What is a Brand Ambassador?

What is a Brand Ambassador?

A brand ambassador is a person who promotes a small businesses’ goods and services.  They increase sales for small businesses by boosting brand awareness. They can either be people you hire, people you recruit or people who sign on voluntarily.

What Kinds are Available?

There are several different kinds of brand ambassadors that you can choose from.  Some small business owners prefer to be their own brand ambassadors while others hire professionals. More and more they are becoming unpaid customers and other connections like bloggers. These people are happy to spread the word after trying the product.

What, Exactly, Do They Do?

A brand ambassador’s job looks simple but there’s more to it than meets the eye.  Although paid and unpaid brand ambassadors all work to build a good company image by interacting with clients, the paid ones have other responsibilities as well. For example, they are often in charge of developing marketing ideas and gathering useful feedback from clients. These brand ambassadors are employees and attend meetings.

Some unpaid online brand ambassadors post about your goods and services. Some attend trade shows and other events to promote products.

Keep in mind a good brand ambassador will appeal to a specific target market. Some companies make the mistake of trying to select an ambassador who will appeal to as many people as possible. In the end, they wind up losing business because they haven’t narrowed their focus to a particular group.

Where Can Small Businesses Find Brand Ambassadors?

There are several places for small businesses to look for brand ambassadors. They can use students and their connections to promote their goods and services assuming their products are aimed at this demographic. Small businesses can use bloggers and other digital influencers as affiliate marketers. Brands can also use celebrities with massive internet followings — though these kinds of ambassadors tend to be priced out of range of all but big corporations. Finally, small business owners can look for influence marketers who happen to have a smaller but substantial following among their potential target customers.

Companies can also simply hire a brand ambassador like a regular employee but here the key is to identify the right candidate through the interview process with the right expertise and industry connections to do the job effectively.

How Do Small Businesses Measure Brand Ambassador’s Effectiveness?

There are a few ways for a small business to measure how effective one of these brand ambassadors are. Gauging your brand ambassador’s effectiveness is about gauging some key metrics. One of the most important is how many people actually view their posts and engage with their content.

Another is to look at sales numbers before and after your brand ambassador came aboard and determine whether those sales are occurring in the segments of your market your brand ambassador was intended to target.

What are the Advantages to Hiring a Brand Ambassador?

It’s a Great Way to Humanize your Brand

When you pick the right one, a brand ambassador brings a media following and a solid reputation. He or she offers your brand online word of mouth and puts a face to your product or service that drives sales.

They Provide a Larger Social Reach that’s Positive

A recent Hootsuite blog points out what happens if you get number of brand ambassadors working with you to spread a positive message about your brand. If they each have 12,000 followers and you land 12 brand ambassadors, you increase your reach by 144,000 prospects.

What are the Disadvantages?

They Aren’t Always Easy to Controlled

If they’re not an employee, small businesses really don’t have complete control over brand ambassadors. It’s always a leap of faith to place your trust in someone else when it comes to your brand.

They can Become bigger than Your Product

A famous brand ambassador or one that’s got a huge online following can dwarf your brand. This is especially true when they become involved in a scandal.

Ambassador Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "What is a Brand Ambassador?" was first published on Small Business Trends