We all are familiar with the term “Brand Ambassador.” You may often see in the news that a celebrity, media person, or athlete has become a company’s brand ambassador. The brands pay a hefty amount of money to recruit a brand ambassador. Have you ever thought about why the brands would do that? What benefits are they getting after spending money on a celebrity? Let’s get to know the details of brand ambassadors, who they are, and what they do for the company.
Who is a Brand Ambassador?
The average person assumes that a Brand Ambassador is a sponsored actor who will bring in more sales/clients to a company by bringing attention to its product. In a sense, they are correct, but it’s much more than that.
A brand ambassador is a representative of a company or a product that promotes the product or brand as best as possible. In simple words, a brand ambassador is the face of a company. The person is willing to actively help you increase the company’s sales or lead others to an event through various forms of communication.
However, there is no specific requirement to become a brand ambassador. Usually, the person with a huge fan base is a perfect match to become a brand ambassador. An ambassador’s job requires a passion for what he does because it can get pretty exhausting sometimes being on your feet all day long. But the benefits are worth every ounce of effort!
They can be paid employees of the company or just regular people working side by side with other employees selling products. In most cases, companies will pay these individuals either out of pocket for expenses such as travel and hotel costs or compensate them with compensation benefits such as gifts cards, cash, free food, and many other things, usually depending on the company.
What Does a Brand Ambassador Do for a Company?
The primary role of a Brand Ambassador is to build relationships with current customers as well as new customers and market your product to them. The Ambassadors make the most out of every opportunity they have to promote, such as giving seminars at colleges or universities, attending community events, and managing their own personal networking efforts.
The ambassadors can do a lot for a company: they strengthen the marketing team and offer what customers are looking for in terms of authenticity. Furthermore, ambassadors provide excellent service by communicating with people who might eventually become customers outside of their usual surroundings. What’s more, through activities like giveaways or contests, brand ambassadors can influence potential customers. Apart from boosting the sales, what more can they do for the company? Let’s have a look.
Give the Brand a Human Touch
A company is nothing without its customers – that’s why it has to establish a connection with them to be successful. This is where ambassadors come in, who are equipped with the knowledge of the company and product as well as skills from communications or engagement management.
Personal contact becomes an essential part of establishing this relationship, especially since consumers tend to trust recommendations from people they know. That means an ambassador can offer convincing arguments for customers who might be on the fence regarding making a purchase.
In addition, ambassadors will do their best to make customers feel comfortable when using your product or service. Brand ambassadors present companies in a different way than ads or pictures do because they actually offer people advice about what to buy. They can explain complicated things in simple terms, which eventually assist customers with purchasing decisions.
Boost the Marketing Team
Ambassadors are not necessarily marketers themselves, but they have knowledge of the company that will help them talk to people. Further, the ambassador provides an excellent first impression regarding the business. Thus, ambassadors can be an excellent help for marketers as the person becomes the face of the brand, and as a result, the marketing team’s job becomes easier.
The ambassadors’ ability to communicate and network is key in helping bring potential customers and contacts together and establish business relationships outside of the event location. Apart from this, the person can sometimes answer questions that would come up during meetings or training for marketers or other employees who don’t always have time to do so.
Assist Social Media Presence
Social Media has a huge influence when it comes to business branding. It is therefore extremely beneficial if the brand ambassador takes on this task as they usually have a huge fanbase. As we have mentioned earlier, brand ambassadors are very good at communicating with other people. Basically, they are social media “experts”! Even if it is only one particular channel, the ambassadors are well versed in all the tools that help promote the company through photos or videos and then share them on the go.
Social Media has become so important for businesses these days that it would almost be irresponsible not to take advantage of this free marketing, especially when the ambassador has millions of followers who can do just that. Instead of paying someone for this task, ambassadors give companies the opportunity to take advantage of their content without spending any extra money for paid social media marketing. The fact that they are actually present during any event ensures authentic posts on social media.
Is there any Negative Impact?
Over the years, brand ambassadors have become a common phenomenon in advertising. However, there are also times when brand ambassadors fail miserably at their jobs because they are not careful enough with what they say. Nevertheless, it all depends on how the company uses them or what kinds of messages the company wants them to relay. A brand ambassador’s bad reputation or any emerging scandals may negatively impact a company. Further, negative media coverage of a particular person could impact the brand negatively.
Bottom line
In general, a brand ambassador can have overwhelmingly positive impacts on your product. There could potentially be some negative impacts from involving a famous figure in your product, but these could easily be outweighed by the benefits that a brand gains from it.
Source: United News of Bangladesh