How to Find Out Your Brand Ambassadors & Incentivize Them Correctly?
- Posted on August 8, 2022 by Robert
- Reading time about 6 minutes
Every business love customers who purchase frequently from them but what about the ones that help to promote and represent their brand to others, they adore them! Customers who just love your brand will go out of their way to provide free marketing for the brand. Identifying these brand lovers or ambassadors can be tough without a well-planned strategy. Let’s find out how a reliable Loyalty Program Platform can help your brand discover, engage and nurture brand ambassadors.
Who are your Brand Ambassadors?
In general, a brand ambassador can be defined as a person who is willing to raise awareness about the company out of sheer loyalty and not for any personal benefits. But the question is how do brand ambassadors achieve this and what can your business expect from brand ambassadors?
There are some main roles that different types of brand ambassadors usually play-
· Brand Representative
These are the ones that are common in many high-profile brands, especially in the fashion & beauty industry where a hired influencer or a renowned celebrity professionally represents the brand. They take part in brand community events, and public appearances; give interviews for media outlets, etc.
· Brand Evangelist
These are the enthusiastic customers who completely align their core values with the brand. They take out their time to engage with the brand on social media and even spread positive word-of-mouth reviews about the brand. Due to their efforts, these customers are very likely to grow into an influencer.
· Brand Lover
As the name says, brand lovers are the ones who love using the company’s products and buy from them repeatedly. Though they are not always in the spotlight, they play a huge role in promoting brands to their families, friends & colleagues.
Tips To Discover & Reward Your Brand Ambassadors
Using an effective Customer Loyalty Software with a brand ambassador program is a must to help your business meet goals & expectations. Having such a program helps in strengthening the relationship of
brand ambassadors with the brand while they get their compensation for their marketing & promotional activities. If you are wondering how a brand ambassador helps a brand grow, then check out the points below to see how they perform-
– Showcase brand-specific content on social media posts
– Boost conversion rate through affiliate marketing links
– Brands can rent items to ambassadors to encourage product discovery
– Raise brand awareness & take part in brand live events /community gatherings
– Build social proof for the brand via reviews & testimonials
Both loyalty programs and brand ambassadors are quite similar as they rely on a reward system to entice & reward the target audience for their certain actions, which help in building a relationship with the brand.
Let’s check out some of the top practices that must be kept in mind to build the right brand ambassador rewards through a loyalty program-
1. Find a Brand Ambassador
If you are planning to run a brand ambassador program, you need to first figure out the potential candidates. For starters, brands can go for an Instagram or hashtag contest where customers upload pictures/videos while using your products to earn a reward. This enables brands to identify eager ones who are likely to become brand ambassadors in near future.
If your business only has a physical presence, you can start arranging community gatherings where organizers and members interact face-to-face with attendees to discover the right ones.
What to avoid-
It is not advisable to try out different things to find the right one. If you have a loyalty program already, you can consider picking a brand ambassador from the top-tier members as they have lots of time & effort to reach the highest tier.
2. Reward Your Brand Ambassador
Once you have found the candidates for your brand ambassador program, you can start planning the incentives to reward them. One of the common reward types is referrals where brand ambassadors share their referral code with their social media friends and receive a payment or profit percentage for every buyer who uses the code.
Another way to make the program more unique and attractive is to use tiers. Brand ambassadors who bring new customers with their referral codes will move up to new tiers and get access to special benefits like early access to exclusive products.
What to avoid-
Boring & complicated loyalty programs will decrease participation rate and engagement, which is why Tiers can be a great option if you are looking for long-term engagement with your brand ambassadors. If your brand influencer doesn’t see value in sharing their referral codes, they won’t do it at all.
3. Engage Your Brand Ambassador
Never miss out on your brand ambassadors in your marketing events, always make sure that you involve them when you plan a customer-facing project. Some of the best ways to engage your customers through your brand ambassadors are through live streaming events and social retail opportunities.
Events like new store openings, in-store anniversaries & other activities enable brands to engage with brand ambassadors and give chance to brand evangelists to mingle with other brand lovers.
What to avoid-
Never allow only your brand ambassadors to be the talking heard showcasing pre-written endorsements, as it will end up feeling inauthentic, damaging your brand image. Instead, make them interact with the community their way to get their feedback and preferences like a gamified survey.
Final Takeaways
As we are now aware of the importance of brand ambassadors in business success, they can be a great help in organically spreading word-of-mouth and increasing customer lifetime value. However, it is not an easy marketing task to find out & maintain your brand ambassadors. One solution is to rely on a renowned loyalty solution provider that offers relevant rewards or incentives to brand ambassadors enabling brands to nurture them.
If you are interested to find out more about such next-gen loyalty programs, connect with the experts of Novus to attain business outcomes effectively by nurturing your influencers and brand ambassadors on time. All you need to do is ask for a demo to see how we can add value to your business that can help you boost customer engagement and incentivize brand ambassadors.