The brand ambassador is one of the most valuable figures for the branding of a company, since his voice is the dissemination channel with the greatest capacity for influence.

This is confirmed by the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey , which shows that more than 90% of people trust the recommendations of other people when choosing a product or service .

Users do not trust brands that try to convince them through advertising. Instead, they do trust those that have provided good experiences to other users. This is where the challenge lies for companies, because favorable testimonials cannot be bought or hired, they must be earned. Digital signage in retail – Learn More About This

What is a brand ambassador?

The brand ambassador is a person who is very satisfied with the experience that the brand in question has given him and who, therefore, highly recommends it to his social circle. For example, a marketing manager recommending a CRM platform to colleagues, or a data analyst recommending big data software. 12 principles of agile methodology in project development

These people, without realizing it, become a branding channel for the brand they are recommending. Your testimonials and comments build trust, confidence and enthusiasm in other people, which drives them to become customers of that brand.

Types of brand ambassadors

The brand ambassador is the person who feels and demonstrates a very close emotional connection with a brand. However, there is some confusion about who may or may not be brand ambassadors. Data architecture: the basis of a differentiating strategy

Influencers, celebrities, and sponsored athletes are not brand ambassadors , as their product and service recommendations are the result of a business agreement between them and the companies, not an honest emotional connection.

In fact, according to  Convince & Convert , citing statistics from Forrester and Nielsen, it is estimated that only 18% of people trust influencers’ recommendations, while 90% trust those issued by brand ambassadors. An influencer can only be considered a brand ambassador when he is linked to the firm sincerely, as a satisfied customer, not through a contract .

In this sense, there are only two types of brand ambassadors:

External ambassadors

External brand ambassadors are those customers with such a high level of loyalty that they not only reject competing products, but also constantly defend and promote the brand in question under all circumstances. The future of data processing: blockchain and big data

Internal ambassadors

Internal brand ambassadors are the company’s own employees. They, at the heart of it, are the people who can best attest to the qualities of the brand. Thus, employee branding is the business strategy that consists of creating this type of ambassadors.

Customers as external ambassadors: a step beyond loyalty

One of the main objectives of a business should be to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty, but not limited to it; you should also strive to make them brand ambassadors.

There is no specific tactic to achieve the latter goal. The secret lies in offering the best experience during the sales and after-sales process, so that the customer decides to share their testimony and recommend the brand. Therefore, all departments of the organization must bear it in mind.

A brand ambassador is not just another link in the marketing campaign, it must be the center of all business management . Only in this way can it become one of the most powerful and economical branding channels that exists.

Employee branding: employees as internal brand ambassadors

Loyalty starts at home. Only a company that is capable of generating unforgettable experiences in its workers is a company capable of causing the same impact on its customers. This is what employee branding consists of , a strategy through which you want to turn employees into the first brand ambassadors.

People trust other users more than the brands themselves. Taking this reality into account, companies must humanize their branding channels in order to generate trust, and the first channel they can access and the most powerful is their own employees. 5 ‘big data’ solutions at the service of your business

How effective is employee branding?

According to Nicole Alvino, Chief Strategy Officer of SocialChorus, the content distributed on social media by the employees of a company achieves eight times more engagement than the content published from corporate profiles.

In fact, the sales processes initiated by the employees of a brand with potential clients through social networks have a greater chance of being successfully closed , compared to other types of sales processes. The reason for such an impact is that more than 52% of consumers fully trust the opinion of a brand’s employees about its quality, as determined by the Edelman Trust Barometer study  .

How to do employee branding?

To turn workers into selfless ambassadors, a number of factors must be taken into account:

  • Organizational culture: the company must train the team to transmit the values ??of the organization.
  • Leadership: superiors have to be an example to follow, and inspire admiration and respect.
  • Empowerment : employees must have the confidence of their superiors to be able to assume responsibilities and work autonomously.
  • Incentives : the company must value the commitment of its employees .
  • Quality faith : as far as possible, workers should know the company’s product or service first-hand to attest to its quality.

Embloyee branding consists of explaining the history of the brand and the team in order to establish an emotional bond with the audience to always be on their top of mind. To achieve this , it is essential to take into account storytelling techniques. It is not about creating a creative advertising message, but about sharing real and inspiring stories that reveal the culture of the brand and its values, what makes it unique.

Storytelling in employee branding is the best way to humanize companies and bring them closer to their customers through the stories of the people closest to the company, their own employees. A success story is the story Balay shared about one of the brand’s oldest employees.

Keys to managing brand ambassadors

An exemplary case of brand ambassador management is that of the company Adobe and Julieanne Kost , a YouTuber who became popular thanks to their tutorials on the use of Photoshop software. Upon reaching the ears of Adobe, the owner of Photoshop, the company hired Julieanne as its official ambassador and made different digital channels available to distribute the brand’s content.

Thus, brand ambassador , both internal and external, is the most profitable branding channel for a company. This is because it does not need any type of advertising investment , it is enough that all the efforts of the brand are focused on the quality of the offer and the interaction with the client to generate very good experiences.

For this reason, companies have to design different strategies to convey the essence of the brand and establish a bond with both their employees and their customers. For a company to be able to turn its customers into powerful brand ambassadors, it must be able to empathize with them, motivate them, excite them and excite them.

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