might make a great kids-clothing ambassador. People will trust their veterinarian friend who promotes their favorite dog food.
A good brand ambassador is someone who has some knowledge or expertise in your product. It is unwise to start inviting everyone on social media to be a brand ambassador for your product. Find someone who will showcase your brand and company culture well.
Look at Competitors’ Ambassador Programs
Learn from others’ successes. Looking at what similar companies are doing can help give you ideas to set up your program. Some of the most successful ambassador programs include:
Look at how they design their programs, what type of person they choose as an ambassador, and what type of content their ambassadors share.
Employee Brand Ambassadors
Hopefully, your employees are passionate about your brand and product. This makes them seem like an obvious choice for a brand ambassador.
Your employees know the most about your brand and have an incentive to promote it. You may be able to include brand ambassadors in their job description and include the cost in their standard salary.
Be cautious that your employee ambassadors do not come across as salespeople. Building trust is the most important part of a brand ambassador program.
Customers as Ambassadors
Customers are some of the best brand ambassadors. You can reach out to some of your most loyal customers and ask them to promote your brand online.
Customers will be genuine in their love of your product. They are likely to give honest feedback and may even give you good suggestions for improvement.
Offering product in exchange for promotional materials is a cost-effective way to increase brand awareness.
Celebrity or Influencer Ambassadors
Getting a celebrity or major influencer as a brand ambassador is expensive. To get a high-profile celebrity ambassador, you will probably have to offer some kind of stock in your company or an extraordinarily high salary. The top paid non-celebrity instagram influencer charges up to $23,000 per post.
Paying one time for an endorsement from a celebrity or influencer can bring attention to your brand. Having a celebrity as a long term ambassador who continually promotes your product will help that attention continue.
However, a celebrity might not be the best choice for a brand ambassador. Their testimonials might feel more like paid advertisements and break customer trust.
Examples of Some Great Brand Ambassadors
A great brand ambassador is anyone who is passionate about and often uses your product. Anyone who is active on social media and enjoys your product can be a brand ambassador.
Celebrity brand ambassadors are often highly sought after because they can reach so many people. If you decide to go with a celebrity ambassador, make sure that your products make sense for your ambassador to use.
Sofia Vergara @sofiavergara
Sofia Vergara is known to have gorgeous hair. She often speaks publicly about her beauty routine and is somehow both famous and relatable. This makes her a perfect brand ambassador for Head and Shoulders shampoo.
Maddie Ziegler @maddieziegler
Maddie Ziegler rose to fame during her time on the show Dance Moms. She is athletic and often posts pictures of her workouts on social media.
This knowledge of fitness makes her a good representative for the fitness clothing line, Fabletics.
Jennifer Aniston @jenniferaniston
Vital Proteins, a collagen supplement, hired Jennifer Aniston as their campaign’s face.
Jennifer Aniston is well known for her looks and beauty routine. Anything she promotes as a beauty product is sure to get a lot of attention.
Non-celebrity Ambassadors
Some of the best ambassadors are people who simply love your brand and can’t wait to tell other people about it.
Customers want recommendations from people that they trust. Friends and relatives have a lot of influence over people’s purchasing decisions.
Why Do These People Make Great Brand Ambassadors?
A brand ambassador’s job is to share their honest opinion about a product they use and are familiar with
Celebrity status is not the only thing that matters. The level of community trust and knowledge about a product are just as important.
People use social media for information about politics, advice about relationships, and product recommendations.
Customers have to filter through a lot of opinions and decide which ones to trust. Make sure you choose brand ambassadors who are trustworthy and will represent your company well.
Brand Ambassadors vs Other Influencers
Influencers and brand ambassadors are easily confused with one another. Both use social media marketing to increase brand awareness.
Both are hired to promote products and reach a target audience. However, there are some important differences between the two.
Both can reach potential customers and raise brand awareness, but they do it in different ways.
Influencers
An influencer is someone who has special insight into or authority over a specific subject.
Usually, they are someone who is considered an industry expert. This might be a famous artist, pop culture star, or athlete.
Social media influencers are also important for brand promotion. These influencers are “regular people” with large social media followings.
Influencers usually focus on a specific niche rather than one product.
Categories of Influencers
An influencer will probably do one blog post about a product and move on to the next company.
Influencers use their social media accounts to promote their own personal brand rather than focusing on marketing for a specific brand or company.
- Nano influencer: 1,000-10,000 followers
- Micro-influencer: 10,000-50,000 followers
- Mid-influencer 50,000-500,000 followers
- Mega-influencer: 1 – 5 million followers
- Celebrity influencers: over 5 million followers
Influencers are usually paid per social media post or appearance at special events. If you hire an influencer to promote your brand online, they will generally create one post for a flat fee. An influencer usually charges about $10 per 1,000 social media followers.
Influencers may also accept free products as payment for brand representation.
Some influencers will share promo codes through their social media platforms and receive a commission based on how many times the code is used.
Ambassadors
Unlike influencers, ambassadors become brand representatives. Their main focus is to generate brand awareness for a specific company or product.
They usually form long-term relationships with one or two brands.
A brand ambassador is hired specifically to be a brand advocate. Their job description includes consistently eating promotional materials for one company.
Ambassadors are people who are genuinely excited about a particular product. People usually choose to become brand ambassadors because they have had a positive brand experience and want to share it with others.
Brand ambassadors generally spread the word about a new brand by giving honest feedback and referring friends. Unlike influencers, they commit to a product they love.
Because most brand ambassadors are passionate about a particular brand, they are more likely to share by word-of-mouth marketing offline during their own hours.
Conclusion
Brand ambassador programs might be one of the most effective ways to promote your new brand. An ambassador program that incentivizes referring friends builds credibility for your business.
When you build your brand ambassador program, make sure you find people who match your company image.
Pay close attention to what they share on their social media or blogs and make sure that it aligns with your company goals and values.
While ambassador popularity is important, credibility and trustworthiness will get you a more committed customer base.
People who love your product will share more. Genuine love for a product is obvious in a social media post.
Using a combination of traditional advertising, influencers, and brand ambassador programs will help you meet your goals and generates brand awareness for your company.