Brand ambassadors can be a great addition to your affiliate program. With a well-functioning affiliate program already active, it’s exceptionally easy to develop a brand ambassador program as well.
If you’re looking to create this type of program in your business, here’s everything you need to know.
What Is a Brand Ambassador?
Simply, a brand ambassador is an individual who advocates for your brand on social media. They may produce significant amounts of content centered around your brand, wear or use products from your brand regularly, and mention your company often. The intent of a brand ambassador is to improve social proof and expose new people to your brand.
What Are the Differences Between a Brand Ambassador, an Influencer, and an Affiliate?
There are three common types of people who reach out to new customers and receive some sort of payment for it. Here’s how you might differentiate between the three.
- Brand Ambassador
A brand ambassador is aligned with your company for the long term. They will usually have some level of exclusivity, meaning they won’t also advertise for other brands within your specific product category. Additionally, it’s common for brand ambassadors to receive free products regularly, whether alongside affiliate commissions or as their main payment.
- Influencer
An influencer is an individual with a large following on social media who promotes your company in some way. Influencers will usually have short-term contracts with a company, often to make a specific number of content pieces about a brand, and will generally be paid a predetermined amount for a campaign, rather than paid on commission or in products.
- Affiliate
An affiliate is an individual who directs new customers to your business through their unique affiliate link or referral code. With that link or code, the affiliate will receive a commission only when a new customer makes a purchase on your website. Affiliates often have less of a close connection to brands than ambassadors or affiliates.
How to Create an Ambassador Program and Discover Your First Ambassadors
Once you already have an affiliate program through Refersion, it’s time to create your ambassador program and discover ambassadors that can help you broadcast your brand.
Much of this process will be internal, as you can use your Refersion affiliate program to create a payment structure for your ambassadors. The difference between your affiliates and your ambassadors will be how you communicate with them and the ways in which you encourage them to distribute your brand image. Creating a brand ambassador program for something like a niche boutique clothing brand will be different from creating a brand ambassador program for something like a grocery store.
There are many ways to find ambassadors for your program. A post-purchase widget , for example, is a great way to turn a customer into an affiliate. You can also go through people who follow your social media accounts to see whether they have a strong following and good interaction, then reach out to individuals you might want to be an ambassador for your brand.
Tips for Maintaining a Strong Ambassador Program
Once you’ve created your ambassador program, it’s important to keep nurturing it. Here are a few top tips that can help you create an ambassador program that helps you reap rewards.
- Maintain Communication With Ambassadors and Potential Ambassadors
Communication is the number-one point of a strong influencer, ambassador, or affiliate program. If you’re not constantly communicating with both ambassadors and people who may eventually become ambassadors, then they’re not going to want to create content for you, and their opinion of your brand may become more negative over time. Instead, maintain communication and get back to your ambassadors when they have questions.
- Accept and Utilize Constructive Criticism
Criticism is an important part of growing as a brand. You should never penalize an ambassador for mentioning a negative component of your product. As a matter of fact, this can make a review look more genuine, actually increasing viewers’ opinion of both the ambassador and your brand. Take the criticism, and do your best to improve your product with it.
- Create Content in Unique Ways
One of the most important things that a brand ambassador has is their personal style of content. As long as it doesn’t blatantly cross your brand’s style guidelines, you should give your ambassadors creative freedom in the way they create content promoting your brand. This can help their content look even more genuine, recruiting significantly more customers to your content.
- Track Your Success Diligently
Finally, it’s important to track your success so you know what’s working and what might not be working. Tracking key performance indicators for your brand ambassadors allows you to see who’s performing well and who might need some extra help. The data points you can get from Refersion allow you to get more insight into your various affiliates and brand ambassadors.
The Bottom Line
Brand ambassadors can get significantly more people introduced to your content. If you’re looking to create and maintain an ambassador program, then remember to seek out strong ambassadors, talk to them about what type of content they want to create, and track the way they’ve been able to perform.
All of these things will help you create a stronger program that can last for years to come.
