Brand ambassadors aren’t exactly a new idea in the marketing world, but they’re a criminally underutilised resource for most marketing departments. The public trusts earned information, like recommendations from their friends, word of mouth, and testimonials from key influencers more than they trust any other kind of marketing. Using passionate, involved voices speaking on behalf of your business taps into this trust.

Brand ambassadors don’t just understand and appreciate your company, they have a personal investment in it. Whether it’s because your company went the extra mile for them or because of your product quality, they’re more than just fans of your company, they’re invested advocates for what you do.

Making sure your brand ambassadors get results requires you to get your sourcing, incentivising, and communication right. We’ve laid out some of the steps you need to take here:

What a great brand ambassador looks like:

A smaller group of influencers matching the profile you’re looking for is better than 200 with only a passing ability to advocate for your brand. Using your existing market research, put together a profile of the kind of person ideal to speak on your brand’s behalf and seek those people out.

The intricate details will vary depending on what your business needs most, but there are some general characteristics great social influencers will share.

• Lifestyle: Brand ambassadors need to live the values of your brand as well as reflecting the lifestyles of the people you’re trying to influence.
• Existing social media presences: Not only is a robust social presence evidence of influence, you’re gaining access to an existing network instead of trying to build one from scratch.
• Leadership skills: To change other people’s buying habits and sentiment, a successful ambassador needs to have a natural disposition to leadership.
• Innate relationship building: Ambassadors have to be able to forge empathetic relationships with your market to succeed.
• Intimate brand knowledge: If a potential ambassador can’t demonstrate knowledge of your products or services, they can’t reproduce that information convincingly for the people they’re trying to speak to.

How to find brand ambassadors:

Social media

As an aside, if you’re not already searching social media to find out what’s being said about your company, you should be. It not only helps to gauge public sentiment towards your company but finds out who’s doing the most talking about your company.

With the prevalence of social media, the most active advocates for your brand are likely already talking about you through their social media outlets. Seek them out and recruit their passion.

Inside your own company

No one is better placed to understand what your brand is about than the people working with it every day, and among your staff you’re likely to find a couple of super-fans with the most robust knowledge enthusiastic about living the values of your business.

Other sources

Your customer service teams might be able to provide insight on particularly positive interactions alongside surveys, questionnaires or emails to source potential ambassadors. You could also lean on particularly effusive reviews from consumers on sites like Trustpilot, Yelp or Amazon.

How to get results from brand ambassadors:

Incentivise them properly

While you’re ideally tapping into an existing reservoir of enthusiasm, goodwill and gratitude alone isn’t going to create successful ambassadors. You’ll have to not just reward but recognise the efforts your ambassadors go to for your brand. Affiliate schemes with rewards for ambassadors can be effective.

Track their work and milestones, and be sure to reach out with recognition when they hit or exceed their targets, pass longevity milestones or reach a personal goal relating to your company’s work.

What works for your audience will be influenced by what kind of customers your business has, but the general rule is to make sure rewards have a level of exclusivity and uniqueness to them. Even something as difficult to value as a meeting with your CEO could be extremely motivating for an ambassador with a love for your company.

Listen to what they’re saying

Value feedback from your ambassadors, and use it. They’re on the frontline talking about your company to the people you need to influence most, it’s vital you appreciate their feedback.

For your most engaged and influential ambassadors, including them on some of your decision making processes, like designing marketing materials, might form a benefit to your company and an impossible to replicate reward for your ambassadors.

Let go of control

Trying to control what your brand ambassadors say down to a micro-management level is only going to result in stilted content easily detected as an advertisement, not the expression of genuine enthusiasm their audience is looking for.

In summary, figure out what the right ambassadors look and sound like, figure out where they are, enlist their help, then recognise and reward their efforts to keep them on board and effective.

Need help with your brand ambassador programme? Get in touch with one of our brand ambassador specialists at FMI. Contact Us