AMBASSADOR MARKETING

Social Media Ambassador Program: Complete Guide + 7-Step Launch Plan

A social media ambassador program is like having an army of spokespeople willing to vouch for your company.

90% of shoppers trust their peers more than branded content, so why shouldn’t you leverage that statistic?

This article teaches you how to launch a brand ambassador program to reach your marketing goals seamlessly.

We’ll also discuss the benefits you can expect, the different types of ambassador programs, and the differences between this program and an influencer marketing campaign, with plenty of examples and practical lessons.

Keep reading below.

What Is a Brand Ambassador Program?

A brand ambassador program is a specific marketing strategy that involves creating long-term relationships with brand ambassadors — spokespeople who vouch for your brand.

Insider tip: We always advise our clients who launch brand ambassador programs to create data-driven campaign plans.

You shouldn’t simply hand your company’s communication to your potential ambassadors.

That plan should be based on:

• Specific goals, whether you want to increase sales, build your reputation, or create awareness.
• Tight-knit relationships with your brand ambassadors, who should perform various duties: write social media messages, take part in offline events, try your products, and so forth.

Why Should I Launch a Brand Ambassador Program?

Successful brand ambassador programs have many benefits that our clients at inBeat noticed, too.

We’ll analyze them below with plenty of examples to understand how these programs work.

1. Social Media Ambassadors Increase Your Brand Awareness

Like influencers, brand ambassadors’ main communication channels are social media platforms.

Your ambassadors will help you leverage social media platforms, especially if they already have considerable followings.

Promoting your company to their audience naturally builds your credibility and opens your company to a new market.

For example, FIGS has created a community of social ambassadors among medical professionals.

Pro tip: Your ambassadors may use different social media channels, which is perfectly okay as long as your prospects use the same platforms.

For example, your potential customers might not browse Instagram for three hours daily but might attend conferences and events.

Insider tip: You should always select the right ambassadors after establishing your marketing goals, picking your channels, and building an influencer brief – not the other way around.

At inBeat, we call the research phase mood-boarding and the discovery phase mood-matching.

2. Social Media Ambassadors Build Loyal Brand Communities

A brand ambassador program helps you build a loyal community, which we noticed has several advantages on your ROI.

That’s thanks to:

• Lower CAC

Maintaining open lines of communication with happy customers is five to ten times cheaper than acquiring new prospects.

• Expensive purchases

Loyal customers make 67% more expensive purchases and buy more products in the long run. They also represent better opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

• More word-of-mouth recommendations:

This community creates natural user-generated content, such as online reviews, using your branded hashtags. This doesn’t just expand awareness but purchases because buyers trust online reviews more than branded ads.

• PR crisis support

Sometimes, companies experience PR or brand image crises, which can wane their sales and public support. However, having an established brand ambassador program means benefiting from the support of a trustworthy community. This strategy prevents a massive market share loss typically associated with these events, and helps your brand recover faster.

North Face has created a community of ambassadors supporting it:

Warning: Not all brand ambassadors can rally loyal communities around them.

You need someone:

• Charismatic
• Expert
• Credible
• Close to their followers

Insider tip: There are many types of influencers. At inBeat, we noticed that nano-influencers with smaller followings have higher engagement rates because they spend more time interacting with people. If you want to build a strong brand community, you need someone who can create those tight-knit, authentic relationships.

3. Social Media Ambassadors Can Increase Trust

Brand ambassadors are already perceived as reliable experts in their fields; when you partner with these people, their credibility will transfer to your brand, too.

Depending on your marketing goals, building authority and trust can be important for you if:

• You run a new company or want to reach an untapped market.
• You are launching a new product or feature that people may not understand because it’s very complex.
• Your products solve a customers’ need innovatively. Conversely, they solve a need people didn’t know they had.
• You have been going through a PR crisis and are trying to regain lost customers.

Note: Solving a need people didn’t realize they have requires a different type of message than regaining authority after a PR crisis.

For example, the inBeat campaign for Phone Loops showcased the loops that keep your phone stable when you’re taking selfies.

And the brand is still using this tactic:

Insider tip: Develop your social media communication plan starting from your goals.

4. Brand Ambassadors Help Create Persuasive Evergreen Content

Effective brand ambassadors know their audience, which is also your audience.

Therefore, they can tap into these insights to create persuasive content that convinces people to:

• Try your products
• Accept your perspective
• Become interested in a new feature
• And so forth

Insider tip: We advise our clients to leverage brand ambassadors for social listening; heed their feedback, and their content will be high-quality and evergreen.

That means you can repost it for years, adapting and curating it for all your channels.

Of course, you would ideally want to create a long-term relationship with your brand ambassadors; that’s one thing that differentiates them from influencers.

But even so, the content they create now should be tapped into and capitalized to its fullest potential.

Remember: Use the content that brand ambassadors create on different channels: your website, marketing emails, social media accounts, ads, and whatever else fits your goals.

5. Social Media Ambassadors Can Skyrocket Your Sales

Your brand ambassadors:

• Transfer credibility and authority to your brand.
• Give you direct access to an untapped market.
• Connect you with the correct audience.
• Create relevant, evergreen content for that audience.

These are the right ingredients to boost sales and overcome any plateaus.

Insider tip: Choose brand ambassadors to meet all the above objectives, which are the precursors of increased sales.

6. Social Media Ambassadors Decrease Your CACs

Brand ambassadors are cost-effective because:

• They already use your products. Therefore, you won’t have to invest time and resources in educating them about your company. They may already have some effective ideas to improve communication with your audience.

Side note: Consider offering company-themed custom merchandise, such as shirts or other swag, as part of your brand ambassador program.

Providing ambassadors with branded mugs, coasters, and other merchandise can be a powerful way to reinforce their connection to your company and create a sense of belonging.

These items can serve as daily reminders of their role in representing your brand, fostering stronger loyalty and advocacy among your ambassadors.

Additionally, when they use these products in their daily lives, it becomes a natural way for them to share your brand with others, extending your reach and increasing awareness.

• They typically work for free. Brand ambassadors aren’t usually paid. And even if you may reward them with exclusive products, deals, or events – all those expenses will be negligible compared to the overall ROI they bring you.

Remember: Of course, you must invest some money in helping your ambassadors devise the right messages and send them your products.

Depending on your strategy, you may have to provide them with transportation to and from certain events.

But the overall cost of all these marketing efforts is well below what you would spend for an ad campaign with the same results.

Insider tip: Find someone who will work for your brand out of a passion for your products or values. That’s how you can ensure they will be okay with working relatively pro bono for your company in the long term.

Social Media Brand Ambassador vs. Influencer

Social media influencers are established, experienced content creators with substantial follower counts.

Brands typically employ them in the short term and have a transactional relationship with them.

Companies can also send products to social media influencers within product seeding campaigns, but that’s not always necessary.

Besides, influencers typically use social media channels and receive milestone, hourly or commission-based pay.

Brand ambassadors can be any type of person from established influencers to inexperienced regular people with reduced or substantial follower counts.

The prerequisite is being passionate about your products and brand.

Social media ambassador partnerships are typically long-term and rewarded with free products, access to exclusive events, and other deals.

Brand ambassadors can use social media platforms, but they also use other marketing channels to promote your brand.

Here’s the perfect example of all that:

Richard Fanders is a UK driving instructor who produces relevant content for students and drivers who want to improve their techniques.

• He is an influencer for two insurance companies. All his videos include trackable links to Collingwood and Confused insurance companies. Each time someone buys one of the Collingwood or Confused products using the tracking links, Richard Fanders gets a commission.

• He is a brand ambassador for his driving school. The companies above pay Mr. Fanders a commission and have been working with him for years. However, Richard is not a brand ambassador for them; he is an ambassador for his driving school, which he supports and recommends by simply creating this valuable social media content.

What Brand Ambassador Program Is RIGHT for YOU?

There are six types of ambassador programs to consider depending on your marketing objectives.

Read this section to understand if and how you can leverage an ambassador campaign.

1. Milestone-Based Ambassador Programs: Best for Control

This program resembles an influencer marketing campaign the most.

Your brand ambassadors have a specific checklist with deadlines they must accomplish within a certain period (e.g., five posts per week, one event per month, etc.).

Checklist apps will help them manage their tasks more efficiently.

Here’s Lululemon brand ambassador taking part in the brand’s campaign events:

Pros:

• Versatile strategy based on a contract
• Increased control over the communication and results
• Easy to amend the plan

Cons:

• May seem too transactional for your brand ambassadors

2. Affiliate Brand Ambassador Programs: Best for Sales

Affiliate ambassador programs are effective in boosting your sales.

Your ambassadors aim to get many people to purchase your products using their affiliate links.

That, in turn, gives them part of the profit.

Pro tip: You can also offer incentives to motivate affiliate brand ambassadors to reach a new sales tier.

Pros:

• Increased awareness
• Improved social media presence
• Boosted sales

Cons:

• The relationship is more transactional, which means your audience might trust your ambassadors’ content less
• Not best for building brand loyalty

3. Informal (Customer-Based) Ambassador Programs: Best for Loyalty

Informal ambassador programs are open to anybody passionate about your brand and products.

You won’t sign contracts or impose social ambassador requirements; you will rely on your loyal spokespeople or customers to create word of mouth on social channels.

As a result of their customer advocacy, you will increase your reputation and credibility and get more referrals.

Xbox has one of the best ambassador program examples that showcase a tight-knit community of players.

These players make recommendations and advocate for the game, enhancing its active users.

Pros:

• Social proof
• Increased referrals
• Relevant content that motivates
• Can create a sense of community

Cons:

• The absence of a strategy can lead to poor or inconsistent results
• Difficult to monitor results
• Difficult to optimize

4. Employee Ambassador Programs: Best for Persuasion

Employee ambassador programs are among the most persuasive because:

• Your employee advocates are very credible; they wouldn’t work for your company if they didn’t believe in it.
• Your employees have intimate insights into your products, strategy, and company culture. Therefore, they know which features to praise or which functionalities to present.

Nicole Damico is one of the employee ambassadors General Electric is using to maintain a solid online reputation:

Pros:

• Increased authenticity
• Insightful messages

Cons:

• The relationship may break if they move on to a different company

5. Expert Ambassador Programs: Best for Authority

Expert social ambassador programs are a version of the customer-based program.

But in this case, you will have to find experts who use your products and are passionate about them.

This strategy builds wide-scale acceptance and credibility, boosting your sales.

Dr. Charles, MD, is a board-certified dermatologist who regularly creates social media posts about Ulta Beauty skincare products.

Pros:

• Increased authority
• Strong, unique selling point that sets you apart from the competition
• Increased sales

Cons:

• May be difficult to find

6. Student Ambassador Programs: Best for Young Audiences

If you want to attract a younger target audience, college ambassadors will help you with genuine endorsements to their fellow students.

Besides, you can easily structure your social media campaign on a specific niche.

Pro tip: Use offline events and guerrilla marketing tactics to generate more buzz around your products and complement your social media marketing campaign.

Celsius, like many other brands, organizes college brand ambassador programs:

Pros:

• Increased social media awareness
• Easy to segment your audience
• Free word-of-mouth and buzz
• Social proof

Cons:

• Not best for older age groups
• Require increased offline presence

How to Start a Social Media Ambassador Program [Our Influencer Platform’s 7-Step PLAN]

Now that you know the benefits and different types of brand ambassador programs, you can start setting up a successful social media campaign using ambassadors.

1. Define Goals and KPIs

All marketing campaigns need to start with clear goals because these goals are the results you want to achieve.

And knowing where you want to get helps you set up the right strategy.

You will also realize which key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to track to reach those results.

Here are two examples to help you start:

KPIs for brand awareness include:

• Reach: How many people see your content? This variable can be measured through website traffic, social media engagement, and email list growth.
• Engagement: How engaged are those who see your content? Are they liking, sharing, commenting, or taking other actions?
• Sentiment: What is the general tone of the feedback you’re getting? Positive, negative, or neutral?
• Brand recall: When people think of your brand, do they remember your content? This variable can be measured through brand awareness surveys.

KPIs for lead generation include:

• Lead volume: How many leads are you generating?
• Lead quality: How qualified are those leads? Do they match your ideal customer profile?
• Lead conversion rate: How many of those leads are converting into customers? Use discount codes to keep track of sales.

2. Set Ambassador Selection Criteria

This point resembles creating a customer persona, but you will create an ambassador persona in this case.

Contouring an ideal brand ambassador will also help you establish specific guidelines or expectations for your campaign.

Remember: First, pick the type of ambassador program that fits your marketing goals from the section above.

Next, consider:

• Your ambassadors’ preferred experience and relationship with your product/brand
• The preferred social media platforms they should use
• The ideal follower size
• Ideal values and beliefs
• Preferred professional experience
• The type of content they should create
• Where they should promote your brand (offline and online), and how often
• Your preferred monitoring/check-in options

3. Find Your Brand Ambassadors

After you have outlined your ambassadors’ ideal profiles, it’s time to find potential brand ambassadors who fit those requirements.

Here’s what you can do:

3.1. Browse Your Followers’ List

Start from your social media channels.

Review your tags and mentions to find people always engaging with your brand.

Look through the comment section and likes as well.

After finding these people, comb through the list and ensure they fit your brand’s profile and audience.

Remember: Pick only the active people with a high engagement rate on that social media channel.

You can use our free Instagram engagement rate calculator for this.

3.2. Network at Local or Online Events

You can also find ambassadors for your brand at local or online events – especially the lives you host on Instagram or TikTok.

That way, you can ensure the potential social media ambassadors use the social channels your target audience also uses.

Here are some easy steps to get this started:

• Organize a Q&A at the end to see who sticks around.
• Pose questions or request suggestions to see who answers.
• Ask who is already using your products or wants to learn more about them.

Pro tip: You can always network like in the good old days and ask for specific recommendations from your business partners or acquaintances.

3.3. Check Your Database of Employees and Collaborators

When scouting for brand ambassadors, one of the most resourceful pools to tap into is your existing database of employees and collaborators.

These individuals already possess a wealth of knowledge about your company’s culture, mission, and products, making them inherently credible and passionate spokespeople for your brand.

Employees sometimes have extensive networks that can amplify your brand’s message organically.

By identifying enthusiastic team members who are already engaged with your brand and willing to share their positive experiences, you can build a team of ambassadors who are genuinely invested in your company's success.

Moreover, collaborators who have had favorable experiences with your brand can serve as powerful advocates.

Whether they are suppliers, partners, or part-time contributors, their external perspectives and testimonies can provide authentic endorsements that resonate well with potential customers.

To leverage these resources effectively, consider the following steps:

• Survey for interest: Send out a survey to gauge interest among employees and collaborators in participating as brand ambassadors. Include questions about their social media habits, willingness to create content, and reasons for wanting to be involved.
• Assess engagement: Review the online presence of interested individuals. Employees and collaborators already actively sharing their work-life balance and professional achievements on social media can be prime candidates.
• Training and guidelines: Provide thorough ambassador training and clear guidelines to these potential ambassadors to ensure they represent your brand consistently and professionally.
• Reward participation: Recognize and incentivize your ambassadors. This could involve offering exclusive discounts and products or spotlighting their contributions in company communications.
• Monitor and support: Regularly check in with your ambassadors, offer support where needed, and continuously gather feedback to improve the program.

3.4. Use Instagram Geotags

If you’re launching an Instagram brand ambassador campaign and want your ambassadors to be in a specific location, using Instagram geotags will help you suss out the profiles that fit.

All you have to do is open the Instagram app and type in the desired location.

We explain this process more in-depth here, along with finding content creators with tagged profiles and location hashtags.

Insider tip: The article above is filled with hacks you don’t want to miss, like how to use group photos.

3.5. Use inBeat

inBeat offers a influencer discovery platform to find highly engaged, vetted content creators.

We don’t want to brag, but the profiles we’ve selected are among the bestest, as we like to say.

While the average Instagram engagement rate is around 1-3%, our profiles usually jump the 20% mark.

This profile below has a highly engaged audience:

The filters are very intuitive, too; we’ve even included keywords you want to exclude to omit an entire category.

For example, you may want to omit HIIT and squats from your search if you want to promote your joint-friendly, low-impact fitness app to fitness enthusiasts.

Here’s how to use inBeat in five easy steps:

• Log in.
• Create a campaign.
• Choose live search.
• Pick your hashtags.
• Review the results.

Pro tip: Mega and macro-influencers are not always effective, although they have large follower counts. Other smaller types of influencers (nano- and micro-influencers) can help you reach your goals faster because they have tighter relationships with their audience.

Side rant: It’s simple math, really.

The fewer followers you have, the more direct and personalized interactions you can have with them. That’s how you can convince them to purchase the products you’re endorsing within an influencer marketing campaign.

3.6. Use Online Application Forms

You can always let your ambassadors come to you, so start with an ambassador application form.

This form popularizes your program, calling for prospective ambassadors in marketing emails or post-purchase messages.

You should also publish this form on your website.

Then, analyze the applications and pick the best candidates.

3.7. Outsource Your Discovery Efforts

Use an event staffing agency to connect you with highly engaged content creators with no fake followers.

You can develop long-term relationships with them so they can become effective ambassadors.

4. Sign a Social Ambassador Contract

Your brand ambassador contract should include the following:

• Exclusive rights to prevent your brand ambassadors from advertising your competitors’ products
• Repurposing rights to reuse their content at any time
• Expected results accompanied by precise guidelines
• Schedule with transparent deadlines
• Non-disclosure agreement
• The approval process to make sure the influencer requests your approval before posting on Instagram
• Legal responsibilities to clarify that you’re not liable if the influencer commits a crime while being your brand ambassador
• Payment procedure to specify details about payment, such as dates, quantum, and conditions

5. Set Tactics and Instruments for Your Ambassador Program

Focus on your customers’ needs and learn what motivates them.

Then, keep them engaged with:

• Blog posts that raise their curiosity
• Inspiring stories about influencers’ ups and downs, how they found their motivation
• Behind-the-scenes posts. Who doesn’t want to see their idol getting out of bed with messy morning hair?
• Original content from fans
• Competitions, giveaways, and challenges
• Polls and debates
• Prizes or certificates for loyal followers
• Sharing tips and tricks about your product
• Using your product in innovative ways
• Roasts
• Talking about hardships and how the influencers overcame them by using your product
• A day in your brand ambassador’s life

Ensure your chosen instruments are relevant to your brand and the current campaign.

If they fit your marketing strategy, they’ll bring in more results.

Repurpose this content to reach a wider market:

• Feature these stories on your website.
• Arrange them in categories on Instagram.
• Include them in your marketing e-mails.
• Make Instagram ads from them.

Pro tip: Use inBeat’s free Instagram mockup generator to test different looks and ensure your content gets the desired results.

6. Motivate and Pay Social Brand Ambassadors

Running an influencer or social ambassador program means balancing the fine line between building credibility and becoming a company that purchases its good reviews.

Monetary commissions aren’t necessary, though.

You can get ambassadors engaged with:

• Free products or discounts
• Exclusive deals and tries
• Gift bags or gift cards
• Access to exclusive events and parties
• Pay-per-click programs
• Store credit

Insider tip: Include the amount and associated details in your agreement if you want to pay your influencers.

Motivation is also important, and for that, you should consider:

• Creating close ambassador relationships ensures the right content and brand collateral are produced. Depending on your campaign, you can consider company logo and brand colors, brochure, or email newsletter are disseminated to the right audience.
• Recognizing your social media ambassadors’ achievements. The first step is personally sending them a message or email. Congratulate them, but also ask them how they did it. Their experience and feedback could be valuable for other ambassadors. Also, consider offering them recognition and exposure:
• Thank you notes or phone calls
• Shout-outs
• Mentions on your website
• Asking them for their input

Side note: You can always take it a step further by bestowing crystal awards upon top-performing ambassadors could be a memorable gesture of appreciation.

7. Monitor and Scale Your Campaign

First, create a centralized system for tracking your KPIs to have a clear overview of the campaign’s performance.

This includes quantifiable data, such as the number of brand-related posts, likes, comments, and engagement rates on Instagram.

Equally important is the qualitative data that can be captured through mid-campaign and end-campaign questionnaires and surveys, which provide insights into the ambassador's and audience's perceptions.

In addition to the social media-focused metrics, it’s essential to track the direct impact on your business objectives.

Monitoring additional traffic to your website via referral links in the ambassadors’ bios and analyzing any increase in sales attributed to discount codes used can offer a tangible measure of ROI.

Tools for Campaign Monitoring

• Google Analytics: Utilize this tool to track referral traffic and user behavior on your website, allowing you to pinpoint the effectiveness of ambassadors in driving your target audience to your digital storefront.
• Social media analytics: Platforms like Instagram provide in-built analytics that can help you monitor the performance of individual posts and overall engagement with your content. However, you can also use separate social media tools to get deeper analyses.
• Surveys and questionnaires: Deploy these tools to gather direct feedback from your audience. Mid-campaign surveys can help you gauge early reception and make necessary adjustments, while end-campaign surveys assess the overall success and areas for improvement.
• Engagement rate calculators: These specialized tools can automate the process of calculating engagement rates, saving time and providing consistent measurements for comparison.
• CRM tools: If you use Customer Relationship Management software, integrate campaign tracking into the system. This allows tracking interactions with discount codes and attributing sales to specific campaign activities.

Remember, monitoring aims not just to report successes and failures but to inform data-driven decisions for future campaigns.

By keeping a finger on the pulse of your campaign through diligent tracking and analysis, you can continue to refine your approach and cultivate brand ambassador relationships that yield the best results for your brand.

Scale Your Social Media Ambassador Campaign

Once everything is on track, consider scaling up your ambassador campaign.

For example, you can use influencer marketing to complement your brand ambassador program; these content creators have broader followings and can create more social proof.

Pro tip: inBeat is a great way to find these influencers, check their engagement rates, and suss out fake followers using our free influencer toolkit.

Alternatively, you can find content creators that produce credible and expert user-generated content for your brand.

Our UGC Studio is just one click away for you to try.

Awesome Social Media Ambassador Examples

Here are some good social media ambassador examples to draw inspiration from.

And yes, we’ve featured inBeat examples too.

1. Miro’s Expert Social Media Ambassadors

Miro is a digital collaboration platform that leveraged inBeat influencers to promote their Miroverse templates.

They specifically targeted B2B influencers within the fields of Agile, Product Management, and Diagramming on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok to create and share complex templates.

The goal was to build trust and increase downloads and active users for their app.

The campaign was carried out with the support of inBeat and involved influencers creating value-packed, visual content, resulting in increased app engagement​.

Leveraging influencers in niche areas can build trust and product familiarity, driving engagement and user growth.

The strategy of having influencers create and use the product in practical applications demonstrates its value and encourages downloads.

Such campaigns showcase the importance of delivering visually engaging and informative content that resonates with the targeted professional audience and aligns with the brand's goals.

Additionally, tech expert influencers can talk very enthusiastically and at length about your products, intuiting very precisely the arguments that are most likely to convince others.

As such, they can promote companies using remote work software or a task management solutions in a very credible manner.

Let’s summarize what you can learn from this program:

• Expertise matters: Engage influencers who are recognized experts to enhance product credibility.
• Practical demonstrations: Encourage influencers to create content showcasing real-world product usage.
• Multi-platform strategy: Utilize various social platforms for broader reach and engagement.
• Visual storytelling: Invest in content that is both informative and visually compelling.
• Product familiarity: Have influencers use and explain the product to foster user understanding and trust.
• Measurable outcomes: Track engagement metrics to gauge campaign effectiveness.
• Community building: Use influencer content to nurture a community around the product or service.

2. Mogo.ca Customer Brand Ambassador Program

Mogo employs micro-influencers to advertise their Bitcoin-related products and other services.

inBeat helps Mogo with its brand ambassador programs.

Creators like Carter Sullivan have a loyal following of young adults interested in budgeting, finance, and lifestyle.

Mogo knows that Millenials and Gen Z are more likely to be interested in Bitcoin.

The bias against these generations is that they’re irresponsible when it comes to financing.

Plus, credit cards are one of the easiest products to sell add-ons for.

This gives brand ambassadors more options for partnerships in the financial industry.

For example, a Mogo ambassador could feature SoFi’s credit score tracker in some Mogo promotions.

They could state the benefits of high credit scores and why tracking credit scores can help credit card users make more informed choices.

Here’s what you can learn from the Mogo Ambassador Program:

• Become your audience’s number-one supporter. Mogo supports its audience by admitting that, although young adults may have different priorities, they lead organized lifestyles.
• Use trustworthy micro-influencers that connect to your audience. Carter Sullivan relates to her audience because she knows financial education is limited in high school. The Mogo app has many learning resources on sustainable spending. These information tidbits are simple and easy to access, which is exactly what young adults want.
• YouTube is an excellent medium for showing how your product works. For instance, Carter Sullivan discusses how Mogo helped keep her credit score up. Plus, she did that without cutting back on so-called “unnecessary expenses,” such as coffee dates.

Videos convey emotions through verbal and nonverbal cues.

Micro-influencers on platforms like YouTube can attract more paying customers by displaying emotions.

• Associate your brand with an essential issue in your audience’s life. Young adults are interested in topics like global warming, so they support eco-friendly brands. That’s why Carter Sullivan explains how Mogo can help people reduce their carbon footprints.

3. Phone Loops Influencer Ambassador Program

inBeat also set up Phone Loops’ brand ambassador campaign.

This company’s product, aka the straps that attach to your phone, addresses an essential customer pain point:

Unlike old Nokia models, smartphones break when they fall.

So, whenever you choose a brand ambassador, ensure their content emphasizes your brand’s essential promise.

Repeating this promise is a reliable strategy because:

• Your brand gains notoriety.
• The recall is faster and easier.
• People start believing what you’re saying.

Insider tip: If you have a new, innovative product, move your audience on these levels: wariness → acceptance → want.

Phone Loops Instagram strategy was to showcase micro-influencers using their product in lots of everyday situations, such as:

• In planes’ bathrooms
• On boats
• In moving cars
• Taking selfies with their families

You can see hundreds of such pictures and videos.

Brand ambassadors recommend this product and provide excellent insight into its uses.

Most importantly, micro-influencers share relatable problems that Phone Loops helped solve.

4. Lululemon’s Fitness Ambassadors

Clothing company Lululemon uses the #lululemonambassador hashtag to unite its community.

In fact, their community is a prominent value for Lululemon, which you can notice in their entire communication.

Lululemon has several relevant social ambassadors on Instagram, posting different types of content:

Motivational:

Personal experience:

Workout and training plans:

Notice that Lululemon’s ambassadors create a personal connection between fitness, mental well-being, and other powerful emotions.

This connection is then associated with Lululemon – the brand making all this possible.

And that’s why their Instagram ambassador program doesn’t use other tactics (like humor or contests) that would dilute this raw emotion.

5. Yelp Elite Squad Informal Ambassador Program

The Yelp Elite Squad ambassador program runs on Instagram under the hashtag #yelpelitesquad, but you can also find it using the shorter #yelpelite.

This program works because users get vetted recommendations from these ambassadors, who are real people just like them.

And statistics show that customer reviews and recommendations convince up to 94% of people to patronize a business.

They create desire with posts like “We’re Yelpers”:

Even better, Yelp recognizes its valued brand ambassadors:

6. Sephora’s Passionate Customer Ambassador Program

Sephora runs an ambassador program under the hashtag #sephorasquad, granting people who qualify for annual contracts and the opportunity to be part of multiple campaigns.

Remember: Wise hashtag usage is extremely important to spread awareness while helping people understand what your campaign is about.

Here’s one example of a person who made it into the Sephora ambassador team:

If you follow her profile, you can notice a slew of posts promoting Sephora:

7. Aerie

Aerie also runs an Instagram ambassador program, using the #aerieambassador and #AerieReal hashtags.

However, you can notice it mainly uses nano-influencers as spokespeople:

The #AerieReal ambassador program offers an excellent example because:

• It aims to associate the brand with a significant value for today’s world, which is staying true to yourself.
• As such, it rewards its ambassadors by offering them recognition and a chance to matter instead of cash payments.

Why does that matter?

Many sources show that people share content because they want to support a cause or make a difference in the world.

So, that opportunity could be more motivating than a trivial $50/post.

Kickstart Your Social Media Ambassador Program

A social media ambassador program is an excellent solution if you want to connect with your audience by letting real people speak on your behalf.

You can choose employees, nano-influencers, or regular shoppers to present your products, represent your values, and participate in all your campaigns.

However, you need a cohesive strategy to start the ball rolling.

Otherwise, you can’t pick the right people, set the right messages, and expect to see results.

Improving a faulty campaign or scaling a successful one is almost impossible without a plan.

But as always, inBeat is here to help with a range of free tools, our influencer database, and paid plans starting at just $134/month.

Regardless of the plan you choose, we’ll provide 24/7 customer support to help you set up a killer campaign.

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