The Impact of Brand Ambassadors on Engagement

It can be said that those who work in PR or Marketing for an organisation are those who speak for it. They use creative ways to create buzz, hype it up and attract stakeholders that are the cream of the crop. It could start with successful campaigns, great commercials or even killer social media strategies. Being either of the methods, they basically build the company brand. This perspective is true, but shouldn’t be entirely relied upon when trying to start up the image of your company. One thing that many don’t realise is the power of the rest of their employees advocating the company’s brand being far stronger in building it. In other words, being a brand ambassador without the need to implement specific marketing approaches.

What does it mean to be a “brand ambassador”?

Basically, to be a brand ambassador will involve your employee living, breathing and eating what your company has on offer. It could be the product or service you offer, the amazing work culture or even the meaningful work that makes a difference on the wider good of society produced. To live, breathe and eat all these things just sees that 99.95% of conversation topics held by your employee to whoever, is all that is a good about your company. In a sense, it’s embedded in their blood to talk about your organisation.

This power unrecognised by many to have your employees be brand ambassadors is actually an advantage. You do all of the above; creating buzz to hype it up and attract the cream of the crop with minimal efforts of your employees. You don’t even need to exhaust your marketing team if you’ve got men running around doing the job for you without them even knowing that they are.

When you reach this point where they do all that, you know you’ve fully engaged your employees. If they weren’t engaged, they wouldn’t willingly go out their way to do so. Not just that, but we already know for a fact that engaged employees are those who are emotionally committed to the organisation. And where there’s emotional commitment…that’s when things are done willingly without question.

Why else is it important to create brand ambassadors?

Other than having them build your brand, driving new customers and being cost effective without the need of over working your marketing team, it actually stems further advantages. As broad and diverse these advantages are, they’re worth considering when looking at the viability of your organisation. This is especially important when you’re planning for the future – it’s something you want to remain positive.

Nevertheless, these advantages are:

1. Effectively grabs attention – This is particularly useful especially when your employees are talking to their friends. The chances of their friends listening to them are higher than they would from an advertisement (because of real experience).
2. Trust is formed – The ability to get your friends to listen is one thing, but on the other hand you create trust through that. This trust is bind by the truth you speak.
3. Spreads positive word of mouth – When your employee tells one person, they’re bound to tell a few more people. If it starts off positive, it’ll remain positive throughout.
4. Lifelong relationship with your brand ambassador – Knowing that they’re all about your organisation means its potential that they’ve invested almost everything into the company. To make sure it stays permanent, make sure you engage them further to get more back.

How do we create brand ambassadors?

In order to create brand ambassadors, it’ll involve you understanding that it stems from engaging your employees. We already know that it encompasses a wide range of aspects such as recognising, rewarding with incentives and so. However, as a general term it’s only one aspect to creating brand ambassadors. A few others to include (that many can agree fall under the category of employee engagement) revolves around:

1. Respecting them – When I say respect, I don’t mean the general good manners and being polite. Really respect their ideas, perspectives and ways of doings things. Make room for their point of view to be heard without quick judgement.
2. Listen to them – Listening here means listening to what they hear from who they talk to. By doing so, you understand what stakeholders currently think. You can use this to your advantage by working developments around these thoughts.
3. Switch Roles – Let your employees lead for the day. Let them bring forth what they want carried out for the company. That way, they’re advocating for something that they originally wanted.
4. Give them an assignment – As part of switching roles and letting them lead, it’ll involve you giving them an assignment to carry out. This assignment is basically to generate lead and buzz on the brand all at the control of your employee.
5. Celebrate their importance – This ties in after recognising their contributions to an organisation and the value they add. Recognising is one thing, but to announce it across the whole company, will really mean it. Like they say, actions speak louder than words.

One thing you can gather from what’s been said above is that brand ambassadors circulate around employee engagement. For starters, it stems from employee engagement as well as it creates for further employee engagement. It’s a cycle in a sense. It’s a cycle that most leaders should utilise in order to achieve effortless growth.