Last week, our friends over at Pilothouse Digital and the DTC Podcast were gracious enough to host me on their awesome podcast.
We had a blast jamming on brand ambassador marketing from a high level all the way down to some tactical ideas.
After the call, DTC Podcast co-host Kyle reached out and asked me for my top 5 benefits of doing a brand ambassador program for their newsletter (which drops today - I’ll include the link in the next email!)
Honestly, it sounds corny to say, but it was a challenge to dial in JUST 5 benefits because of how broad and impactful well executed brand ambassador programs can be.
But I put some thought into it (which was a great exercise), and shared the results in the video here.
Check it out:
1. Reach New Customers via Word-of-Mouth and Referral Sales
By enlisting your best customers and biggest fans as brand ambassadors and arming them with the right tools and assets (including referral links and coupon codes), you can reach a wider audience and bring in new customers through this creative new marketing channel.
2. Increase Conversion Rates (While Cutting Marketing Spend) with User-Generated Content
On average, user-generated content converts at 5% higher than content produced in house. And by leveraging your ambassadors as your content creation (and distribution!) army, you can enjoy new savings by decreasing your in-house content creation spend.
3. Increase Efficiency & Effectiveness Across Paid Social, Social, and Content Channels
With the right framework and tools in place, your ambassadors can be leveraged to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of every other marketing channel you're investing in.
From boosting conversions on paid social (by engaging with ads to increase social proof), to driving more reach on social (by engaging with your social posts), to increasing the reach of your published content (by sharing it with their networks) - ambassadors can be leveraged to drive higher ROI and ROAS across your entire marketing stack.
4. Increase LTV of Your Most Valuable Customers
When you enlist a new brand ambassador into your community, you forge a deeper bond with that customer and embed your brand and products even further into that customers life and identity.
On average, brands are seeing a whopping 43% higher LTVs amongst their brand ambassador cohorts than their broader customer cohorts (though, to be fair, it's unclear how much of this is a result of filtering in higher-value customers to begin with).
5. Leverage A New Hybrid Between Owned, Earned, and Paid Media (Which Enhances All The Rest).
Unlike most other social-facing initiatives like paid and organic social, with the right brand ambassador tooling, you can actually own the community that you can then leverage to further enhance your efforts across digital, social, and beyond (as discussed above).
With the right platform, your can truly own your brand ambassador community - giving you similar benefits of a thriving, engaged Facebook Group (which, mark our words, FB will be monetizing and tanking organic for brands before long) - but on a platform where you truly own the customer relationship - complete with phone numbers, email addresses, and messaging capabilities.
Boom. Hope that was helpful/enjoyable!
Love always 💞
-AVT
