What is Influencer Marketing and How Can Brand Ambassadors Benefit Your Business
– Helped his business boom. – You don’t have to be a major celebrity. – It’s native advertising, it’s word of mouth. – Welcome to The Journey. I’m Nealey. – And I’m Emma. – And today we’re talking about how a brand ambassador can grow your business. Can you give us the inside scoop on what a brand ambassador really is? – Yeah, and they’re closer than you think. It could be an employee, (laughs) where, here? It could be someone that already works for you. It could be just a huge fan of yours, a customer. It could also just be someone in your community that has a huge influence. – Perfect. So with brand ambassadors, I’ve heard this term called influencer marketing, what is that, and how can we leverage that with our brand ambassadors? – Yeah, so there are a ton of creative ways to do that. Once you do find that brand ambassador, what you can do is you can encourage them to post about you on their personal account. And why would you do that?
How to Find and Reach Skateboarders and Influencers to Boost
Of course– – Why would you do that? – Grow your following, because then you reach out and you have this customer. Actually, let me give you a really cool example that happened to me last year. My buddy, Kyle, owns a grip tape company, Cloud 9 Griptape over back in the Midwest, and he wanted to leverage brand ambassadors to do influencer marketing. So what he did is he sent some free grip tape out to friends of his that have a good Instagram following, and just, you know, gently encouraged them, hey, once you grip your deck and go out and skate, I’d love it if you could tag Cloud 9 Griptape. And it helped his business boom because he got in front of a targeted audience. Obviously, if you’re sending grip tape to people on Instagram who have a skateboard vibe, they’re gonna have the audience you want to get in front of. – Right, so if maybe you’re a clothing artist, or whatever your business is, find people in your niche that have a decent following.
Brand ambassadors help spread the word about a business
They don’t have to be a major celebrity, they’re little micro-influencers, right, couple thousand followers, sometimes even higher, and reach out to them and say, hey, I’ve got this free product, or I have X ad that I want you to run and see if you can make some type of arrangement to– – Yeah. – Get your name out there, because we trust social reviews, and people talking about another business is pretty darn high.- Yeah, brand authenticity is another big reason to do it because again, you might be pushing your product. Like, I was at a trade show, a big food show in L.A., and I came across this brand called Field Roast, and as a vegan, they’re one of my favorite brands out there when it comes to alternative meats. And they sent a package of, like, a t-shirt and some free products to try. Do I have a huge following? No, but I went and I posted about it ’cause I was stoked.
How to Earn Value from Your Brand Ambassadors
I cooked with it, I took videos, and I tagged them, and that helped them to get in front of a larger audience. And then I felt so valuable, I went and bragged about them to all my meat-eating friends, and kinda converted them a little bit actually, now that I think back. – What is it, like, 25% of, like, positive interactions, those people go tell 10 of their friends? – Yeah, so it doesn’t hurt even if that person doesn’t have this huge following. But make it fun, make it into kind of a game of, like, what could you send me that’s related to your business, or your customers, or Nealey? He loves free stuff. And encourage them to do something, and then tag you (laughs).Yeah.And another thing, ’cause I’m thinking about what I get asked all the time from local heroes like yourself is, okay, where is the return on investment here?
Why Influencer Marketing is a Powerful Tool for Your Business
What’s super rad is you can have a discount code or a coupon, that then you hook up with your brand ambassador, and encourage them to go spread the love to their friends.- Okay. – And then it’s easy to track, you know, how many people did actually come into your store or your shop, and spend money based on or because of that brand ambassador? Easy to link it back. – Yep, so everyone gets their own unique coupon code. So, Emma, you get a code, and I get a different code, so you can see, cool, Emma did a lot better than I did, so probably gonna focus my attention to give Emma a little bit more content to promote, and me, not so much. – So why this is also really effective, and why you want to definitely get out there, start thinking about who would be a great brand ambassador for you, get on board the influencer marketing, is because it’s native advertising, it’s word of mouth, right?
Why You Should Get a Brand Ambassador
So, like, back to my buddy, Kyle, shout out to Kyle, Cloud 9 Griptape, if he is sending out this cool grip, and all these people, tons of people in California, in Indiana, in New York, they’re putting his grip tape on their boards and they’re out there shredding, that is telling the world that this grip tape is high quality, so I’m gonna get on board with Cloud 9 Griptape because it’s not Kyle pushing it in front of your face on his Instagram.- Yeah. – It’s actually his customers because they’re so stoked about the brand. – Yeah. – Word-of-mouth marketing. – And it doesn’t come off as salesy or pushy, it’s just, hey, this person thought this was pretty cool, I might think that’s pretty cool ’cause I’m just like them. – I’m just like, exactly, very organic and very true. Hey, it hooked me (laughs). All right, that’s a wrap. Thanks for tuning in. You learned all about brand ambassadors, what they are, who they are, and why you should go and get one. – Perfect.
5 Brand Ambassadorship Tips for Increased Engagement
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