Many brands are enlisting the help of brand ambassadors to speak about and promote them. They help strengthen their relationships with them and their followers. Ambassadors lend their credibility and unique perspective to influence brand perceptions and purchase intent over time. In return, brands are able to build a community of advocates on social media and in real life. Brand ambassadors have been on the rise over the past few years because of the success companies have had from incorporating them into their marketing plan. Whether you’re interested in bringing on brand ambassadors or you already have them, here are 5 steps to creating a successful brand ambassador campaign.
Step 1: Set brand ambassador program goals and KPIs
A few common goals and KPIs for brand ambassador programs are:
Ambassador Engagement
- KPI: number of brand-to-ambassador interactions or quality of interactions from the brand to ambassadors
- KPI: campaign completion rate, number of ambassadors that completed the given post requirements in any given campaign brief
Volume and Quality of Ambassador Content
- KPI: number of repurposable pieces of content
Purchase Intent
- KPI: increase in purchase consideration among ambassadors’ followers pre- and post-campaign
Step 2: Invite influencers and customers to apply
Invite and vet potential ambassadors based on your criteria. Identify what each of them would bring to the table. Your ambassador should be diverse. Once they’re selected, on-board them to your brand by sharing brand and style guidelines and the marketing campaign calendar. This can be done with a meeting, either in-person or virtually.
To help bring awareness to your program, you can reach out to specific influencers to see if they want to be part of it. Also, you post about it on your company’s social media pages to encourage customers to apply. After this, you can start to cut down the list and figure out who will work best for your brand.
Step 3: Launch brand ambassador program
The best practices for setting up your brand ambassador program is below:
- Brief the ambassadors monthly (or on a different cadence of your preference).
- Provide ambassadors with a choice to create content for that brief.
- If an ambassador does not choose to post, they will not be taken out of the program and will have an opportunity to participate in the following brief.
- If needed, you do have the ability to remove an ambassador from the program.
Step 4: Communication with ambassadors
Because some of your ambassadors may be new, the more communication the better. This will help ensure that all of them are on the same page as you at all times.
- Welcome email with high level expectations and first deadline
- Creative Brief email (this should include examples of the types of content you are expecting on what social media platforms). Any photography/posting tips you can include are very useful for newer content creators
- Reminder Email 1 including the brief for convenience. For a monthly cadence, we recommend sending this mid-month to leave plenty of time for questions
- Reminder Email 2 including the brief for convenience. For a monthly cadence, we recommend sending this 1 week before the post due date
- Reminder Email 3 including the brief for convenience. For a monthly cadence, we recommend sending this 2 days before the post due date
- “Thank you for posting” email including a link to a survey to give feedback on the program
Step 5: Measure success
Once your campaign is over, it’s time for you to measure the success. You need to go back to the goals you set and compare how your numbers have risen. You should compare your final numbers to what you had in the beginning. Along with this, you should send out a post-campaign survey to get feedback from all of your ambassadors.