THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BRAND AMBASSADOR MARKETING IN 2020 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction to Ambassador Marketing 3 What is Ambassador Marketing? 4 Why are most referral programs destined to fail? 6 Test Your Company for Ambassador Marketing 7 Chapter 2: Brand Ambassadors vs. Influencers: How to find and recruit the best Ambassadors for your Brand 9 Ambassador Marketing vs. Influencers 9 User-Generated Content 11 How to Find Brand Ambassadors? 13 How to Determine High Engagement? 14 Chapter 3: How to Build a Successful Brand Ambassador Program 16 What Exactly is a Brand Ambassador Program? 16 Types of Brand Ambassador Programs 17 11 Steps to Your Brand Ambassador Program 19 KPIs to Define Success of Your Brand Ambassador Program 23 Chapter 4: How to Engage and Incentivize your Brand Ambassadors 24 How to Keep Your Ambassadors Engaged? 24 Tips to Maintain Engagement 28 Chapter 5: Conclusion & How to Promote your Brand Ambassador Program 29 Key Takeaway Points 29 Wrap Up 32 2 CHAPTER 1: Introduction to Ambassador Marketing In this ebook we are going to share valuable information about Brand Ambassador Marketing. So, why did we write this ebook? And why should you read it? For the past few years we have worked closely with businesses across many different sectors from fashion to sports to automotive to hospitality with the goal of helping our customers implement successful ambassador marketing strategies. Whenever we meet with marketers to discuss their requirements we come across several common insights which are worth noting: • Marketers tend to overlook ambassador marketing as it can appear overly complicated • Many marketers don’t understand how ambassador marketing is different from affiliate or referral marketing or influencer marketing • Ambassador marketing is an underutilized channel by many brands • Brands that set up ambassador marketing programs experience great success • When done correctly, ambassador marketing outperforms most other online marketing channels including PPC, SEO, content marketing and email marketing So, why are these insights valuable and why should you complete this ebook? We would like to show you how to harness the awesome power of ambassador marketing with minimum effort to help you maximize your marketing spend. 3 Here is an outline of what to expect from this ebook: • Chapter 1: Introduction to Ambassador Marketing • Chapter 2: Brand Ambassadors vs. Influencers: How to find and recruit the best Ambassadors for your Brand! • Chapter 3: How to Build a Successful Brand Ambassador Program • Chapter 4: How to Engage and Incentivize your Brand Ambassadors • Chapter 5: Conclusion & How to Promote your Brand Ambassador Program Great, so let’s get started! What is Ambassador Marketing? Ambassador marketing is Word of Mouth Marketing (WoMM) on scale. Sounds a bit like a referral program right… wrong! So, how does ambassador marketing differ to traditional referral programs? Marketers who implement ambassador marketing programs understand that traditional referral programs are very difficult to sustain. There are only very few companies who consistently implement successful referral programs, Uber, Dropbox and Airbnb are among them. Essentially, companies that already have huge market share. So, how do you know if your referral program is actually working? 4 There is a commonly used formula to measure the success of a referral program, called K factor or Viral coefficient: (Number of Existing Customers x Number of invites sent by all your customers) X CVR of those invites Number of customers = K factor/Viral Coefficient For example, if you have: 1. 100 customers 2. Each of them sends 10 people to your business 3. Out of those 10, 1 becomes a customer, then your CVR is 10% 4. You can insert all these numbers into the formula 100x10x0.10 = 1 K factor 100 Side note: You can also use this free tool to calculate your K factor If your K factor is 1 or less than 1, then your referral efforts are not paying off. And let us share a secret with you: most referral programs simply don’t work! If you do have a K factor that is higher than 1, that’s amazing, well done! Keep on reading though because we can help you improve even further! 5 Why are most referral programs destined to fail? Based on our research and the data collected from companies we have worked with (other than not fitting the criteria due to lack of social currency in your product - if you don’t know what social currency is, we will cover it later in this chapter), the fact is most referral programs tend to treat everyone the same. When a customer who recommends your product, service or brand doesn’t convey trust or doesn’t fit with your brand’s voice or values, their recommendation can often cause more harm than good. With a traditional referral program, It doesn’t matter if your customers are very influential people or people with a small group of friends, they all receive the same treatment. People are different, this is one reason why personalization became so big in the past few years. It simply works! Companies that incentivize customers with a lot of social influence (e.g. customers and employees with a big audience of followers and friends and great engagement) the same way they would incentivize your average Joe, are missing out on a great opportunity! 6 This opportunity is Brand Ambassador Marketing. Ambassador marketing relies on one of the oldest known principles, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. Those who use this rule in their marketing efforts focus on 20% of their followers (customers, employees and prospects) to drive a K factor that is larger than all of their followers combined. This 20% of followers are people who fit your brand voice and have influence over others either in real life or online on social media platforms. These people of influence can drive amazing results with a minimum budget. You can, and should, incentivize these people differently (we will focus on this topic in Chapter 4). The bad news though, is that this channel does not necessarily fit all businesses. Test Your Company for Ambassador Marketing Here’s a quick test to see if your company is a great fit for ambassador marketing: 1. Can you reach at least 1000 people? (Unique monthly visitors and/or Social media followers and/or email list and/or number of customers and/or number of employees). 2. Does your product, service or brand transfer social currency? Does it make people look or feel any of the following when they talk about it: i. Cooler ii. Healthier iii. Smarter iv. Trendier v. Exclusive vi. Professional 7 If your answer to these 2 questions are Yes, for sure! - then ambassador marketing is right for your business! To summarize, ambassador marketing is an approach that allows you to recruit brand ambassadors who resonate with your brand’s voice and can represent you. These customers, employees or prospects will help promote your brand and can be incentivized in various forms. In Chapter 2 we will explore how to differentiate influencers from brand ambassadors, how to set the criteria for your brand ambassador, how to find brand ambassadors and recruit the right ones for your brand. 8 CHAPTER 2: Brand Ambassadors vs. Influencers: How to find and recruit the best Ambassadors for your Brand People often ask us about the difference between brand ambassadors and influencers. This is an important question, so let’s jump right in! Brand Ambassador vs. Influencers Often when we engage with marketers, customers and brand advocates at conferences or online, we are told that a brand ambassador is just another term for an influencer. This is not entirely true. An influencer can be a brand ambassador, butnot all influencers are brand ambassadors for the brand which they are promoting. 9 This points to the heart of the matter. A brand ambassador is someone who is invested in your product, service or brand. Whereas an influencer is someone you might hire to launch a new product or promote something online. Brand ambassadors are a long term investment whereas influencers are usually hired for short specific campaigns. Influencers are more extrinsically motivated (for example by monetary rewards) compared to brand ambassadors who possess intrinsic values, share common goals and are motivated beyond financial gains. If you have previously dealt with influencer marketing, 2 things are abundantly clear. Hiring an influencer can be an expensive exercise and not all influencers deliver results: • Many of them have poor engagement • They are extremely expensive • The performance aspect is lacking • It’s hard to find good influencers • Good influencers are hard to recruit • They are not very loyal and will usually go for the higher bidder On the other hand, your brand ambassador is generally a customer, employee or product user who: • Likes your product and brand and is likely to recommend it to others regardless of your efforts • Is loyal • Will be there when you need him or her for any activity, from promotions to product design, reviews or to generate content • Will consistently generate content for your brand, sometimes even without being asked to • Can be remunerated with freebies and other forms of non-monetary compensation 10 Brand ambassadors authentically like the product and brand and really believe in it! These are your true fans. And there is no better form of marketing! Don’t take our word on it, ask Kevin Kelly the chief editor of wired magazine or Seth Godin, a world renowned marketing guru. User-Generated Content Let’s dig a little deeper. Brand ambassadors tend to create User Generated Content (UGC) to share information and spread influence.