Brand Ambassador
A brand ambassador is a person a company/organisation selects to represent its brand.
A company can have one or more ambassadors to promote its products or services.
Contents
General Information
Brand ambassadors do not need formal qualifications, but they are experts in talking about your brand. Generally, a suitable person to become your brand ambassador can be anyone who loves, uses your products, and actively engage in supporting your vision.
Brand ambassadors will use their own marketing campaigns and strategies when promoting the brand.
The brand ambassador (brand advocate) speaks positively about your brand and helps you create a network of content creators who use, review and post about your services or products on Social Media.
In other words, brand ambassadors push content related to your brand; they present the brand to their (online) social circle (family, friends, followers, subscribers).
Important to know - the benefits of a partnership with a brand ambassador will come if the brand already has a good image.
Why does a business need brand ambassadors?
They are considered the image of the business. By partnering with a brand ambassador, companies can reach potential customers besides those they already have through standard ad campaigns.
Your partnership with your brand ambassador is invaluable, and here is why you need one:
- To increase brand awareness
Markets are becoming more saturated with products and services. In this context, the variety of options gives power to potential customers when buying. Many consumers choose not to follow brands on social media platforms but will pay attention to their social circle - people they follow online.
A well-known fact is that companies use social networking to increase brand awareness, together with enhancing brand loyalty.
Brand ambassadors increase the brand’s effectiveness on social media platforms. Thus, choosing a brand ambassador with an excellent reputation is the path to building customer trust.
Investing in a brand ambassador program will bring positive results.
- Improved social selling
Trust leads to enhanced social selling, a good practice used to help companies reach their sales target (translated into boosting sales). More precisely, social selling uses the company’s social media platforms to connect, communicate, and develop relationships with potential customers.
In this specific matter, brand ambassadors will connect more effortlessly and rapidly with their audience, which means they can ensure customer trust.
- Establish a good reputation
Each brand needs a real face, a real person to represent and share its values.
A brand ambassador is an excellent way of promoting your brand’s services or products. Because they know, appreciate, and use your products, they will become more than a partner; they will advocate for your brand online (by sharing content) and offline (at events and conferences).
Qualities of a brand ambassador
When looking for brand ambassadors, one should remember that no fixed attributes make a good brand ambassador.
Brand ambassador job’s description - what are the main requirements for this position?
- Impeccable image and professionalism
Although they are not employees, brand ambassadors are a part of the company, as they have a significant role in brand awareness.
They will influence how their social media followers (potential customers) perceive your brand. Brand ambassadors will be talking about your products, so they need to be reliable and trustworthy.
- A sense for Marketing
As mentioned before, brand ambassadors do not need formal education or a degree in Marketing. Still, they must understand marketing, appreciate originality and have a sense for good advertising.
- Leadership skills
Brand ambassadors should inspire and lead the way toward good choices. We are all drawn to the charismatic, confident, and positive persons around us, so these are the traits one should look for when choosing a brand ambassador.
- A solid online reputation/social media presence
This should not be a problem if you choose a celebrity as your brand ambassador; celebrities have many subscribers and followers.
Brand ambassadors have an established social media presence. Over the years, they established a strong relationship with their audience, which they can reach through social media platforms, emails, and workshops/webinars.
- Skills to gather feedback and provide resourceful insight
The ability to collect information is a crucial trait of brand ambassadors. They should know how to conduct conversations with customers in order to get feedback about your products. Moreover, based on their own experience with your brand - services or products - they will help you to improve the referral marketing strategy.
Types of brand ambassador
A brand ambassador can be any person who is involved in promoting your brand, as follows:
- Celebrities
- Business partners
- Influencers
- Micro-influencers
- Nano-influencers
- Customers
- Employees
- Contractors
All these persons aforementioned can make it on the list of influencers to follow.
Brand ambassador vs. Influencer
Influencers and brand ambassadors are passionate about content creation and personal branding. Brand ambassadors and influencers share in some shape or form the same objective - to promote your products or services to their audience and potential customers. But a brand ambassador is a long-term partner of your brand, while influencers are partners marketers and brands choose to promote a particular product for a limited time.
Instagram Marketing is free, so your brand needs to increase its social media presence on this platform. But posting on your brand’s social media account (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) is not always enough to attract potential customers. Nevertheless, working with an Instagram influencer is a great choice to spread the word about new products, as they have a strong community of potential customers following their social media account.
Influencer marketing is one of the popular solutions for brand awareness. A partnership with Instagram influencers often includes working with promo codes or commissions on sales.
A brand ambassador signs a collaboration with a brand for a long time compared to an influencer or other brand advocate.
Usually, brand ambassadors are influential persons and considered influencers, even if their main activity is sharing content on one or various Social Media platforms. On the other hand, influencers' objective is to work with more than one brand, although they can build a solid relationship with every single one of those companies.
Regarding which one to choose for your business, you should choose both, if possible. You can build a solid partnership with a particular influencer while closely working with your brand ambassador.
Brand ambassadors vs. Affiliate Marketing Programs - what is the difference between them?
Affiliates and companies have a clear and straightforward partnership. A person is affiliated with a brand to sell its services or products in exchange for commissions.
Affiliate Marketing programs involve recommending products and services by sharing them on social media platforms, blog posts, and websites or mentioning them in a podcast. Each time customers purchase through the affiliate link associated with their recommendation; affiliates earn a commission.
Affiliate programs may be similar to a brand ambassador program when paying ambassadors a commission on sales. However, brand ambassadors may have other benefits (for example, rate fees, product gifting, gift cards, and commission on sales).
The difference between ambassadors and affiliates is that a great brand ambassador is a good content creator concerned with originality when posting on social media accounts and when writing a blog post.
Brand ambassadors have different benefits (for example, rate fees, product gifting, gift cards, and commission on sales).
References
Getambassador, 6 Key Characteristics of A Successful Brand Ambassador / Brand Ambassador Marketing, https://www.getambassador.com/blog/6-key-characteristics-successful-brand-ambassador
Haiilo, Who Are Brand Ambassadors and Why Every Organisation Needs Them, https://haiilo.com/blog/who-are-brand-ambassadors-why-are-they-important/