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The world we know today has loads of digital marketing tactics that can be difficult to navigate in an ever-changing world, especially for cosmetics brands that are ready to grow a strong community of fans. From influencer marketing, affiliate marketing or even advocacy marketing, it’s a whirlwind trying to understand which strategy will work best for your cosmetics company.
I’m here to guide you through all you need to know about ambassador marketing and why it is your best bet for building even stronger relationships with your customers. We have put together an insightful blog post on what ambassador marketing is and how it will benefit your future marketing campaigns.
What is Ambassador Marketing?
To understand ambassador marketing, we should first establish that, although easily thought of interchangeably - a brand ambassador is different from an influencer. We define a brand ambassador as being someone who already loves a brand and owns their product, and therefore feels the need to share it with their friends.
The brand ambassador is therefore also a customer and one that has a relationship with a brand that the brand may want to nurture on a long term basis. Their number of followers may vary from a small to a really large audience.
Whereas, an influencer is usually hired on a short-term basis for the value of their large social media following, with the hope that they'll drive outcome and content related to a brand. The influencer may or may not be an actual customer of the brand.
We like to think that neither influencer or ambassador is superior or inferior, rather it’s about establishing the outcomes a brand wants to achieve from their marketing campaigns and choosing the right persona to effectively achieve the outcome - often that means using a combination of both.
An ambassador with a loyal audience can drive traffic to your site, increase your presence online and increase your sales through their recommendations. In a world where consumers are wise to overt marketing tactics, they want to research a brand on their own and get recommendations from someone they trust which positions ambassador marketing as a fantastic way for cosmetic brands to market to new channels.
Ambassadors are your top fans! They are the people who already have a huge love for your product and want the world to see how amazing your products are through their own social media.
What are the Benefits of Ambassador Marketing?
There are numerous benefits to building strong brand ambassador programs but the most important is relationships. Forming a strong relationship between your consumers and your brand is easier said than done.
With ambassador marketing, you can strengthen relationships by giving back some love that your ambassadors show on social media every day! This can be in the form of discount codes, commission on sales or free products. Why let your top fans go unheard when you can reward them for their advocacy?
Let’s not forget that ambassador marketing increases brand trust too. People trust people, they always have and always will! When your brand ambassadors speak highly of your cosmetics or skincare products on their social media platforms, their audience hears great feedback and trust that the product will deliver the same results for them.
Now, imagine your ambassadors had the opportunity to earn rewards for their wonderful words? They would definitely go above and beyond to make your product look and sound as good as it is! This naturally brings about brand awareness.
And here is the one you probably want to hear the most… Ambassador marketing generates sales! The more social buzz your brand receives on social media the better chances you have to make sales. This automatically results in great ROI for your ambassador marketing campaign.
What Can Brand Ambassadors Do For Your Cosmetics or Skincare Brand?
It’s good to understand what outcomes ambassadors will achieve for your brand once they’re onboard. Once you have a clear understanding of the outcomes, it’s easier to create expectations within your ambassador marketing strategy, both for your ambassadors and your KPIs. Here are a few ways ambassador marketing can benefit cosmetics and skincare brands and how these few things will boost your ROI:
1. Produces UGC (User-Generated Content)
UGC is a great way for your brand to utilise organic content (image or video) from real people on social media. This allows future customers to relate to your brand by seeing themselves in your existing customers and therefore be more willing to buy the product.
Not only will UGC generate sales but you will also be getting loads of great content that you can share on social media and at no additional cost to your business.
2. Generates Social Buzz
The more people see your brand on social media the more likely they will try your product out for the first time. If your ambassadors are creating this social buzz for you, you can focus your time and energy on more pressing, business-related situations. It’s like they say, time is money!
Your fans will advocate for your brand on social media as well as in person. That’s the beauty of word-of-mouth marketing. If these fans became your ambassadors they would feel even more proud to talk your brand up!
3. Creates Organic Social Reach
Let’s face it, seeing one ad after the next on social media can get very boring for the average user and savvy consumers can easily see through paid ads. A thriving ambassador community can easily result in a higher social reach when you’re actively involving them in frequent and unique ambassador marketing tasks. Allowing your ambassadors to gain the social reach you otherwise would have paid through ads is a great ROI for your campaign.
4. Gets Trustworthy Content
With the right guidance, your ambassadors will be able to create relatable content that others can trust before buying your product. The more real your ambassadors, the better.
Now I’m not saying your gorgeous models can’t do the trick, I’m just saying it’s always comforting seeing friends and family members feeling fabulous too!
5. Builds a Strong Community
Remember that bit earlier about relationship building? All brands should have a foundation of people who love their products. When you turn these people into brand ambassadors you make that foundation even stronger because now your people are your VIPs! They will feel one with your company and align with your marketing goals. When your ambassador community is flourishing, you bet your figures are too!
6. Moulds Customer Loyalty
There is no doubt that consumers shop around. When it comes to skincare and cosmetics, the market is so competitive, it’s easy for your fans to jump ship when the next best thing comes along.
You always want to be the best thing because of tried and trusted results, right? One way of building serious customer loyalty is to allow your fans to become your ambassadors so that you can offer them small perks in return for the sales or content they produce for your brand.
How Can You Utilise Gamified Tasks In Your Ambassador Marketing Campaigns?
In our experience, we have found gamified marketing tasks to be the most rewarding incentive for brand ambassadors. They are super fun marketing missions that your ambassadors can complete for rewards and they can be as creative and exciting as you’d like!
Say there is a massive TikTok trend that is perfectly aligned to your brand and product. You can create a mission for your ambassadors that will get them to perform the TikTok for your brand! Or maybe you have a product launch coming up that you need to create hype for, your ambassadors can share this news to their feeds and stories and even drop promo codes to boost sales. We have even seen brands on our platform join forces to create collab missions where the two ambassador communities team up to create double the buzz on social media!
Where to next?
Our Ambassador software platform can help you maintain your ambassador marketing campaigns with top-notch automation systems from a built-in message feature for your ambassadors to an easy-to-use reward distribution system.
You can plan your campaign around any marketing goal be it local brand awareness to international sales.
