Brand Ambassadors: Everything You Need to Know
Brand ambassadors have an important role to play in the world of influencer marketing.
In an age where digital marketing strategies are some of the most effective tools a company can use to promote itself, it’s worth knowing exactly what techniques you have at your disposal when it comes to online advertising campaigns. Making the most out of social media might seem difficult, but in reality, you can master it in no time.
When it comes to working with influencers online, brand ambassadors can do wonderful things for a company.
In this article, we’ll outline some of the key things you need to know about working with brand ambassadors. Before long, you’ll be entering long, successful partnerships with the best influencers around.
Brand Ambassadors Offer Positive Promotion
These days, when customers are looking for new products and services to invest in, they’re more likely than ever to listen to the opinions of people on social media – particularly influencers. The job of a brand ambassador is simple: give your company a positive recommendation.
A partnership with a brand ambassador can be a fantastic way to bring in new customers.
This is because they get to know your company well and use what they know to advertise it to various different audiences. A partnership is built on a mutual understanding regarding who you’re trying to sell to, and who’s going to listen to the ambassador’s opinion.
Whilst many brand ambassador deals are organised independently, an influencer marketing agency like Wear Cape is run by people who are experts in setting up perfect partnerships between brands and influencers. Empirical knowledge about an influential person’s audience allows marketing experts to pair them up with companies in a way that leads to a fruitful campaign.
A brand ambassador can be seen as a third-party spokesperson for a company.
They are not obligated to work with the brand: they choose to enter the partnership due to their belief in what the company has to offer. This makes for a mutually beneficial working relationship and long-lasting rapport between the company and the ambassador.
Who Can Be a Brand Ambassador?
There are a number of different types of brand ambassadors, and we’re going to tell you more about the most common types. Each has one thing in common: they all have an audience to promote to.
Celebrity Ambassadors
When a brand partners up with a celebrity ambassador, it means they’re going big. Usually, you’ll find that its huge companies who work with movie stars and music legends.
But celebrity can come in all shapes and sizes.
If a person is famous in their field, then they may well be considered a celebrity brand ambassador of sorts. Though the world’s top track cyclist might not be a household name, they’re the ideal celebrity to promote a brand selling their latest range of cycle gear.
When a celebrity becomes the face of a brand, the people who admire them are likely to invest.
These partners can reach a global audience, with the brand being promoted on huge billboards and in press interviews. They are also the most costly of all brand ambassadors, so it’s fair to say that high investment reaps high rewards.
Influencers
Living in a digital age means that this category has a reasonable overlap with the celebrity category. Plenty of today’s biggest influencers can hold their own when it comes to having fame.
However, a key difference between a celebrity brand ambassador and an influencer brand ambassador is the way that they promote.
Where celebrities promote brands by wearing them, turning up at launches, and talking about them in interviews, influencers promote primarily to a digital audience.
They design the content themselves to fit in with their own aesthetic, so it appears on potential customers’ feeds in a more organic way than an ad from a company page.
The captions will say something about the company, and images will show the product or indicate the service – these sponsored posts and paid ads are sent out from the influencer’s own account. This targets their audience directly, encouraging them to take a look at your company and what it has to offer. In this, the principle for choosing an influencer to partnership is much the same as that for choosing a celebrity.
The influencer’s audience has to be people who can reasonably be expected to have an interest in the brand.
Influencers who are offered the role of brand ambassador tend to have a follower count somewhere between 10,000 and 1million. The benefit of working with an influencer is that their content tends to be based around a particular niche, and they already have high digital engagement levels based on the work they’ve put into their online presence.
Micro-Influencers
Perhaps the rarest type of brand ambassador, micro-influencers are not to be scoffed at. They can offer effective promotion due to the close rapport they generally have with their smaller audiences.
An influencer with less than 10,000 followers is considered a micro-influencer.
These ambassadors can promote a brand and encourage sales through a personalized discount code on their page. Their engagement rates are often just as good as their larger influencer counterparts, and if their content relates to your brand’s niche, a partnership with a micro-influencer is worth considering.
One benefit of working with a micro-influencer is that they are less likely to have partnerships with other brands already set up. This means they can work closely and exclusively with you, and often at a more affordable rate than a huge influencer.
Making those with smaller accounts brand ambassadors gives both the company and the influencer the chance to grow together. Partnerships like these will be based on mutual benefit and belief in one another’s success.
What Does Organising a Good Brand Ambassador Campaign Entail?
Working with brand ambassadors is a new and exciting adventure for many businesses. For those who haven’t dipped their toes into the world of influencer marketing before, it can seem overwhelming to start that first campaign. But now that you know what brand ambassadors do, it should be a little easier to get started.
Before anything else, businesses should make a plan. Here’s a basic outline of what tends to happen when setting up a brand ambassador campaign:
Outline Your Goals
The key to success is knowing what you want. By coming up with some actionable aims for your partnership, you can progress towards achieving them.
Maybe your priority is brand awareness, or perhaps it’s new sales. Whatever your goals, you can use them as a guide when it comes to seeking a brand ambassador to work with.
Identify Who You’re Looking For
This part is important. Based on your goals, you need to decide what kind of person you’re looking to partner up with.
If you want to make people aware of your new audiobook service, you might want an influencer who talks about literature online or a well-known author. But if you want more people to come and buy pastries from your new bakery business in a Sydney suburb, the person for you might be a local micro-influencer.
Once you know what you’re looking for, get out there and find your partner.
An influencer marketing agency will be able to help massively at this stage. With countless clients on their books waiting to promote brands, a company like Wear Cape will have someone who’s perfect for you.
Embark On a Successful Partnership
Now that you’ve found a brand ambassador and agreed on terms, it’s time to start working together. This can involve a number of things depending on the agreement you enter:
- Making a Campaign Plan
- Discussing Goals
- Scheduling Content
- Co-Creating Media and Captions
- Creating and Shipping Merchandise
Treat these tasks like the creative outlet that they are. Find ways to blend the ambassador’s style and your brand’s image. You can work together to come up with something brilliant.
Monitor the Ongoing Success of Your Campaign
The rest, as they say, is analytics. Once the posts and ads start going out, all you need to do is monitor audience response. This might mean tracking numbers, or it could mean reading comments and examining website traffic.
Whatever your goals are, this is when you check that you’re moving in the right direction.
If not, there might be things you need to do to make your campaign more effective. Try looking at audience trends and seeing what people are engaging with most. You can always tweak your next ambassador posts before they go out and monitor the effect of a new spin on things.
Once you’ve cracked it and those results start flooding in, you can oversee the campaign and do what you need to keep it working at its best.
A brand ambassador partnership can last as long as determined best. Perhaps it will span a few posts, or maybe you’ll decide to pursue the work indefinitely and see where it goes – after all, consistency lies at the heart of every successful influencer marketing campaign. Whichever you choose, your partnership is sure to be a success at this stage.
Benefits of Hiring a Brand Ambassador
There are countless benefits to influencer marketing campaigns and digital promotion. Working with a brand ambassador can do fantastic things for your business. Here are some of the key advantages:
Reaching New People
An ambassador can lead you directly to new potential customers that your own social media accounts simply wouldn’t find. This can do amazing things for your brand awareness and generate new sales.
It can be difficult to find your way into certain niches to advertise without seeming insincere. Having a spokesperson who genuinely believes in your brand solves this problem.
Generating Positive Publicity
As a rule, you’ll be choosing someone with a good reputation to work with. All of the associations people have with the ambassador, and their content will become one with your brand.
This kind of positive association can work wonders for you. Whether it’s being linked with a successful sportsperson or being partnered with a small scale comedian who spends time making others happy, the publicity that comes of your campaign will be positive. Working with those who dedicate their time to building communities and inspiring others can never be a bad thing.
Audiences Trust Those They Follow
People follow the people they follow for a reason. If you’ve picked your brand ambassador wisely, they’ll be someone with a public face and a likeable personality. Their followers will be genuinely invested in what they have to say.
This means their recommendation of your brand will resonate.
Rather than promoting yourself, you’ve got someone on the outside who is willing to vouch for you. Potential customers would undoubtedly rather hear opinions from a fellow consumer than from your own accounts. Having a brand ambassador recommending you will boost people’s willingness to try you out.
Tip: Watch Out For Bad Ambassadors
If you’re not sourcing your partner through an influencer marketing agency, be sure to be very careful with who you choose. Plenty of people will sign up for brand deals thinking it’s easy money.
You don’t want to work with someone who’s clearly insincere.
The content will seem lazy and unplanned, the recommendations won’t be taken seriously, and your investment won’t be worth it. Working with a partner who isn’t committed can actually damage the reputation of your brand, putting people off trying your products.
Don’t let this warning worry you. As long as you follow the advice in this article, you’ll be able to find the ideal brand ambassador for you and soon enough you’ll be experiencing all the benefits of a successful digital marketing campaign firsthand.
Find Your Perfect Brand Ambassador Today
We’ve told you all you need to know about working with brand ambassadors. Now it’s time for you to experience it for yourself.
With so many eager potential partners out there, you can get a good campaign off the ground before you know it.
If you want to see exactly what working with a brand ambassador can do for your business, there’s no need to wait around. Contact Wear Cape today to find out more and meet the ambassador who will propel you towards your goals.
