6 things that rock your ambassador program

The nature of a Startup is to drive innovation. But customers/users are only proactively embracing innovation, when a product finds its ideal market-fit. To get there, startups need to hustle and growth hack to reach a critical mass of customers, users, and visitors that proves the product is needed. Now, roughly 50% of app downloads are based on word of mouth, which shows that people make decisions for what product to use mainly based on friends’ and influencers’ opinions. But how to leverage that to build a growing community of users, clients & customers?

6,035 likes in 8 hours on our latest Facebook post. 37,760 people saw a video posted 12 hours ago we were mentioned in … how does that sound? This is what was happening when we started rolling out our “swaaag ambassador program” mid 2014. We had figured that if we would enchant “music bands” with a Facebook Fan Page with 1–2 Million followers, we could achieve a great conversion rate between the “likes” we got and the actual “app downloads”. We connected with bands on all their social channels and interacted actively on their posts: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. In parallel we started to ping them via email with a direct ask to do business. … “Your brand reaches the same target audience we are serving with our app, thus would like to discuss promotion campaigns”… No BS — No Spam — No fake sales talk! 55 out of 60 contacts didn’t respond at all. 4 responded they were not interested in … and the one band we got to speak with … the one we spoke with- we hooked them big time!

Build a community of raving fans

1. Why does only a “fun ambassador program” matter?

If you are looking to build a community of users, clients or customers, a fun designed brand ambassador program allows you to leverage the existing audiences and reputations of influencers to reach your goals. Use caution though, and make sure you don’t see the ambassador program as a social campaign, but as a social brand experience designed to increase visibility and obtain a sustainable reach into your target audience.

In order to create an “experience” — you want to gamify the story of the program. At swaaag, for instance, we motivated influencers to invite followers to join swaaag to express excitement, moods and love beyond a boring comment or like. The ones who did — got visibility on our swagr leaderboard based on their engagement! The slogan was “if you don’t have swaaag — you don’t have swag”. Users embraced the message and it became fun for all parties. Ambassador programs are a great, qualified growth hack method with measurable return of investment and are awesome to convey brand experience.

“Take your target audience beyond boring campaigns — into a personal way of experiencing your brand” -tommaso db

2. Who are ideal ambassadors?

Having brand ambassadors is never about the quantity — but the passion with which ambassadors represent your product, hence the quality of the promotion service. You want a brand ambassador for sure that influences your target audience that you are aiming to hook, which finally should use your product. Be aware that many Social Profiles with more than 100k followers, are seen/behaving as social celebrities, which will make the outreach more challenging and the service more expensive.

Besides, expect successful social influencers also to have “talent agencies” and not to be able to talk with them directly. In such a case — don’t waste your time pursuing agency conversations if you don’t have big dollars to spend (which a startup usually does not) — as they want to make a notable cut on the deal…

Instead, focus your efforts on contacting influencers between 5k and 50k followers to start out with. That’s a great sweet spot to start practicing your story. Great platforms to recruit ambassadors are the common venues such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Vine and Snapchat.

Other two potential influencers you might want to consider are on-hand existing “users” of your product that have been “fans” from the beginning (early adopters), who love the story and are therefore great people to enchant others. On the other hand — depending on how badly you really want to create buzz — are Hollywood celebrities … which yes, are quite a bit more challenging to reach out to … but not impossible if the purpose of your story is aligned with their values and your communication skills are “different”.

Tommaso FaceTiming with Seal about the swaaag ambassador program

3. How to reach out?

Like in any other “cold” communication — you have only 1/10 of a second to make a good impression. Therefore, you better prepare for how to DIFFERENTIATE before reaching out. Think of it that way: 99% of all emails are a) overloaded, b) text based and c) too general. This means, to get the potential ambassador’s attention you must avoid long emails, make the context very specific by referring to things the recipient can relate to and have only 1 call to action (= what you want them to do).

Especially because you want to act different in your message, it’s highly recommended to convey “vibe / emotions / authenticity”. You do so by sending a video in which either you / the team / the founders convey the message in a crazy / fun / authentic way, or you have a 30 sec product preview video they can digest with a blink of an eye. Cost point for that is < $100 with Fiverr. (!!)

If your ambassador program is more meant for a broader group of people, then you definitely should consider creating an online presence just focused on that. Get some inspirations on partner program pages from the following brands: lyft, hootsuite, Google Student Ambassador Program or the Lego Ambassador Network.

FYA: Going the extra mile will pay off!

4. What to say when talking to them?

The big question you better address right away without a potential ambassador asking is: “How do they benefit from using your product — compared to what they do today?” If they don’t really benefit from your product — but only the influencer’s followers do — then you want him/her to buy into the story “why it is a great thing” for his/her fans. In other words, the more the influencer is intrigued by what you guys do, the more real / authentic / successful the ambassador’s representation. The less interested the influencer is, the more the cooperation stands on a “financial” basis only.

In fact, the purpose of your endeavor is what you want an ambassador to buy into to represent your product. Ambassadors must have fun along the road — hence support the “why you are doing what you are doing” … and less the “what”.

In short, you need to master your storytelling like a pro — and forget the technical BS talk!

If you can’t break down “who benefits from what, when, and why” … then you better rethink your product strategy, your marketing … your “entrepreneurial doing”. First things first. Innovation is what usually brings the “value add” to the influencer — and it’s what raises the curiosity to give it a try.

5. What expectations need to be defined?
Once the potential ambassador buys into the program, (before signing an ambassador agreement) you want to break down “gives and gets”. Meaning, the things you expect the ambassador to do and on the other hand, what the influencer gets in return.

LENGTH & INTERVAL

Essential to an ambassador program is the length of the commitment you are envisioning. In fact, if you think of an ambassador as somebody who posts a couple of times, either a video or picture on Instagram, then you have misunderstood the goal of an ambassador program. It’s not a point campaign you want to get, but somebody who is contributing on an ongoing basis. Hence, you should look at an agreement that goes anywhere from 3–12 months. During this period of time, the ambassador should be proactively reaching out to his/her followers on a regular basis. In order to avoid friction, define the interval and the minimum outreach per week or month.

ACTIVITIES

The clearer you are up front, the lower the probability of you running into discussions later on. When you define activities for the ambassador to run, it is not thought to limit engagement beyond what you set — but to guarantee a minimum action for the situation, in case the influencer doesn’t perform anymore after a while. In fact it is pretty normal that influencers are pretty busy with tons of other things to do, thus you defining some simple tasks is helpful for their organization. Standard things we defined ambassador to do were (if applicable):

• “eat your own dog food” = use the product in any form
• come up with authentic things using the product
• invite your followers from other social media accounts
• add your profile of this new tool in the bio of influencer’s social accounts
• share content the tool allows you to export

GOALS

Depending on the grade of the relationship and the budget you invest, you can specify / or / quantify what you want the influencer to achieve. This brings into the program not just the importance of a defined “activity” — but reminds the ambassador that goals can only be reached if the quality of the outreach is proper. Goals can vary from traditional KPIs such as downloads, new customers, or sales, up to less tangible results such as increasing the brand awareness. In order to keep track of those goals, you need to make sure you have a tracking tool in place and a unique account ID per ambassador.

6. How to compensate?

Value is relative, especially when you are in LOVE with what others do. Imagine you having been early adopter at Snapchat / Instagram / Facebook … wouldn’t it have been amazing? Now — that’s exactly what you have to convey. Compensating with cash is always the easiest way. But startups are rich in equity and poor in cash … hence, you might want to define what’s appropriate for your situation.

Personal recognition can be worth a million bucks … and that’s what makes the world go ‘round!

For instance, you should be able to jump into an ambassador’s post with bits of recognition or commendations to nurture the community. Think of Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Rewards. Then, reward your ambassadors in ways that matter to them.

Now, rather than you claiming not to have the budget to proceed with an ambassador program, sit down & write the right story that hooks people … and just do it!

First access to a new product, an invitation to a special event, company merchandising or public recognition is likely to be more meaningful than money. — Tommaso db

Meeting with Stanford Football Players in Palo Alto (the youngest one is my older Son David ;-))

Your ambassadors are part of your brand family and should be able to interact with you and with fellow ambassadors. Regular conference calls — meetings — and debriefings make the ambassador part of the brand/product experience … which will lead to a boost in reach.

TAKEAWAY

• Gamify the program first
• Differentiate the way you reach out to influencers
• Storytelling is the engine behind your program
• Define expectations to avoid friction
• Compensations are often intrinsic
• Don’t claim no budget — do it

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Originally published at whatittak.es.