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How to Create a World-Class Brand Ambassador Program

Creating a World-Class Brand Ambassador Program

This post on 10 Thing to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program remains one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written. So to start off the new year, I wanted to do a deeper dive into the topic of creating and launching a successful brand ambassador program, and walk you through the process from the brand’s point of view.

So where do you start? How do you measure results? How do you choose your ambassadors? How do you integrate the program with your other marketing and sales functions? We’ll get into all that in this post, so read on…

First, I have to say of all the consulting work I do, helping companies build out brand ambassador programs is probably the most fulfilling. I love the challenge of creating a plan that’s going to help companies better build relationships with their most passionate customers. It’s so rewarding to know that you’re helping to build something that will greatly help the brand, but even more importantly, that will provide a much better product and experience for the customer.

If I were going to work with your company to help you build a world-class brand ambassador program, this would be the process:

Plan Your Brand Ambassador Program; How Does the Brand Benefit, and How Will Your Ambassadors Benefit?

Related: How to Incorporate Millennials Into Your Brand Ambassador Program

At a high level, your brand needs to ask and answer two questions when you start fleshing out your brand ambassador program:

  1. Who is our ideal brand ambassador?
  2. What relationship will we have with our ambassadors?

To further expand on the second point, you want to as clearly as possible detail how your brand benefits from an ambassador program, and how your ambassadors will benefit.

The benefits to both your brand and its ambassadors need to be clearly defined, and very obvious and desirable to both parties. Too many brands can clearly point to what they want to accomplish with an ambassador program, but they struggle to detail meaningful benefits to the ambassadors if they participate. This is why it’s so key to create solid benefits to the ambassadors. You want your ambassadors to be thrilled to join, in fact you want so many customers applying to be ambassadors that you could never accept them all.

Think of it this way: Let’s say you want to launch a brand ambassador program because you want to increase sales of a particular product line by 20%. That’s a pretty heavy lift that you’re asking of those ambassadors, so you have to do some heavy lifting of your own and make it worth the ambassador’s while to join and then be committed to acting in a way that will help you realize that 20% increase in sales.

The more clearly defined and OBVIOUS the benefits you offer ambassadors, the more likely they will be to want to join your program and help your program reach its goals.

    Benefits - Ambassadors

  • Salary
  • Greater Access to Brand
  • Early Access to New Products
  • Recognition and Promotion
  • Professional and Personal Development

          Benefits - Brand

  • Increased Sales
  • Increased Promotion
  • Product Feedback
  • Customer Feedback

As far as measuring and tracking results: Clearly define what your goals are for your brand ambassador program. Maybe you want to increase sales, or decrease calls to customer service centers, or improve customer sentiment online. Start with your core goal, then clearly define precisely what you want to see happen.  The more precise you are with your goals, the more accountable everyone will be for reaching them.  Don’t just say ‘increase sales’, say ‘increase sales by 8% for the first year of the brand ambassador program’. And your KPIs will flow from your goals and desired outcomes.

An additional note about goal-setting: Don’t be afraid to regularly revisit your goals and measurement tactics to make sure you’re on a realistic course. This is especially important during the first year of your brand ambassador program. Self-audit frequently, at least every 3 months, monthly is better for the first 6 months. There will be a lot of trial and error involved in launching your brand ambassador program at all levels. Be mindful of this, and don’t be afraid to change course if something isn’t working as expected.

Your Brand Ambassador Program Needs Internal Ambassadors

Before you do anything else as far as fleshing out your brand ambassador program, you need to know who will own it and who will fight for it internally. Ideally, you want more than one person who are customer-centric, and who can clearly communicate to their bosses the value of the brand ambassador program, especially in the early days when a direct impact on the business bottom line will be harder to quantify. These will be the people that understand how a brand ambassador program will benefit their brand, but they can also envision how such a program will improve the product and brand experience for the ambassadors, and all customers.

Your Brand Ambassador Program Should ALWAYS Be Integrated Into Your Existing Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Efforts

The quickest way to ensure that your brand ambassador program fails is to put it on an island within your organization. Left by itself, a brand ambassador program could take years to see measurable results that justify its cost. At best. Few companies will be willing to invest the money necessary to reach that point. The good news is that a brand ambassador program can begin benefiting your company almost immediately, if structured correctly.

A well-designed brand ambassador program will directly impact and positively affect most of the core functions of your business:

  • Marketing: Ambassadors will help promote your products to other customers
  • Sales: Ambassadors will drive new sales
  • Customer Service: Ambassadors will interact directly with customers both online and off, addressing their concerns and answering their questions.
  • PR: Ambassadors will not only spread positive news about your company, they will also proactively defend it against trolls and attacks.
  • Product Design: Ambassadors will collect valuable product feedback directly from customers, which your company can then implement to improve product design.

Think of it this way; You’re not reinventing the wheel by launching a brand ambassador program. As my friend Kelly Hungerford says, a well-designed brand ambassador program makes everything your company is already doing, work better.

Kelly Hungerford

" A well-designed brand ambassador program makes everything your company is already doing, work better."


Start Small, Grow Big

For most companies, the idea of launching a brand ambassador program is a completely new initiative. There’s a steep learning curve involved at first, and much of the process will honestly be trial and error in the first days. To minimize the expense and improve efficiency, it makes sense to start with a smaller core group of ambassadors. The idea is that you want to iron out the kinks with a smaller group, then once you’ve got the process nailed (and you’re seeing the results you want), then you can branch out with a larger group.

For example, if you are targeting single moms, maybe start out with a group of say 5 or 10 ambassadors, and over time as you develop your program, you can scale it out to 100 or even 1,000 single moms. If you want your brand ambassador program to drive sales at your retail locations, maybe focus on only your San Jose market at launch, with the idea being to eventually branch out into a national program.

Create Channels to Directly Connect Your Ambassadors to Each Other, and Your Brand

This can be something as simple as a Facebook or LinkedIn group or a Twitter group DM or a Slack channel.  Also, you want to have the brand representatives that they will be working with regularly present and active in these groups as well.

Why this is important:

  • It gives your ambassadors a place where they can get to know each other
  • It gives your ambassadors a place where they can share ideas, bounce questions off each other and get help
  • It gives your brand a place where they can directly communicate with your ambassadors
  • It gives your brand the ability to quickly and easily collect feedback from your ambassadors
  • It communicates to your ambassadors that you take their feedback and connection seriously, which further motivates them to be more active

Beyond this group, you want to ensure that your ambassadors have as much direct access to your brand representatives as possible, as often as they need it.  Let’s say one of your ambassadors is ‘in the field’ and talking to a potential customer about your product. The customer is considering purchasing your product, and asks a technical question that your ambassador doesn’t know the answer to. If your ambassador had a way to message a brand rep and quickly get that information, it could result in an easy sale. This works regardless of how you will be using your ambassadors and across many core functions such as sales, PR, customer service, customer feedback, etc.

Collect and UTILIZE Feedback From Your Ambassadors

No matter what your working relationship is with your ambassadors, you should always focus on how you can empower your ambassadors to do a better job of collecting feedback from the customers they interact with, and from the ambassadors themselves. There’s a couple of key reasons for this:

  1. Think of the feedback collected from your ambassadors as being free market research. They will interact directly with current and potential customers, and get unfiltered product and brand feedback. The ambassadors will also have their own feedback to provide.
  2. Current and potential customers are more likely to give HONEST feedback to an ambassador than to your brand. Your ambassador will, for the most part, be viewed as just another customer by the people they talk to, so those people will let their guard down and give unfiltered feedback. That feedback may be more critical, but it will also be honest, and it will tell your brand exactly what it needs to do to win that customer’s business.

Your brand’s ability to collect and utilize feedback from its ambassadors is one of the biggest benefits from launching a brand ambassador program. The feedback your ambassadors collect from other customers aids your marketing, PR, customer service, and even product design. It’s invaluable, and a core tenet of your ambassador program should be to design it so that a premium is placed on collecting customer feedback.

All Your Ambassadors MUST Be Compensated

Whenever I talk to companies about compensating ambassadors, I stress two points to them:

  1. All your ambassadors MUST be compensated
  2. Paying them with cash should be your last option

Let’s take a closer look at each point.  First, you must compensate your ambassadors. The level of involvement and work you’re asking of ambassadors is about the same as a part-time job. By compensating your ambassadors, you are communicating to them that you value and appreciate their hard work, and that you aren’t taking it for granted. This keeps them motivated to work hard on your brand’s behalf. On the other hand, if you don’t compensate your ambassadors, they feel as if you are taking advantage of them and their time. Because you would be.

On the other hand, you should only compensate your ambassadors with cash if there are no other options. Paying ambassadors with cash frames their work as being a job. You don’t want the ambassador’s involvement to be viewed as work, you want it to be viewed as an act of love. They love your brand, and they want to work in a way to help grow and foster it.

So if you take cash off the table, how do you compensate your ambassadors? I always tell clients that cash should be the last option and ACCESS should be the first. Give your ambassadors better access to your brand and its products. Let them talk directly with the people that bring their favorite products to market. Let them have a first-look at new products, before even the press gets a chance to review them. In fact, in many ways giving ambassadors early access to new products can be a simple extension of what your brand is already doing with reaching out to the press to let journalists review your products early before they hit the market.  Treat your ambassadors as special people, because they are. Give them early access to products, give them tours of your facility, let them talk directly to the product and brand managers that help bring their favorite products directly to market.

And above all, ask your ambassadors how you can make their involvement worth their while. You will be amazed, but one of the best ways you can compensate ambassadors is to give them better access to your brand, and to take their suggestions seriously. Listening to your most passionate customers and ACTING on their feedback is one of the best ways you can reward them.

To be honest, simply paying ambassadors is pretty lazy. If that’s your best idea for compensating your ambassadors, then you really don’t know them very well. Go back to the drawing board till you come up with a better idea.

Don’t Just Read This Post, Act on it 

Too many people will read this post, think it’s a great idea to launch a brand ambassador program, then do nothing about it.

Yes, it’s a lot of work.

Yes, it may be hard to convince your boss to commit to it.

Yes, it will take a lot of time.

But the bottom line is, your customers are worth every bit of it. A well-run ambassador program is one of the greatest competitive advantages your brand can have. And as a brand employee, there’s nothing more satisfying than working directly every day with customers that genuinely LOVE your brand.

That’s what you get to do if your brand runs an ambassador program.  Start today, building the case internally for launching a brand ambassador program. Analyze your business, and detail all the ways that a brand ambassador program could positively impact your bottom line.  Scroll back up to the section on integrating your brand ambassador program as I’ve already given you the list.

Create a proposal for a brand ambassador program and present it to your boss.  Don’t position as ‘this is what it will cost us’, instead present it as ‘here’s how our brand will benefit’.  At worst, a well-run brand ambassador program should pay for itself.  At best, it will be a huge competitive advantage for your business.

Besides all of that, you are creating something amazing for your customers. You are creating a vehicle that allows your brand to not only get a better sense of who your customers are and what they think, but that also takes that customer feedback and IMPLEMENTS it and utilizes it within your brand.

And if you need help making the case to your boss and creating your plan, feel free to email me.  I’ll be happy to answer any question you have about creating a brand ambassador program, even if we don’t work together on it. I’ll be happy to help you get started, no strings attached, just reach out and I’ll be happy to help answer any general questions you have.

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The Two Keys to Creating Amazing Content: Empathy and Relevance

I’ll Fly Away is believed to be the most recorded gospel song ever. It’s been covered by everyone from The Kossoy Sisters to Andy Griffith to Johnny Cash to Kanye West. This is one of my favorite versions, by Alan Jackson:

https://youtu.be/SDqTENtNvKQ?t=1m20s

The song’s enduring popularity is thought to be rooted in how it takes the fear we all have of dying, and it re frames death not as the end, but the beginning of true happiness and joy. It helps to calm our fears; simultaneously reminding us that the pain and suffering of this world is temporary, while the rewards that await are eternal:

“Just a few more weary days and then…..I’ll fly away
To a land where Joy shall never end….I’ll fly away!”

I especially liked how the site Trial and Error Collective described the song: “I’ll Fly Away” is a song, like many traditional spirituals, intended to be sung by anyone and everyone. I would argue that it demands the voices of amateurs, so that they too can join in the peace and joy that it bestows.”

But perhaps the true reason why the song has inspired for almost a century is the empathy it has for the listener. Its lyrics speak to those feeling powerless, and it empowers them. The sense of worry and dread in the face of death is replaced by strength and joy at a time when the listener needs it most.

 

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know that I often reference music and certain songs in my posts. The reason why is because good content is good content, regardless of the form it takes. Many popular songwriters have the ability to write in a way that shows empathy for the listener. Creating content that shows empathy for your audience is one of the easiest ways to arrest the attention of your audience. I use the word ‘arrest’ deliberately, because if your content is empathetic to your audience, it forces, it compels them to pay attention.

Another powerful way to show empathy for your reader is to create content that is relevant to them.

What is relevant content?

Relevant content is content that provides someone with the information they need, at the time they need it, in the form in which it is most useful for them. Notice that you need to focus on timing and form when determining if content is also relevant.

Last March I was in the market for a new smartphone. I wanted to stay with iPhone since I had an iPhone 4S at the time. So I did copious amounts of research on several models, ultimately focusing on deciding between the iPhone 6s, the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus before buying the iPhone 7 Plus. But as soon as I bought my iPhone, I stopped reading the articles that compared different models, because I had already made my purchase, the same information that was completely relevant before I made my purchase, no longer was.

You also need to consider the type of content that’s most relevant to your audience. Years ago I created a very crude Speaking page to let event planners learn more about me and (hopefully!) hire me for their event. At first, the page just featured a couple of paragraphs explaining the topics I spoke about, and the only picture I had of me speaking. Over the years, I would get feedback from companies and conferences, and I would adjust the content on my Speaking page accordingly.

“Do you have any references?” led to my adding Testimonials from past events I’d spoken at.

“Do you have any videos of your speaking?” led to my adding, you guessed it, videos of me speaking.

By factoring in the elements that made the content more relevant to my audience, my speaking page converted at a higher rate.

 

Relevance and Empathy Are Your Secret Weapons

There are two things you can add to your content in 2018 that will instantly make it resonate more with your audience; Relevance and empathy. Relevant content captures our attention. Over the holiday break I was researching a topic, and as I often do, I was using my laptop while also checking something on my phone at the same time. So my attention was fractured, to say the least. I was scanning google results on my laptop while checking notifications on my phone. Then, while scanning the google results, I found an article that looked like it was exactly what I was looking for, and I clicked over and for the next 10 mins or so I was completely absorbed by this article. I had to laugh when I noticed that I had put the phone down without even realizing I had. The relevant article had completed sucked me in and captured my attention.

Relevant content is interesting content.

 

Forget Creating ‘Better’ Marketing and Content, Focus on Creating More Relevant Marketing and Content 

‘Better’ is all the rage when it comes to customer marketing. Businesses are striving to create better content for customers, a better experience for customers. The first cousin of ‘better’ in this context is a more personalized experience with more personalized content. Even B2B marketers are getting in the game, Account-Based Marketing is one of the hottest trends in B2B Marketing, designed to focus on target accounts vs target markets, with the end goal of giving ‘better’ marketing to these target accounts inside of giving less specialized marketing to a target market as a group.

Tools and marketing methodologies, when used correctly, can help your business better understand its customers. But at the end of the day, you have to WANT to better understand your customers. You have to want to understand what a more relevant piece of content would be to them. And not because you want to improve your KPIs or move a needle. But rather, because you know that providing more relevant and interesting content and experiences for your customers WILL result in more sales.

Making the customer the priority over the business means you both win.

 

The Only Content Rule You Need to Follow in 2018 and Beyond

Think about all the hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘rules’ that have popped up in recent years when it comes to content creation. There’s been numerous research studies done into what is the perfect length/form/topic to drive social shares. How to write the perfect headline, how to optimize for search engines, what day to publish your content, what time of the day.

Notice how formulaic these ‘rules’ are. Also notice that none of these rules actually take into account the person you are creating the content for.

Here’s the only content rule you ever need to follow: Create content that is relevant to, and emphatic toward your audience.

Want to improve your engagement numbers this year?  Want to increase your conversions?  Want to get more people interacting with your content? Sharing it?  Contacting you to buy a product because they liked it?

Ask and answer these three questions before you create any piece of content:

1 – Who am I creating this for?

2 – Why is it relevant to them?

3 – How is it going to help them?

 

Ask and answer those three questions for EVERY piece of content you create this month.  Then check your results vs your projections and see how you did.

The thing is, we as content creators know why WE are creating that piece of content.  We know what WE want to happen, we know what OUR desired outcomes are.

But we don’t always put as much thought into making sure that the customer’s needs are met. Which often means our needs aren’t met either.  Funny how that works out, isn’t it?

 

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The Secret to Getting More Engagement on Our Blogs That We’ve All Forgotten

From 2006-2011, I did a weekly ‘Top 25’ list of the best marketing blogs on my first blog The Viral Garden. Yesterday, I was doing some maintenance on The Viral Garden, and I found a Top 25 list I did back in December of 2007.

Ten years ago! When I saw the list, I was immediately curious to see how many of the blogs were still around and active, ten years later.  Most of them had either ‘died’ years ago, or had moved to a new URL, a couple had apparently let the hosting for the domain lapse and someone else had taken it over. BTW, props to Valeria, her blog Conversation Agent is still going strong, looks to be even more prolific today than it was 10 years ago!

I spent probably two hours clicking the links and reading the blogs, several of which I hadn’t visited in years. It was a very interesting digital trip down memory lane. Putting my Content Strategist hat on, I immediately noticed several differences in the content being created on these blogs 10 years ago versus today:

  • Shorter posts. There weren’t a lot of 1,500-word posts floating around in 2007. In fact most where a few hundred words, if that.  Short, and to the point.
  • There were few ‘How-To’ posts. There was little, if any teaching and instructive content. I have a theory on why this is the case, and I’ll get to it in a minute.
  • No ‘Listicle’ posts. You know, “Ten Steps to Building a Better Blog” or “Five Ways to Improve Your Digital Presence Today!”

But what really struck me about the content being created on these blogs 10 years ago was the tone. Most of these blogs were written as if the blogger was talking to no more than 30 people. Because they probably weren’t! I think back to my own experiences blogging around this time, and there were many days when I wouldn’t crack 100 visitors. But the flipside was, I knew most of the people who visited my blog, because they were commenting on my blog!

And when you are writing for people that you know, and people who know you, you write differently. Remember I said that most bloggers in 2007 didn’t write ‘How-To’ or ‘Listicle’ type posts.  Instead, they mostly wrote ‘Here’s what happened to me today’ type posts, with a business slant or moral behind the post. But when you write in that way, it’s much more ‘folksy’, and it makes you much more relateable.

One of the constant complaints I hear from bloggers in #Blogchat, from clients who blog, is “No one ever comments on my blog anymore!” We know why some of this happens; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social sites are fragmenting conversations. Most bloggers and their readers weren’t using these sites in 2007, so as a result, social conversations were still mostly happening on blogs. Over the years, as these sites grew, we started to spend more time off our blogs, which meant our social interactions followed us.

Sidenote: Back in those days I had a ‘trick’ I would use to get more blogging readers. A decade ago, Technorati would list all the blogs (or it tried to) by their number of links. And you could sort them so that the list would be ascending or descending. I would sort the list of blogs so that it was ascending, meaning that it showed me the blogs that had few or no links, first. My thinking was that the blogs with few or no links were probably brand new bloggers, so I wanted to check them out and comment as often as I could, to help them get going and also to get on their radars so they would start reading and commenting on my blog! One day, I found a particular business blog with few or no links, and I clicked over and started reading the blog. It had about 5 or 6 posts, the first five were strictly business focused, on a particular topic, all written in a very textbooky tone. None of them them got any comments. Then the ‘newest’ post was simply the blogger asking “Why in the world isn’t anyone commenting?!?  I keep writing posts, putting a lot of effort into them and no one comments!”  That was the last post on that blog, the post was about 3-4 months old by the time I saw it, and I remember thinking “I just saw this blog die”. That’s always stuck with me, for whatever reason.

But looking back at these ‘old’ blogs from 2007 and such, I’m reminded of the role that the tone of our blog posts plays in driving engagement. Or, how the tone used can stifle engagement. Remember I said that I saw few ‘How-To’ or ‘Listicle’ posts on these blogs from 2007 years ago. Now, these are all the rage on blogs, but think about why that is. These types of posts are written to EXPAND your audience. They are written to help more people, many of which you don’t know. So you write in a tone that’s more formulaic and impersonal. This makes your message more accessible to a larger audience, but it also makes your message less engaging, in a way.

I want to illustrate how this applies to one of my favorite blogs from 10 years ago, Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users. Kathy’s blog was always brain candy to me, but even though she had a massive audience, her blog always felt welcoming and engaging in a way that I never really understood. As I was reading these old blog posts from 2007, I noticed that one of the blogs had Creating Passionate Users on their blogroll (remember those?), so I clicked over and started reading Kathy’s blog. I was immediately struck by the tone! She wrote in a way that made it seem like she knew all her readers and was just chatting with us at a bookstore and having a casual conversation just with us. It made her content much more interesting, and engaging, even if I didn’t realize why at the time.

So if you want to write to expand your audience and to establish your expertise, the ‘How-To’ posts and really any content that teaches a skill is a good idea.

But if you want to increase engagement, if you want to get more comments and interaction, do like we used to do in the ‘old days’ of blogging; Write like you only have 30 readers, and you know who each of them are.

Try it! It really does change the way you write, doesn’t it?

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Research: Online and Offline Conversations Account for 19% of Sales

An exciting new study from Engagement Labs (Formerly Keller-Fay) had some very interesting takeaways for brands concerning the impact that online and offline WOM has on sales.  The study tracked the correlations between conversations (online and offline) and sales for 170 brands.  The research found 19% of sales resulted from both online and offline conversations.  Further, the study found that both sources contributed almost equally; 10% of sales resulted from offline conversations (Word of Mouth) and 9% resulted from online conversations (Social Media).

The study also looked at how a brand uses social media can impact sales: “By improving social performance by just 10 percent, the brands included in this study can realize a two percent increase in sales and large improvements in profit margins compared to business-as-usual figures. For example, the sentiment of conversations, both online and offline, were proven to be a big driver of performance. Therefore, by improving sentiment, a brand can experience a sales lift.”

The More Positive the Conversation Around Your Brand, the Higher Your Sales

So let’s unpack that previous paragraph a bit. If a brand improves the efficiency of its social media efforts by 10%, it realizes a 2% increase in sales. That alone is incredibly significant. But additionally, positive sentiment about a brand online and off leads to an increase in sales.

And what group is the biggest driver of positive sentiment about your brand online?  Your happy customers!  Your biggest fans are not only the biggest contributors of positive conversations around and about your brand, but they are also the group that is the most motivated to talk positively about your brand!

This is precisely why I am so dedicated to helping companies better connect with and empower their happy customers. Additionally, customers are more likely to listen to and trust a fellow customer than they are a marketing message that comes directly from a brand! You know this to be true from your own experiences: Which are you more likely to trust; A commercial for a brand, or an endorsement for that same brand from a customer you meet in a store? You’re going to trust the customer over the commercial, right?  Of course you are.

If you want to improve the sentiment of the conversation around your brand online, then make sure your happy customers are more active participants in that conversation.  That’s it.  If you don’t take a role in engaging your happy customers, they will be less likely to create positive content around and about your brand online.  Which will lead to fewer sales.

But we want you to have more sales. And as this study found, just a 10% increase in the efficiency of your social media efforts results in a 2% increase in sales.  For a small business with at least one employee, average annual revenue is $4.9 million.   So if a small business with one employee could improve its social media efforts by just 10%, it could realize an increase in sales of $98,000.00.

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How to Incorporate Millennials Into Your Brand Ambassador Program

Using Millennials as Brand Ambassadors
Want to know how much it will cost to create a Brand Ambassador Program for your company? Check out Mack’s Rate Sheet.

In many ways, millennials are ideal for most Brand Ambassador Programs given who they are, how they communicate, and where their passions lie.  The starting point for the group defined as millennials is generally considered to be anyone born in ‘the early 1980s’, and most sources put the end-point for this age group as being 18-20 years later.  So for the purposes of this article, I’ll call millennials anyone between the ages of 15-35 in 2017.

Before we talk about how to incorporate millennials into your Brand Ambassador Program, let’s look at some of the key qualities and characteristics that define this group of people:

Millennials are digitally savvy: Millennials have used computers and digital devices for most of, if not their entire lives. Additionally, millennials are the first generation to grow up with a robust internet available to them. Millennials are quite comfortable with and even expect digital experiences in many if not all forms of communication.

Millennials thrive off connecting with others: Millennials as a group are definitely extroverted, they seek out communication with others, especially within their same age group. This is slightly in contrast to their older siblings who are members of Generation X (who may also be their bosses), as that group tends to be more self-reflective and values solitude more than millennials. Keep this in mind if there are no millennials involved in the planning of your brand ambassador efforts if you want to attract millennials to your program.

Millennials have a highly-tuned bullshit sensor when it comes to advertising: Having grown up with the internet and social media, they’ve also grown up with a lot of bad advertising. They are naturally weary of anything the ‘smells’ like advertising. On the flipside, they prize authenticity.   They view open and honest communication as a show of respect for them, and this improves brand loyalty and attraction for millennials.

Millennials support causes that benefit their communities and the planet on local, national and global levels: One thing that I think is quite impressive about millennials is that they are passionate about problems they view within their communities, but they are also more than willing to play an active role in working to solve those problems. They are very giving of their time to help support causes that they believe in, and that speaks to their credit. Keep this in mind when you move to fleshing out how millennials will be compensated within the structure of your Brand Ambassador Program.

 

Related: 10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program

 

So when you are fleshing out how millennials can be a part of your Brand Ambassador Program, you want to factor in the above qualities that define this group. Let’s look at the role you should ask millennials to perform as Brand Ambassadors, how you can best engage them, and finally, discuss the best ways to compensate them.

How Should You Ask Millennials to Act As Brand Ambassadors? When a brand launches an ambassador program, one of the first strategies is to attempt to leverage the Brand Ambassador Program as a vehicle to drive new sales. There are many other ways to leverage a Brand Ambassador Program (as a way to drive customer feedback, as a way to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, to help with product design), but driving sales is often a logical starting point, since budgets for Brand Ambassador Programs are often justified by the promise of new sales generated.

Yet when we consider working with millennials as our Brand Ambassadors, we need to factor in the unique qualities that define this group when deciding on the type of relationship we want and expect of them.  In short, we need to remember that:

  • Millennials are very wary of advertising messages
  • Millennials prize authenticity
  • Millennials are very engaging, especially with other millennials
  • Millennials are quite comfortable with the internet and digital tools

So for example, if you want millennials to work to drive sales as part of your Brand Ambassador Program, you need to tailor your efforts to incorporate the qualities that define millennials. Case in point, we know that millennials are very wary of advertising messages and that they prize authenticity. Using these together, if you ask your Brand Ambassadors who are millennials to sell to other millennials, you have to be willing to let them do so in a way that will make sense to them as millennial Brand Ambassadors, but also to the other millennials they will be talking to. For example, since millennials prize authenticity, you have to give your millennial Brand Ambassadors the freedom to openly discuss what they like AND dislike about your brand. It might seem scary to have your Brand Ambassadors out there openly discussing what they dislike about your brand, but if they are speaking to millennials (and many other age groups, for that manner), this will actually improve their ability to sell to those millennials.  In short, regardless of how you want your Brand Ambassadors to act on your brand’s behalf, you have to consider how they can most comfortably help your brand reach its goals.

 

How Should You Engage Millennial Brand Ambassadors? Two of the defining qualities of millennials is that they thrive off open communication, and they prize authenticity. So this means when engaging your millennial Brand Ambassadors, you want to give them as much honest communication and information as possible about your Brand Ambassador Program and how you want to work with them. Give them a thorough knowledge of what your Brand Ambassador Program is, what you are hoping to accomplish, and talk to them about how you want to work with them. If millennials have a sense that their opinions are valued and respected, and they feel as if they have a sense of ownership over the Brand Ambassador Program, they will be more invested in seeing it succeed. This willingness to honestly engage the millennials you are working with also speaks to their love of authenticity, which will appeal to them and help them become more invested in your efforts.

Also, keep in mind that millennials are also very comfortable with digital and social media tools. So another option could be to create an online portal, forum or group where Brand Ambassadors could connect with each other and share tips and ideas.  Also, you could have the brand’s management be involved with this group, so that the Brand Ambassador’s best ideas could be pitched directly to the brand, and quickly incorporated into the program. This incorporating of ideas from millennial members also helps them become more invested in the Brand Ambassador Program itself, as it send the strong message to the millennial ambassadors that their opinions are valued, and will be acted upon.

 

How Do Your Millennial Brand Ambassadors Want to Be Compensated? I’ve always said that your Brand Ambassadors should absolutely be compensated for their efforts. There’s a big time commitment involved, and everyone deserves to be compensated for their time. However, money is not the only way to compensate Brand Ambassadors, and only compensating with money has ramifications. I see many Brand Ambassador Programs that only focus on leveraging Brand Ambassadors as salespeople, and they are compensated with commissions on their sales. The potential problem with this approach is that it frames every customer interaction a Brand Ambassador has a sales-interaction only. The Brand Ambassador is typically only interested in completing a sale, and isn’t as interested in any customer feedback that might be collected, and which is often far more valuable than completing an individual sale.

Now that I’m off that soapbox, let’s look at how to compensate your millennial Brand Ambassadors. Having said all the above, I still think it’s fine to compensate millennial Brand Ambassadors with cash, but I also think other forms of compensation should be considered. For example, we know that millennials thrive on open communication, and they love authenticity. Keeping this in mind, you could adopt the rock star mentality and give your millennial Brand Ambassadors special access ‘behind the scenes’ at their favorite brand.  Give them special access to the marketing team, or to product development.  Let them know about upcoming products or initiatives that the general public doesn’t know about or that won’t know about for months.

Also, feel free to tap into their natural love of being active in their communities. For example, if a brand like North Face launched a Brand Ambassador Program with millennials as members, it might want to have a special Beach Cleanup Day just for its Brand Ambassadors.  An initiative such as this would be a way to not only reward millennial Brand Ambassadors, but also give them a way to improve their local community, which taps into their desire to be invested in helping locally. Perhaps this event could be made open to the public and even used as a sort of membership drive as a way for the existing millennial Brand Ambassadors to meet other millennials who would want to help clean the beach, but who may also become interested in learning more about joining North Face’s Brand Ambassador Program.

 

So there’s some ideas for how you can work with millennials in your Brand Ambassador Program. Since this group has already become the largest generation, working with them is no longer an option, it’s now reality. As with any solid Brand Ambassador Program, think about how your brand benefits from the program, and think about how your ambassadors (in this case millennials) will benefit.

Find a win-win situation for both your brand and your ambassadors, and your Brand Ambassador Program will be a success.

BONUS: Here’s this post in video form to make it even easier to share with your team:

UPDATE: Here’s an example of company brand ambassador programs that leverage millennials as members:

Red Bull’s Wings Team: This group of ambassadors (or ‘Student Marketeers’) mostly includes people who are deemed popular and influential within their local communities.  Members are involved in ‘activations’ involving the Red Bull drink, typically more than a simple product demonstration.  These can involve elaborate stunts such as ‘air drops’ or slipping free Red Bull into classrooms or in vending machines for free. The main goal is to connect with college students as these are also millennials.

 

 

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Connecting With Your Customers Should Be a Part of Your Culture, Not Part of a Publicity Stunt

You may have seen over the last few weeks how a user on Twitter spotted an odd pattern to the few people that KFC was following on Twitter:

And KFC responded by sending him several goodies, including a rather large painting of himself along with the Colonel:

Now, on the surface, this is a cool thing for a brand to do. It got KFC a ton of positive publicity and will no doubt win Wieden & Kennedy (The agency behind this idea) a ton of awards. But whenever I see something like this from a brand, my first question is “Ok, now what comes next?”

The problem is, these ‘let’s send a customer something cool’ stunts typically end up being just that: Stunts. They aren’t part of a larger strategy or initiative.  They are typically one-offs designed to generate short-term publicity for the brand, and the agency of record.  W&K can easily point to social media engagement and claim this is a ‘win’.  Just look at the first tweet from @edgette22, it has over 700K RTs currently.  I’m sure KFC is thrilled with that, and W&K will win a ton of social media awards for this.

But at the end of the day, what needles were moved?  What long-term impact will this have for KFC?

Since this happened, I’ve had strategy discussions with two major brands (everyone here has heard of both of them and you likely use their products).  In simple terms, we discussed how these brands can better connect with their customers. We discussed what they could do to better collect feedback from customers, and better ACT on that feedback to improve existing business and marketing processes.

In both cases, we never discussed “Hey guys what if we did some Twitter stunt where we send something cool to a customer?” Because if you really want to connect with your customers, you can’t do it just once, it has to be your commitment and your culture.

Now to be fair to KFC, they could very well have many other customer engagement efforts underway. Maybe they’ve launched a customer advisory board, maybe they have a brand ambassador program, or maybe they are looking to launch such efforts.  If so, I wrote the book on both topics.

I just get a little testy when it appears that brands are only embracing their customers as a way to get a public pat on the back. Actually committing to embracing your customers is damn hard work, and much of it goes without public acclaim. Your brand has to literally love and care for its customers. You have to value them and view bringing the voice of the customer into your organization as being a cause worth fighting for.

If you only do it in public, you’re committed to the publicity.  If you also do it in private, you’re committed to the cause.

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How Often Should You Blog If You Have a Business Blog?

One of the biggest questions bloggers of all stripes face is how often they should blog. For personal bloggers, the answer is simple; whenever you want. But for business bloggers who use blogging as a way to drive new sales and for building awareness, a posting strategy is far more important.

Business bloggers face many restrictions that personal bloggers don’t have to worry with.  Probably the two biggest restrictions are a lack of time, and oversight from bosses and having to work within the confines of your company’s larger digital and content strategies.

 

If You Had All the Time In the World…

So in an effort to decide how often you should blog for your business, let’s start with removing the time restriction.  Let’s assume you had all the time in the world to write whatever you wanted.  If time were no longer an issue, how often should you blog?

The answer, of course, is “it depends…”  In general, publishing more content (assuming it has value to its audience) is better than publishing less.  If your blog is itself a business, meaning you will be selling advertising or sponsorships on it, then you will likely need a pretty aggressive posting schedule.  Likely one new post each weekday.  At least. The idea is that your advertising and sponsorship rates are set in great part based on your blog’s traffic, which is why you need to post more often in order to raise traffic levels.

But most businesses attempt to leverage their blogs as a way to generate new business leads or customers. So for these blogging businesses, a slightly less ‘ambitious’ posting schedule is more prudent.

If your business wants to use its blog to build awareness or generate leads, then ideally one post each weekday, Monday through Friday, would be perfect.  In addition, one of these posts, likely in the middle of the week, should be a longer, more in-depth post on a topic that’s core to your business.  Think of it as a White Paper used as a blog post. So every week, ideally, you would write four shorter posts, with one longer, more in-depth post published in the middle of the week.

So in a perfect world where you had all the time in the world…you would want to blog once a day during the week, with four shorter posts, and one longer, more in-depth post.

 

Now, Back to the Real World

Unfortunately, you don’t have all the time in the world. Your limited time means you have to prioritize your content creation efforts. If your primary goal for your blog is raising awareness for your company, then you need to create more content, plain and simple.  The more you post, on average, means more traffic for your blog, more exposure, higher search rankings, etc.

This means you need to balance your available time with posting once a day during the week, if possible. Posting more often helps your blog get more traffic and exposure. I’ve been very inconsistent in my posting the last few months, but just this week so far I’ve posted twice, and traffic is already up 10% versus last week.

What you need to do is balance your available time with making sure that you connect with your audience.  In other words, you want to make sure that your posts are going to be seen by your audience. If your audience only reads blogs on the weekend, then you only want to publish content on the weekend.  If they only read during the week, then that’s when you want to post.  If you aren’t sure, in general, most blogs see highest traffic levels in the middle of the week and during the middle of the day.  So if I know I can only write say 2 posts a week, I will publish those posts on Tuesday and Thursday.  If I can write three, then they will run one a day from Tuesday through Thursday.

Also, consider if your audience is seasonal. My audience is primarily managers and directors who work at companies and who have control of digital budgets and allocations. Basically, the people that can write the checks and sign off on hiring consultants like me to help them improve their marketing strategies. As such, I take into account the likely schedules of this audience.  For instance, most of this audience takes its annual vacations in July and August. As a result, I don’t blog as much during the Summer.  On the other hand, in late Fall and early Winter is typically when this group is planning budgets for the following year. They are doing research to see who they should hire which is why I ramp up my blogging efforts the first 2 months of the year, and the last 2. I want to be on the radar for decision makers when they are looking and researching their consulting options.

 

How Do You Decide How Often to Blog?

You start in the middle, and work your way out. Start by writing one new blog post a week, and start in the middle of the week.  If you can only write one post a week, publish it on Wednesday.  If you can write two, publish them on Tuesday and Thursday.  If you can publish three, publish them from Tuesday through Thursday.

If you reach a point where you can publish a new post Monday through Friday, congratulations! If you find that you have enough time to create even more content, I would advise that you instead focus on improving your current content creation efforts before expanding further. If the main goal of your blog is to build awareness for your company, then in most cases you will never need to publish more than one post every weekday. If you find that you have time to create even more content, then focus on other content channels such as your email newletter or webinars.

If you blog for your business, how many new posts do you publish a week, and how did you decide on that number?

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What Influences The Cost of Instagram Ads In 2017?

Note from Mack: This is a guest post from AdEspresso by HootSuite. If your company would like to publish a guest post here, please email me!

 

There’s no getting around it. Visual social networks, like Instagram and Snapchat, are ruling the social media roost right now. For brands, Instagram has become a cornerstone of their marketing strategy. Research has shown that brand engagement on Instagram is astronomical compared to Facebook. Furthermore, the generations that succeed Millennials have shown less interest in Facebook — with swathes of Gen-Z opting to skip Facebook altogether in favor of social networks like Instagram.

So if you want to set up your next advertising campaign on Instagram, how much is it going to cost? That’s the question posed by Hootsuite’s AdEspresso, who analyzed $100 million dollars worth of Instagram ad spend to evaluate what influences cost per click.

They made some remarkable findings.

Instagram’s CPC is highest on Sunday, lowest on Tuesday

While it’s been common knowledge for a while that retail performs best over the weekend, it’s interesting to note the particular spike for Instagram’s CPC on a Sunday.

 

Apple devices are up to 50% more expensive to target

iPhones are by far the most expensive device to target on Instagram, and even the iPad outpaces standard Android smartphones. Why? In theory, Apple users have spent more money on their device, and therefore may be more apt to splash their cash on high-end brands.

 

Commercial breaks matter on mobile

AdEspresso noticed a curious spike in CPC during 2017’s Q2 among a usually low Instagram demographic; young males aged between 13-17. They realized that the spike occured during March Madness and the NBA playoffs. The NBA is the most popular sport with young men, and NBA star, LeBron James, has more fans on the social network than the NFL, the Patriots, and Tom Brady combined.

Multiple studies have confirmed that when big televised events go to commercial breaks, viewers are tuning out. But not by changing the channel; they’re scrolling through Instagram or Facebook instead.

To learn more, check out AdEspresso’s infographic on the cost of Instagram ads below:

 

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The Best Strategy to Adopt in 2018 is a More Flexible One

It’s the end of the year and companies across the country and world are knee-deep in business planning for 2018. Budgets are being justified, planned and allocated based on strategies created to execute against business goals for the coming year.

The best strategy you can adopt in 2018 is a more flexible one. The strategy you adopt in Q4 of 2017 for 2018 may not be relevant in a month’s time, much less for the entire year.

Increase the frequency of strategy performance audits.  It’s no longer enough to have a mid-year or even quarterly review of how your strategy is performing.  Adopting monthly or in some cases even weekly assessments of the effectiveness of your efforts will make it easier to pivot and capitalize on emerging market opportunities.

Make sure you are measuring the right KPIs for your strategy. One of the biggest mistakes companies make with their strategies when assessing if it is working is to measure the KPIs that are the easiest to measure versus what’s the most relevant to your strategy and goals. For example, when it comes to tracking engagement with your digital strategy, many companies default to the metrics that are the easiest to find, such as Likes, Retweets, or Comments.  If your digital strategy is built on driving sales, these aren’t the most relevant metrics to track as they are too far away from having direct impact on a sale.  You would want to track other metrics such as the number of times a sales page from your blog is loaded, or the number of times a call to place an order is initiated from your site or blog.

Engage in regular competitive analysis of your market players. This is a very powerful tactic if you’re smart about it. You should always be aware of what your competition is doing. Just because a competitor is doing something doesn’t mean it will work for your organization, but it still pays to know what’s up. Additionally, you can also easily scan feedback from customers via social media to see what they think of what the competition is doing.  For example, let’s say you are planning a marketing conference for Fall of 2018. What you could do now is identify 5 events that you feel yours would be competing with, and monitor the feedback from attendees on Twitter.  Any event in 2017 has a hashtag set up so that attendees can communicate with each other. This is also a great way for you to see what attendees are saying about their likes and dislikes associated with the event.  If you see common complaints from attendees across multiple events, that is a signal for what you need to focus on with planning for your own event.

BTW, competitive analysis can also work to show you what your competitors are NOT doing. I recently decided to shift my strategy in one particular area based on researching that most of my peers were NOT doing something that created an opportunity for me to serve potential clients in a way in which others were not.  So it works both ways.

Be open to adopting new tools to increase productivity or improve execution. This is especially important with your digital strategy as new tools are constantly popping up promising to improve content creation, engagement tracking, everything. Carefully monitoring social media sites and digital news sources will not only keep you up to date on the latest tools, it will also give you product feedback. You can see which tools are being promoted as ‘can’t miss’, then track feedback on these tools left by users on social media sites. Twitter chats and groups on Facebook or Linked are also great ways to see what tools your peers are utilizing within their organizations.

 

So keep these tips in mind as you are doing your strategy planning for 2018. In general, don’t be afraid to revisit your strategy and how it’s being executed, regularly.

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How Do You Blog Every Day For 1,000 Straight Days?

UPDATE! Here’s the transcript for this #Blogchat!

One of the biggest challenges bloggers face is creating content on a regular basis. In fact, an inability to create content regularly is probably the biggest reason why most blogs fail.  Creating content regularly is very difficult, even for seasoned bloggers.  I’ve been blogging ever since 2005, and I still struggle with creating content regularly.

So in February of 2015, Helen started her blog, Anchored Scraps. Her blog is all about encouraging letter writing, old-style correspondence. She uses technology to connect with other kindred letter writing enthusiasts. On Tuesday, she will hit an incredible milestone: She will have published a daily blog post for 1,000 straight days! Writing 1,000 blog posts is a fantastic accomplishment for any blogger, but to do so daily for almost 3 years is incredible.  Helen is a longtime participant in #Blogchat, so I invited her to share her advice on how to write a blog post for 1,000 straight days.

Helen will join us tonight at 8pm Central at #Blogchat. Please follow her on Twitter.

Here’s our topic: How Do You Blog Every Day For 1,000 Straight Days?

Questions (These will start at 8:00 with a new one asked every 10 mins:

Q1 – Why did you decide you wanted to write a new blog post every day?
Q2 – How do you find enough ideas for posts to blog every day?
Q3 – What tool (digital or analog) has helped you the most in creating daily content for your blog?
Q4 – How has blogging every day impacted your blog’s engagement and traffic?
Q5 – What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had about blogging everyday that you didn’t realize when you started?
Q6 – If someone wanted to start blogging every day like you have, what would be your best piece of advice for them?

 

Also, here’s a talk Helen gave earlier this year on blogging every day for 900 days! Life comes at you fast!

I hope you’ll join us tonight at 8PM as this is a wonderful chance to learn from Helen how to blog every single day!  Please follow Helen on Twitter, and also check out her blog, Anchored Scraps.  If you’ve never joined #Blogchat, here’s what it’s all about.