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A social media ambassador program is like having an army of spokespeople willing to vouch for your company.
90% of shoppers trust their peers more than branded content, so why shouldn’t you leverage that statistic?
This article teaches you how to launch a brand ambassador program to reach your marketing goals seamlessly.
We’ll also discuss the benefits you can expect, the different types of ambassador programs, and the differences between this program and an influencer marketing campaign, with plenty of examples and practical lessons.
Keep reading below.
A brand ambassador program is a specific marketing strategy that involves creating long-term relationships with brand ambassadors — spokespeople who vouch for your brand.
Insider tip: We always advise our clients who launch brand ambassador programs to create data-driven campaign plans.
You shouldn’t simply hand your company’s communication to your potential ambassadors.
That plan should be based on:
Successful brand ambassador programs have many benefits that our clients at inBeat noticed, too.
We’ll analyze them below with plenty of examples to understand how these programs work.
Like influencers, brand ambassadors’ main communication channels are social media platforms.
Your ambassadors will help you leverage social media platforms, especially if they already have considerable followings.
Promoting your company to their audience naturally builds your credibility and opens your company to a new market.
For example, FIGS has created a community of social ambassadors among medical professionals.
Pro tip: Your ambassadors may use different social media channels, which is perfectly okay as long as your prospects use the same platforms.
For example, your potential customers might not browse Instagram for three hours daily but might attend conferences and events.
Insider tip: You should always select the right ambassadors after establishing your marketing goals, picking your channels, and building an influencer brief – not the other way around.
At inBeat, we call the research phase mood-boarding and the discovery phase mood-matching.
A brand ambassador program helps you build a loyal community, which we noticed has several advantages on your ROI.
That’s thanks to:
Maintaining open lines of communication with happy customers is five to ten times cheaper than acquiring new prospects.
Loyal customers make 67% more expensive purchases and buy more products in the long run. They also represent better opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.
This community creates natural user-generated content, such as online reviews, using your branded hashtags. This doesn’t just expand awareness but purchases because buyers trust online reviews more than branded ads.
Sometimes, companies experience PR or brand image crises, which can wane their sales and public support. However, having an established brand ambassador program means benefiting from the support of a trustworthy community. This strategy prevents a massive market share loss typically associated with these events, and helps your brand recover faster.
North Face has created a community of ambassadors supporting it:
Warning: Not all brand ambassadors can rally loyal communities around them.
You need someone:
Insider tip: There are many types of influencers. At inBeat, we noticed that nano-influencers with smaller followings have higher engagement rates because they spend more time interacting with people. If you want to build a strong brand community, you need someone who can create those tight-knit, authentic relationships.
Brand ambassadors are already perceived as reliable experts in their fields; when you partner with these people, their credibility will transfer to your brand, too.
Depending on your marketing goals, building authority and trust can be important for you if:
Note: Solving a need people didn’t realize they have requires a different type of message than regaining authority after a PR crisis.
For example, the inBeat campaign for Phone Loops showcased the loops that keep your phone stable when you’re taking selfies.
And the brand is still using this tactic:
Insider tip: Develop your social media communication plan starting from your goals.
Effective brand ambassadors know their audience, which is also your audience.
Therefore, they can tap into these insights to create persuasive content that convinces people to:
Insider tip: We advise our clients to leverage brand ambassadors for social listening; heed their feedback, and their content will be high-quality and evergreen.
That means you can repost it for years, adapting and curating it for all your channels.
Of course, you would ideally want to create a long-term relationship with your brand ambassadors; that’s one thing that differentiates them from influencers.
But even so, the content they create now should be tapped into and capitalized to its fullest potential.
Remember: Use the content that brand ambassadors create on different channels: your website, marketing emails, social media accounts, ads, and whatever else fits your goals.
Your brand ambassadors:
These are the right ingredients to boost sales and overcome any plateaus.
Insider tip: Choose brand ambassadors to meet all the above objectives, which are the precursors of increased sales.
Brand ambassadors are cost-effective because:
Side note: Consider offering company-themed custom merchandise, such as shirts or other swag, as part of your brand ambassador program.
Providing ambassadors with branded mugs, coasters, and other merchandise can be a powerful way to reinforce their connection to your company and create a sense of belonging.
These items can serve as daily reminders of their role in representing your brand, fostering stronger loyalty and advocacy among your ambassadors.
Additionally, when they use these products in their daily lives, it becomes a natural way for them to share your brand with others, extending your reach and increasing awareness.
Remember: Of course, you must invest some money in helping your ambassadors devise the right messages and send them your products.
Depending on your strategy, you may have to provide them with transportation to and from certain events.
But the overall cost of all these marketing efforts is well below what you would spend for an ad campaign with the same results.
Insider tip: Find someone who will work for your brand out of a passion for your products or values. That’s how you can ensure they will be okay with working relatively pro bono for your company in the long term.
Social media influencers are established, experienced content creators with substantial follower counts.
Brands typically employ them in the short term and have a transactional relationship with them.
Companies can also send products to social media influencers within product seeding campaigns, but that’s not always necessary.
Besides, influencers typically use social media channels and receive milestone, hourly or commission-based pay.
Brand ambassadors can be any type of person from established influencers to inexperienced regular people with reduced or substantial follower counts.
The prerequisite is being passionate about your products and brand.
Social media ambassador partnerships are typically long-term and rewarded with free products, access to exclusive events, and other deals.
Brand ambassadors can use social media platforms, but they also use other marketing channels to promote your brand.
Here’s the perfect example of all that:
Richard Fanders is a UK driving instructor who produces relevant content for students and drivers who want to improve their techniques.
There are six types of ambassador programs to consider depending on your marketing objectives.
Read this section to understand if and how you can leverage an ambassador campaign.
This program resembles an influencer marketing campaign the most.
Your brand ambassadors have a specific checklist with deadlines they must accomplish within a certain period (e.g., five posts per week, one event per month, etc.).
Checklist apps will help them manage their tasks more efficiently.
Here’s Lululemon brand ambassador taking part in the brand’s campaign events:
Pros:
Cons:
Affiliate ambassador programs are effective in boosting your sales.
Your ambassadors aim to get many people to purchase your products using their affiliate links.
That, in turn, gives them part of the profit.
Pro tip: You can also offer incentives to motivate affiliate brand ambassadors to reach a new sales tier.
Pros:
Cons:
Informal ambassador programs are open to anybody passionate about your brand and products.
You won’t sign contracts or impose social ambassador requirements; you will rely on your loyal spokespeople or customers to create word of mouth on social channels.
As a result of their customer advocacy, you will increase your reputation and credibility and get more referrals.
Xbox has one of the best ambassador program examples that showcase a tight-knit community of players.
These players make recommendations and advocate for the game, enhancing its active users.
Pros:
Cons:
Employee ambassador programs are among the most persuasive because:
Nicole Damico is one of the employee ambassadors General Electric is using to maintain a solid online reputation:
Pros:
Cons:
Expert social ambassador programs are a version of the customer-based program.
But in this case, you will have to find experts who use your products and are passionate about them.
This strategy builds wide-scale acceptance and credibility, boosting your sales.
Dr. Charles, MD, is a board-certified dermatologist who regularly creates social media posts about Ulta Beauty skincare products.
Pros:
Cons:
If you want to attract a younger target audience, college ambassadors will help you with genuine endorsements to their fellow students.
Besides, you can easily structure your social media campaign on a specific niche.
Pro tip: Use offline events and guerrilla marketing tactics to generate more buzz around your products and complement your social media marketing campaign.
Celsius, like many other brands, organizes college brand ambassador programs:
Pros:
Cons:
Now that you know the benefits and different types of brand ambassador programs, you can start setting up a successful social media campaign using ambassadors.
All marketing campaigns need to start with clear goals because these goals are the results you want to achieve.
And knowing where you want to get helps you set up the right strategy.
You will also realize which key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to track to reach those results.
Here are two examples to help you start:
KPIs for brand awareness include:
KPIs for lead generation include:
This point resembles creating a customer persona, but you will create an ambassador persona in this case.
Contouring an ideal brand ambassador will also help you establish specific guidelines or expectations for your campaign.
Remember: First, pick the type of ambassador program that fits your marketing goals from the section above.
Next, consider:
After you have outlined your ambassadors’ ideal profiles, it’s time to find potential brand ambassadors who fit those requirements.
Here’s what you can do:
Start from your social media channels.
Review your tags and mentions to find people always engaging with your brand.
Look through the comment section and likes as well.
After finding these people, comb through the list and ensure they fit your brand’s profile and audience.
Remember: Pick only the active people with a high engagement rate on that social media channel.
You can use our free Instagram engagement rate calculator for this.
You can also find ambassadors for your brand at local or online events – especially the lives you host on Instagram or TikTok.
That way, you can ensure the potential social media ambassadors use the social channels your target audience also uses.
Here are some easy steps to get this started:
Pro tip: You can always network like in the good old days and ask for specific recommendations from your business partners or acquaintances.
When scouting for brand ambassadors, one of the most resourceful pools to tap into is your existing database of employees and collaborators.
These individuals already possess a wealth of knowledge about your company’s culture, mission, and products, making them inherently credible and passionate spokespeople for your brand.
Employees sometimes have extensive networks that can amplify your brand’s message organically.
By identifying enthusiastic team members who are already engaged with your brand and willing to share their positive experiences, you can build a team of ambassadors who are genuinely invested in your company's success.
Moreover, collaborators who have had favorable experiences with your brand can serve as powerful advocates.
Whether they are suppliers, partners, or part-time contributors, their external perspectives and testimonies can provide authentic endorsements that resonate well with potential customers.
To leverage these resources effectively, consider the following steps:
If you’re launching an Instagram brand ambassador campaign and want your ambassadors to be in a specific location, using Instagram geotags will help you suss out the profiles that fit.
All you have to do is open the Instagram app and type in the desired location.
We explain this process more in-depth here, along with finding content creators with tagged profiles and location hashtags.
Insider tip: The article above is filled with hacks you don’t want to miss, like how to use group photos.
inBeat offers a influencer discovery platform to find highly engaged, vetted content creators.
We don’t want to brag, but the profiles we’ve selected are among the bestest, as we like to say.
While the average Instagram engagement rate is around 1-3%, our profiles usually jump the 20% mark.
This profile below has a highly engaged audience:
The filters are very intuitive, too; we’ve even included keywords you want to exclude to omit an entire category.
For example, you may want to omit HIIT and squats from your search if you want to promote your joint-friendly, low-impact fitness app to fitness enthusiasts.
Here’s how to use inBeat in five easy steps:
Pro tip: Mega and macro-influencers are not always effective, although they have large follower counts. Other smaller types of influencers (nano- and micro-influencers) can help you reach your goals faster because they have tighter relationships with their audience.
Side rant: It’s simple math, really.
The fewer followers you have, the more direct and personalized interactions you can have with them. That’s how you can convince them to purchase the products you’re endorsing within an influencer marketing campaign.
You can always let your ambassadors come to you, so start with an ambassador application form.
This form popularizes your program, calling for prospective ambassadors in marketing emails or post-purchase messages.
You should also publish this form on your website.
Then, analyze the applications and pick the best candidates.
Use an event staffing agency to connect you with highly engaged content creators with no fake followers.
You can develop long-term relationships with them so they can become effective ambassadors.
Your brand ambassador contract should include the following:
Focus on your customers’ needs and learn what motivates them.
Then, keep them engaged with:
Ensure your chosen instruments are relevant to your brand and the current campaign.
If they fit your marketing strategy, they’ll bring in more results.
Repurpose this content to reach a wider market:
Pro tip: Use inBeat’s free Instagram mockup generator to test different looks and ensure your content gets the desired results.
Running an influencer or social ambassador program means balancing the fine line between building credibility and becoming a company that purchases its good reviews.
Monetary commissions aren’t necessary, though.
You can get ambassadors engaged with:
Insider tip: Include the amount and associated details in your agreement if you want to pay your influencers.
Motivation is also important, and for that, you should consider:
Side note: You can always take it a step further by bestowing crystal awards upon top-performing ambassadors could be a memorable gesture of appreciation.
First, create a centralized system for tracking your KPIs to have a clear overview of the campaign’s performance.
This includes quantifiable data, such as the number of brand-related posts, likes, comments, and engagement rates on Instagram.
Equally important is the qualitative data that can be captured through mid-campaign and end-campaign questionnaires and surveys, which provide insights into the ambassador's and audience's perceptions.
In addition to the social media-focused metrics, it’s essential to track the direct impact on your business objectives.
Monitoring additional traffic to your website via referral links in the ambassadors’ bios and analyzing any increase in sales attributed to discount codes used can offer a tangible measure of ROI.
Remember, monitoring aims not just to report successes and failures but to inform data-driven decisions for future campaigns.
By keeping a finger on the pulse of your campaign through diligent tracking and analysis, you can continue to refine your approach and cultivate brand ambassador relationships that yield the best results for your brand.
Once everything is on track, consider scaling up your ambassador campaign.
For example, you can use influencer marketing to complement your brand ambassador program; these content creators have broader followings and can create more social proof.
Pro tip: inBeat is a great way to find these influencers, check their engagement rates, and suss out fake followers using our free influencer toolkit.
Alternatively, you can find content creators that produce credible and expert user-generated content for your brand.
Our UGC Studio is just one click away for you to try.
Here are some good social media ambassador examples to draw inspiration from.
And yes, we’ve featured inBeat examples too.
Miro is a digital collaboration platform that leveraged inBeat influencers to promote their Miroverse templates.
They specifically targeted B2B influencers within the fields of Agile, Product Management, and Diagramming on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok to create and share complex templates.
The goal was to build trust and increase downloads and active users for their app.
The campaign was carried out with the support of inBeat and involved influencers creating value-packed, visual content, resulting in increased app engagement.
Leveraging influencers in niche areas can build trust and product familiarity, driving engagement and user growth.
The strategy of having influencers create and use the product in practical applications demonstrates its value and encourages downloads.
Such campaigns showcase the importance of delivering visually engaging and informative content that resonates with the targeted professional audience and aligns with the brand's goals.
Additionally, tech expert influencers can talk very enthusiastically and at length about your products, intuiting very precisely the arguments that are most likely to convince others.
As such, they can promote companies using remote work software or a task management solutions in a very credible manner.
Let’s summarize what you can learn from this program:
Mogo employs micro-influencers to advertise their Bitcoin-related products and other services.
inBeat helps Mogo with its brand ambassador programs.
Creators like Carter Sullivan have a loyal following of young adults interested in budgeting, finance, and lifestyle.
Mogo knows that Millenials and Gen Z are more likely to be interested in Bitcoin.
The bias against these generations is that they’re irresponsible when it comes to financing.
Plus, credit cards are one of the easiest products to sell add-ons for.
This gives brand ambassadors more options for partnerships in the financial industry.
For example, a Mogo ambassador could feature SoFi’s credit score tracker in some Mogo promotions.
They could state the benefits of high credit scores and why tracking credit scores can help credit card users make more informed choices.
Here’s what you can learn from the Mogo Ambassador Program:
Videos convey emotions through verbal and nonverbal cues.
Micro-influencers on platforms like YouTube can attract more paying customers by displaying emotions.
inBeat also set up Phone Loops’ brand ambassador campaign.
This company’s product, aka the straps that attach to your phone, addresses an essential customer pain point:
Unlike old Nokia models, smartphones break when they fall.
So, whenever you choose a brand ambassador, ensure their content emphasizes your brand’s essential promise.
Repeating this promise is a reliable strategy because:
Insider tip: If you have a new, innovative product, move your audience on these levels: wariness → acceptance → want.
Phone Loops Instagram strategy was to showcase micro-influencers using their product in lots of everyday situations, such as:
You can see hundreds of such pictures and videos.
Brand ambassadors recommend this product and provide excellent insight into its uses.
Most importantly, micro-influencers share relatable problems that Phone Loops helped solve.
Clothing company Lululemon uses the #lululemonambassador hashtag to unite its community.
In fact, their community is a prominent value for Lululemon, which you can notice in their entire communication.
Lululemon has several relevant social ambassadors on Instagram, posting different types of content:
Motivational:
Personal experience:
Workout and training plans:
Notice that Lululemon’s ambassadors create a personal connection between fitness, mental well-being, and other powerful emotions.
This connection is then associated with Lululemon – the brand making all this possible.
And that’s why their Instagram ambassador program doesn’t use other tactics (like humor or contests) that would dilute this raw emotion.
The Yelp Elite Squad ambassador program runs on Instagram under the hashtag #yelpelitesquad, but you can also find it using the shorter #yelpelite.
This program works because users get vetted recommendations from these ambassadors, who are real people just like them.
And statistics show that customer reviews and recommendations convince up to 94% of people to patronize a business.
They create desire with posts like “We’re Yelpers”:
Even better, Yelp recognizes its valued brand ambassadors:
Sephora runs an ambassador program under the hashtag #sephorasquad, granting people who qualify for annual contracts and the opportunity to be part of multiple campaigns.
Remember: Wise hashtag usage is extremely important to spread awareness while helping people understand what your campaign is about.
Here’s one example of a person who made it into the Sephora ambassador team:
If you follow her profile, you can notice a slew of posts promoting Sephora:
Aerie also runs an Instagram ambassador program, using the #aerieambassador and #AerieReal hashtags.
However, you can notice it mainly uses nano-influencers as spokespeople:
The #AerieReal ambassador program offers an excellent example because:
Why does that matter?
Many sources show that people share content because they want to support a cause or make a difference in the world.
So, that opportunity could be more motivating than a trivial $50/post.
A social media ambassador program is an excellent solution if you want to connect with your audience by letting real people speak on your behalf.
You can choose employees, nano-influencers, or regular shoppers to present your products, represent your values, and participate in all your campaigns.
However, you need a cohesive strategy to start the ball rolling.
Otherwise, you can’t pick the right people, set the right messages, and expect to see results.
Improving a faulty campaign or scaling a successful one is almost impossible without a plan.
But as always, inBeat is here to help with a range of free tools, our influencer database, and paid plans starting at just $134/month.
Regardless of the plan you choose, we’ll provide 24/7 customer support to help you set up a killer campaign.
