Amp Up Your Small Business with a Brand Ambassador Program

Want your very own squad of cheerleaders hyping up your brand? Check out the world of brand ambassadors, an increasingly popular and effective way to boost the promotion of your small business goods and services as well as your online presence! 

We'll look at the different types of brand ambassadors, dig into the benefits of collaborating with them, and learn how to keep track of your ambassadors' progress to maximize your business gains. Let's go find the perfect brand ambassadors to advocate for you and your brand!

What’s a Brand Ambassador?

Brand ambassadors are individuals who help you connect with your potential customers and fans by showcasing your products and services on their socials. Think of them as an extension of your brand, boosting awareness and promoting your small business in an effective, cost-efficient way. The best brand ambassadors know and use your company’s products or services, align with your brand's approach and values, and know how to share their positive experiences with their followers, essentially “winning over” their fans to become your fans, too!

Unlike traditional, large-scale advertising campaigns, brand ambassador programs let your ambassadors connect with fans and potential customers on a more personal level, which fosters trust, generates interest, and helps build genuine connections. Brand ambassadors are a great way for small businesses and brands to build out their promotional campaigns, as there are several different levels and types of brand ambassadors, each offering their own unique advantages, at price points for all budgets.

Types of Brand Ambassadors

Influencer Ambassadors

Influencers have rapidly become the gold standard for brand ambassadors. Whether you recruit them from Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, partnering with social media influencers who align with your brand lets you tap into a specifically targeted audience and greatly expand your reach. 

Both micro-influencers (with small but highly engaged followings) and mega-influencers (with millions of fans) are on the table here, depending on the size of your budget and how big a campaign you want to do. As long as you seek out influencers whose audience demographics and content mesh with your brand's approach and values, the ambassadorship possibilities here really are limitless.

Customer Ambassadors

Your potential customer ambassadors might already be hyping up your products or services online! Customer ambassadors can be loyal customers who rave about your brand in an organic way, on their own, and finding these brand champions can be a great starting point for your ambassador program. 

Keep an eye out for customers who consistently engage with your social media content, leave glowing reviews, or pop up in search results when you search for your own product/service on socials; many customers would be excited to engage with your brand, and might even agree to creating content for you solely in exchange for free products.

Employee Ambassadors

What people understand your company culture and values firsthand, and have worked with your products or services? Your employees! They're natural brand advocates with insider knowledge, which makes them credible and experienced voices to promote your business. 

Offering employees incentives to share their experiences on social media or participate in customer interactions can be a powerful tool, as your employees already have a genuine interest in your goods and your brand.

Benefits of Brand Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors offer a wide range of benefits for small businesses, helping you achieve your marketing goals at every step of your brand's growth - increasing your cred, authenticity, personality, and expanding your audiences!

Build Credibility

While traditional advertising has its place, people in general are more likely to trust recommendations from "real people." That's where your brand ambassadors come in - by sharing their experiences with your brand in a genuine and appealing way, they help build credibility and that all-important trust in your brand, utilizing their personalities and existing followings to make new customers more receptive to your products or services.

Promote Authenticity

Your brand ambassadors' genuine experiences with your brand help cut through the noise of more classic advertising formats, allowing viewers to easily see how your products or services fit into their lives. This authentic approach also lends itself to creating new organic fans of your brand, who might join in the fun, becoming a grassroots part of your promotional efforts by word of mouth!

Expand Your Audiences

Choosing brand ambassadors who align with your brand is a great tactic, as this opens you up to new target audiences who are already interested in products or services similar to your own. This then allows you to tap into a much larger customer base without having to invest in more pricey commercial marketing campaigns, and does so in a credible, friendly, and convincing way.

Keep Things Fresh

Your brand ambassadors can generate fun, fresh content like reviews, testimonials, and social media posts - everything from simple demos of your products to viral dances highlighting your brand! - saving you time, effort, and resources on content creation. UGC (user-generated content) enhances your brand image even more by putting you right in the thick of the trending socials that millions of people view daily.

Get Personal

Brand ambassadors personalize your brand by adding their own human touch, making your business, products, and services more accessible for everyday viewers. Having active social posts of real people using and enjoying your products is worth its weight in gold, especially when you select brand ambassadors who really vibe with your existing branding and marketing approach.

How to Find Your Brand Ambassadors

All of the above sounds great, right? So let's get into how you can access all of those benefits for your own business and brand! Finding the right brand ambassador is your next step - here's how to get started:

Research Social Media

Recruiting your new brand ambassadors from the socials they'll be posting on is perhaps the most obvious way to conduct your talent search! Look for individuals who are already promoting products, services, or types of brands similar to yours, and who have the type of following that aligns with your target audience. Once you find an influencer or content creator you like, pay close attention to their engagement metrics - if there's genuine interest in their content, they should be generating a substantial amount of likes, comments, and shares from their audience.

Post An Application

Your existing customers and employees are great resources for potential brand ambassadors, and are also readily available for you to reach out to. You can encourage them to apply to become your brand ambassadors by posting a brand ambassadorship application online, outlining your program's expectations, benefits, and the application process. This can bring you brand ambassadors who already know and love your brand!

Collaborate

A great cross-promotion strategy is to partner with other businesses that complement (but aren't in direct competition) with yours, so you can both reach a wider audience. You might co-host a special event featuring brand ambassadors from both companies, or have your respective brand ambassadors help promote a bundle feature products from each of you. This approach exposes your brand to new audiences, offers extra value to potential customers, and introduces you to more influencers who could become ambassadors.

Reach Out

This is where your social media research comes in again - finding content creators or influencers who have already reviewed or mentioned your brand. These creators, who have already started becoming advocates for your products or services, might be interested in a formal brand ambassador partnership, and have loads of potential since they're already familiar with your brand.

The Brand Ambassadors’ Effect

Tracking the results of your brand ambassador program is your next goal, so you can measure their success and keep updating your strategy. Two metrics, in particular, effectively track the effect your brand ambassadors are having on your brand and business: quantitative metrics offer an up-to-date snapshot of how your brand ambassadors are performing, while qualitative insights offer context and a broader overall view of your program and customer interactions. 

By combining both quantitative and qualitative data, you can gain a solid understanding of your brand ambassador program's effectiveness and make adjustments as needed.

Reach

Monitor how far your brand message is traveling locally and globally via your brand ambassadors; track metrics like website traffic sources and social media impressions to get a good grasp on how much reach you're gaining.

Engagement

Keep an eye on the engagement of your ambassadors' posts, including the amount of likes, comments, and shares. These indicate how effectively your message is resonating with your target audience, and how hyped people are getting about your brand!

Traffic and Conversions

Track how many visitors to your site or online store come from brand ambassador promotions and posts, and then how many of those actually convert into paying customers. Using tags or UTM parameters in links shared by your ambassadors will help you track their specific contributions and gains.

Sales

Using discount codes or unique referral links, you can identify sales directly attributed to your brand ambassadors posts. Seeing what kind of posts are most effective for driving sales will help you adjust the different components of your promotional plan, and how you work with your brand ambassadors.

Surveys

Surveys are a great way to get feedback from your target audience regarding brand awareness, the association of your brand with your brand ambassadors, and overall customer sentiment about your products, services, brand, and promo efforts.

Direct Communications

Open communication with your audience is key! Responding to comments and messages on social media helps you understand how brand ambassadors are impacting your brand, and adds yet another level of personality and warmth to your marketing efforts ("Wow, the company owner actually responded to my comment!")

Let Fourthwall Help Amp Up Your Team!

Brand ambassadors are a powerful tool for small businesses to grow their online presence and reach new fans. By partnering with the right influencers and content creators who share your brand values and can authentically connect with your target audience, you can create a successful brand ambassadorship program and enjoy fresh, fun collaborations that have the potential to achieve big results!

Fourthwall can help amp up your brand ambassador team by giving you a place to headquarter your custom website and host your own official merch store where you can easily design your own line of merchandise as well as bringing in your own products; you can even launch your own mobile app through Fourthwall, to promote right alongside your brand ambassadors' socials! Get started on Fourthwall today - and while you’re there be sure to explore Fourthwall's resources on influencer marketing and building a strong brand identity on their Fourthwall blog page!