Why Brand Ambassadors Could Be Your Best Marketing Strategy

What is a brand ambassador?

Brand ambassadors are advocates who promote a brand to people in their online and offline networks. They use various channels, including social media, to boost a brand’s visibility, generate more sales leads and increase sales. Beyond social media, brand ambassadors often participate in events, product launches or marketing campaigns to represent the brand in person.

Brand ambassadors are often confused with social media influencers, who may be celebrities, people with instant name recognition or niche personalities with loyal audiences. While brand ambassadors are a type of influencer marketing — and some influencers can become brand ambassadors — these individuals don’t have to be famous. 

Brand ambassadors are typically customers, influencers or employees: 

• Customers: Your best customers can make excellent brand ambassadors. These individuals typically are high-volume, loyal customers who love your company and products. Their enthusiasm allows them to share authentic experiences that help create trust and credibility. 
• Influencers: Popular social media influencers with significant followings can be effective brand ambassadors, especially if they already use and enjoy your products or services. When influencers become ambassadors, they may receive compensation, free products or other perks.
• Employees: Employees are particularly effective brand ambassadors with in-depth knowledge of a company and its products. Loyal employees who truly believe in your company’s mission and values will gladly spread the word about your brand online and offline. Companies often provide training and resources to help employees effectively represent the brand.

Benefits of brand ambassadors for marketing

A brand ambassador program can bring several compelling benefits to enhance your organization’s marketing plan.

1. Brand ambassadors bring credibility to your business.

Recommendations and content disseminated by brand ambassadors have a distinct advantage over company-generated marketing because they’re trusted to a much higher degree. According to Tint, 93 percent of marketers agree that consumers are more likely to trust content created by other consumers than content produced by brands themselves. Additionally, Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows that 71 percent of consumers prioritize trust when engaging with brands, with many viewing brands that collaborate with consumers as more authentic.

In other words, consumers are more likely to trust content shared by “normal people” over content businesses share. No one is forcing brand advocates to say good things about your products and services. They do it because they are passionate about your brand and that authenticity shines through.

2. Brand ambassadors have first-hand knowledge of your products.

When a brand ambassador talks about your product, it’s more than theoretical. Customer brand ambassadors have direct experience using your product. They can share their personal knowledge and explain how your offering solved a specific problem for them. Similarly, employee brand ambassadors know how a product is made and understand how consumers interact with it. Potential customers recognize that employees wouldn’t enthusiastically endorse a low-quality product or something users didn’t enjoy. 

3. Brand ambassadors are viewed as experts.

Brand ambassadors are not casual or first-time product users. They likely have extensive experience with your current and past products as well as competitors’ offerings. They can give potential customers a comprehensive view of how your product compares to alternatives and other iterations. Consumers respect their knowledge, making the brand ambassador’s recommendation credible and valuable. This expertise can also save potential customers time they would otherwise spend researching.

Why do employees make great brand ambassadors?

While customer brand ambassadors and influencers are valuable allies, many businesses overlook the potential of employee brand ambassadors. When your company has a fantastic work environment to go along with its excellent products and services, your employees can become a powerful source of advocacy, eager to amplify your efforts and boost digital marketing return on investment.

Here are three reasons why employees make great brand ambassadors. 

1. Employee brand ambassadors increase social reach.

The most obvious benefit of employee brand ambassadors — also known as employee advocacy — is boosting your company’s social reach. Research from ReferralCandy shows that 88 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends, family and colleagues over other forms of marketing.

Your employees’ word-of-mouth recommendations online and offline will resonate powerfully with their friends, family and followers and their genuine enthusiasm will help instill confidence in your company. 

Whether you have 10, 100 or 1,000 employees, you’ll have additional voices advocating for your company, sharing content and posting jobs and organically extending and amplifying your other marketing efforts.

2. Employee brand ambassadors boost leads and lead quality.

According to LinkedIn’s employee advocacy guide, employees’ follower bases are 10 times larger than their company’s. When employees share a post, it’s considered three times more authentic — and sees click-through rates twice as high — than if the company shared the same content. While only about 3 percent of employees share content about their companies, the content they share increases engagement by 30 percent. 

Further, socially engaged companies are 57 percent more likely to see an increase in sales leads and sales teams are more likely to convert leads successfully gathered via employee brand advocates. 

Employee ambassadors are a valuable way to reach wider audiences while increasing lead quantity and quality. When employees promote your product, their familiarity and knowledge enhance their credibility. Additionally, enthusiastic, engaged employees signal a happy workplace and a business that treats its employees well, boosting the company’s reputation, respect and trust. 

3. Employee ambassadors reduce paid advertising spend.

Employee ambassadors are much less expensive than traditional paid advertising channels like Google Ads and Instagram advertising. While many other marketing and advertising channels are worthwhile, employee advocates can reduce your overall advertising spend while allowing you to reach warmer leads who are already familiar with your brand. 

Brand ambassadors promote trust and have a far greater reach than many traditional advertising outlets. While you shouldn’t abandon your other advertising efforts, employee brand ambassadors allow you to focus less on those channels and save money. Paid advertising can complement your brand ambassadors’ reach rather than being the star of the show.

How to start working with brand ambassadors

When you’re ready to start a brand ambassador program with employees, customers, influencers and other stakeholders, follow these steps: 

1. Decide on your brand ambassador program’s goals: Most brand ambassador programs focus on brand awareness. If brand awareness is your goal, you should evaluate your program’s success by tracking mentions, hashtag use and follower growth. If your goal is to increase sales, you can track success via specialized links or coupon codes. Other goals may include gaining contest entries or getting people to subscribe to your blog or newsletter. 
2. Determine a way to reward ambassadors: While a brand ambassador program is a low-cost strategy, your ambassadors would appreciate some reward, so decide ahead of time what that reward will be. Employee ambassadors may appreciate creative perks like vacation days and bonuses. Other ambassadors may enjoy purchase discounts and access to exclusive content. Everyone will welcome rewards like recognition, event access, parties and more. 
3. Create brand ambassador guidelines and policies: Guidance will foster more consistent and higher-quality promotions from your brand ambassadors. Don’t micromanage them. Instead, prepare hashtags and tell them about the products and events you want to promote. Give them timelines and access to a password-protected web page where they can download product pictures, logos, video content and other media for their posts. Let them know what isn’t acceptable, such as foul language, trashing competitive products, dishonesty and more.
4. Identify potential brand ambassadors among your employees: Find happy, engaged employees to serve as possible brand ambassadors. Potential brand ambassadors should also use and enjoy your products or services. To increase the pool of potential brand ambassadors, give employees free product samples and future discounts. For example, some cruise lines give employees a free family cruise to help them become familiar with and enthusiastic about the product. 
5. Look for potential brand ambassadors among your customers: The best customer ambassadors are usually long-time customers who love your products and engage with the company already. Ideally, they’re active on social media with excellent follower counts and have mentioned the company favorably in previous posts. 
6. Invite people to be brand ambassadors: Once you’ve narrowed your list of potential ambassadors, invite them to join the program. Explain the program, what their duties are and how you’ll reward them. Enroll those who accept and start following their social media accounts. 
7. Communicate with your ambassadors: Once your brand ambassador program begins, communicate regularly with your ambassadors. Gather their ideas and any follower feedback. Reiterate your expectations and time frames and recognize those who are doing well. Repost some of your ambassadors’ posts on your company social accounts.
8. Track your progress: Track your results to determine your program’s effectiveness. Reserve unique hashtags and links for the ambassador program to track results more easily. Look at your website traffic sources to see if there’s an uptick from specific social media platforms. Monitor each ambassador’s social media accounts to see mentions, shares and other actions. If you notice a successful contest or promotion, create similar offerings. Adjust or discontinue efforts that don’t get much traction. 

Adding brand ambassadors to your marketing strategy

Brand ambassadors are a valuable addition to your marketing strategy. As social media’s power grows stronger, it makes sense to encourage the people who value your brand to drive crucial conversations online. Your brand ambassadors can boost your bottom line while also improving social recruiting, brand searches and organic public relations.