If your company is doing well, you should have brand ambassadors already. These are the people who use your product or service, are knowledgeable about how it works and share their enthusiasm with others. It is a sure sign that your brand is on the right track to build an ambassador program.
However, as enthusiastic as they might be, adopting them in an official brand ambassador program is only going to make them more productive for your company. In doing so, you can give them the right knowledge to make sure they know what to promote and when.
Importantly you need to give them both the right support and the right incentive. What these are is up to your brand to decide. With Social&Loyal we provide the information to ensure your decision leads to the best brand ambassador program for your needs.
Steps to build the best Ambassador Program
1. Set Your Ambassador Goals
You may only be dipping your toe into the brand ambassador pool, but you need to know what you are capable of. Be bold in aiming for as much new custom as possible, but stay cautious enough not to dive in headfirst.
The best way to know which goals to set is to do your research. Having a customer loyalty program which has analytic functions to check your demographics is a must. If you are in a slump and need a rise, you can see what a reasonable goal is going to be. If you are slowly getting there, you might be able to raise your hopes a little higher.
A brand ambassador program is not a referral program, nor is it technically affiliate marketing. However, the end goal is very similar: get custom. Being specific will get you there faster. Do you want to increase your reach on social media? Do you want to sell more of a specific product? Do you want to tap in to a particular market?
Answering these questions and considering your options will be the first step in creating the best brand ambassador program for your company.
2. Find Your Ambassadors
Once you have the right goals set down, you need to find the right ambassadors to make sure you reach them. Doing this will also involve your customer loyalty platform.
An effective social media strategy should be included in your customer loyalty platform, ideally one which brings all your networks into the one channel. Use this platform to search related keywords and hashtags to your brand. Find ambassadors whose own personal brand fits well with yours.
Beyond social media, you can also use your own workforce to make suggestions of who can be the best ambassadors for you. Your staff will have their own individual networks and contacts with a personalized way to attract interest. Use all resources available to you.
3. Make the Program Exclusive
Once you find your brand ambassadors, both those who are already into your brand and those who are interested in more, you have to sell it to them before they can sell you to others. This means making it worth their while.
Find out the interests of your brand ambassadors and see what your brand can use to make them feel special. It needs to be something exclusive to the program, so not part of your customer loyalty program or referral program prizes. If you have a tiered customer loyalty program, you can happily make brand ambassador a top tier position.
4. Structure the Roll Out
When you have your goals established, your ambassadors prepped and your promotion ready to go, structure the roll out. This is similar to how you would with any promotion, but you need to make sure you don’t go too far too soon.
Potential new customers might not listen if a bunch of people on social media just happen to be talking about your brand and all saying the same things at the same time. You can do this simply by providing information to certain ambassadors at different stages. You can even use data analytics from the first part of the roll out to inform the second. This way you can adapt to the responses you receive as well as continue further with new ambassadors.
5. Set Parameters
You want to provide the information to your ambassadors and let them choose how they disseminate it. As long as you are getting the word out there, your brand ambassadors exerting their own creative freedom will be an asset.
However, you will need to set some guidelines. These will depend on your brand. If you have a family image you want to uphold, then you might want to ask that brand ambassadors respect this aspect. It doesn’t mean you need to govern their social media accounts. But, if their promotion of you doesn’t fit in with your brand image, you can make this part of your agreement to discontinue your relationship.
6.Promote Alongside
You don’t want to send your ambassadors out with all of your information on new products and promotions, but ignore other avenues at the same time. Use your own promotions whether through print advertising, social media campaigns, in store promotions or whatever you want to achieve, alongside your ambassadors.
More importantly, promote your ambassadors directly. Show that you care about your customers by retweeting ambassador posts, being generous with likes and lauding them to other social media users.
7. Analyze
Once you have met your first goals in your brand ambassador program (or even if you have some ways to go), you should be checking on your data.
Using your customer loyalty program software, see how sales are affected, how your social media community is responding and how it links to other trends and promotions. Once you do this, you will be better able to see if you need to work on your original goals or take it up to the next level.
8. Diversify Your Ambassadors
Once the best brand ambassador program for your company is on the up and up, it’s time to diversify. Check those stats and see if there are any untapped markets your brand ambassadors have not yet covered. If your brand ambassadors are doing well, they should be bringing in people you wouldn’t even expect to be interested.
Show that your brand is diverse and ready to take on future challenges by making new ambassadors and letting the current ones reap their rewards. The best brand ambassador program is one which never stops growing.
Do you want to know more? Schedule a call with our loyalty experts through this link!
