#1: Social Advertising Will Cost More, But Be Worth It

At first, people almost found it alarming to see advertisements for products or services that reflected their age, geographic location, tastes, life events, or previous Internet searches on social media feeds. However, as personalized marketing became more popular, consumers became accustomed to paid social ads and those platforms got better at integrating ads into the overall experience. The result is, as eMarketer discovered, higher click prices for advertisers combined with better conversion rates.

#2: The Platforms You Use Now Might Not Be Around Forever

For years now, YouTube has been the holy grail of video marketing; but, in August of 2014, video viewing on Facebook surpassed YouTube by one billion views, according to a Socialbakers report. Even though more total videos have been uploaded to YouTube than Facebook, the gap is closing fast. One simple explanation is that Facebook’s share of interactions is greater than YouTube’s, and as time passes, Facebook’s share is increasing. Both marketers and personal users may find Facebook more effective, which may contribute to a change in the quality of content uploaded to each site.

This illustration isn’t meant to suggest that YouTube will disappear soon — but is does serve as a wakeup call that marketers need to keep one eye on their own tactics and the other on new platforms. Ello, the so-called anti-Facebook, could revolutionize the way we interact with social media platforms, for example.

#3: Marketing Effectiveness Will Hinge Upon Hard Metrics

Executives measure the effectiveness of sales departments based upon key performance metrics. In time, increasing brand awareness and other kinds of soft metrics will get replaced by these hard metrics for marketing departments as well.

While the tension between your department and sales may be less palpable, it’s likely that sales and marketing don’t believe they have the same goals. In order to remain competitive through the next decade, marketing needs to focus on the goal of increasing bottom line revenue. Sales and marketing must become more integrated, and marketing needs to embrace harder metrics like ROI and attributable sales.

#4: Character Will Be Huge

With the increase in online reviews and the credibility that Internet users give to those reviews, reputation will be the marketing currency of the next decade. Internet ratings, word-of-mouth advertising, and brand ambassadors make advertising claims credible to consumers. In short: what customers say about companies will matter more than what companies say about themselves.

#5: Marketing Automation Will Become More Personalized

We’ve already seen that personalized marketing has become more effective and popular lately, but many marketing automation tools still leave CMOs struggling to send the right messages to the right people. For example, an email marketing study by eMarketer reported that very general demographics and geographic information were the only thing used by more than thirty-five percent of respondents. Survey respondents noted that they rarely tracked— or were unable to track —buyer behaviors or personalize marketing communications.  And a majority of marketers surveyed noted that better targeting was a top priority for 2015.

In order to keep up with other marketing channels, marketing automation tools need to keep up.

We Have An Exciting Future

We expect to watch the growth of personalized advertising, more emphasis on hard data to measure campaign effectiveness, and some give and take in the market shares of the big players and new upstarts in the next ten years. We also expect to see more reliance on sophisticated marketing automation tools that will really be the only way to keep up with the multitude of platforms and information.

Of course, we also expect to be surprised.

The post The Next 10 Years of Marketing Solutions Will Crush the Past Decade appeared first on Ambassador.

It seems like being a brand ambassador is a new craze when, in fact, empowered recommendations and relationships have been created using the power of word-of-mouth for centuries. You don’t need a host of celebrities to create a comprehensive stream of new leads and empower customers to champion for your brand. A successful marketing campaign relies on more than lights and cameras, the word-of-mouth action is what counts. If you’re wondering which segment of your customers will make for the best brand ambassadors, here are the categories you should be looking to fill with award-worthy brand ambassadors:

Best Director

What would an award ceremony be without this category? This spot is reserved for the Martin Scorseses and Steven Spielbergs of your network. Consider the fans and customers that have the personality and the insight to place your brand in front of the right set of eyes. Brand ambassadors worthy of the Best Director badge don’t just lead the pack, they clear a path and join each member of their network on a journey. They aren’t afraid to advocate for your brand, champion your service, and keep members of their network on the right track.

Customer in a Lead-Acquiring Role

Of course your company doesn’t have any favorite customers, but if you absolutely had to choose one segment to nurture, they would probably be the kind of customers that could naturally build intrigue for your brand. These customers will scrounge even the coldest marketing fields for warm leads, Leonardo Dicaprio style. Empowered brand ambassadors will be able to share exciting brand information and updates on behalf of your company while driving rich leads to your company. Plus, leads acquired this way close faster and stay longer.

Most Connected Customers

Referral programs provide a great opportunity for your customers to forge new contacts, but every good referral marketing program includes the kind of customers that everyone already knows. If your company has an influencer that could easily be swapped into the Kevin Bacon game with their astonishingly minimal degree of separation number, then they’re well-connected. These customers have great in-person skills, but are just as respected and sought after online. Well-connected brand ambassadors will know how to find information and they’ll be the first one to share it. Your brand will be able to earn a few cool points just by association.

Most Invigorated Network

Nothing feels better than discovering powerful groups that have the ability to catapult your brand. Actually, the only thing better is one customer that links you to their network of equally engaged and excited friends. If you publicly awarded this segment, they’d run onstage with tears streaming down their face and talk until the live orchestra played them offstage. In other words, members of this category have an immediate and relentless desire for new information (and an equally strong reaction when they receive it).

Outstanding Word-of-Mouth Performance

Some of your brand ambassadors won’t be into the glitz and glam of becoming a member of an exclusive group, you’ll need people on the ground that aren’t afraid to ring a few bells or send a few emails on your behalf. That’s where the power of word-of-mouth kicks in. Pinpointing people that can reach engaged and curious leads is like discovering a gold mine for your referral marketing program. Word-of-mouth gatekeepers give your brand the referral nominations and nods that will lead to a complex referral network.

And the award goes to…

A study by Wharton School of Business revealed 83% of customers are willing to provide referrals, but only 29% of those customers actually do. You’ll need an outstanding group  of vocal, informed, and engaged brand ambassadors to close that gap. Instead of praising your fans, clients, and customers from the corner office, referral marketing programs allow you to reward them in real life. Running a successful referral marketing program is a lot like winning your first Oscar statuette, it can validate your hard work and help spread the word to the masses.

Do you want to learn how to turn more of your customers, partners, affiliates, and fans into revenue generators?Request a custom demo from one of our referral marketing software experts today!

The post Award-Winning Brand Ambassadors appeared first on Ambassador.

In one corner is the belief that carefully enrolling only your most loyal and passionate ambassadors is the best approach. The thinking here is that those people, who already love and support your brand, will happily and aggressively work to generate referrals and new business for your company.

In the other corner is the somewhat contrarian stance that auto-enrolling all of your potential brand ambassadors is the better strategy. The argument being that until you get a referral marketing program running at full speed, you can’t — and shouldn’t — assume that you inherently know who your most passionate advocates will be.

So, where do we fall on that spectrum? Much closer to the latter strategy than the former.

The Argument for Auto-Enrolling Everyone

Why does auto-enrolling make sense?

It’s simple: We’ve found that, regardless of how much time you invest in studying your contact database upfront, it’s virtually impossible to predict who your best ambassadors will be. Sure, repeat customers and engaged fans are safe assumptions, but you’d be surprised how often referrals come from people who don’t fit that profile.

For instance, you might not expect a random one-time shopper who falls outside of your target demographic to be a productive ambassador, yet we’ve repeatedly seen that scenario play out. In fact, just one share from a non-obvious ambassador can open the door to a whole new market, audience, or industry to deliver surprising results (that’s exactly what happened with our own referral program).

Now, that’s not to suggest that the bulk of your referrals won’t come from power users, big spenders, trusted friends, and long-term customers with high NPS scores. That might very well be the case.

But with that said, why rule out the possibility of referrals coming from people and places you never expected?

Auto-Enrollment Does Not Mean Generic

It’s important to point out that auto-enrolling doesn’t mean opening the gates to the masses and blasting them with the same, generic messaging. Allowing everyone to access your program is one thing. Creating custom referral programs for a variety of customer segments within that pool is quite another.

 With the latter, the idea is to personalize campaigns, messaging, and incentives to the specific interests and motivations of each type of ambassador. After all, it’s likely that your happiest customers (the “Promoters” in the Net Promoter Score framework) will require less motivation to sing your praises to their network. Fans and followers who aren’t paying customers, on the other hand, will need a little more nudging (and, typically, more tangible short-term incentives).

That said, it’s important to once again warn against making assumptions.

Instead of jumping to the conclusion that a long-time customer will be your best ambassador, the goal should be to study referral activity over a period of time and use that data to develop hypotheses about how, when, where, and why ambassadors promote your brand. Ultimately, this will make it easy to lump people into reasonably accurate segments that can be targeted with unique campaigns, messaging, and referral incentives.

For example, you might find that your brand ambassadors fall into the following categories:

–     Longest-time customers

–     New customers

–     Past customers (a referral program is a great way to re-engage them)

–     High NPS customers

–     Highest spenders

–     Partners or re-sellers

–     Fans, bloggers, and influencers

Or, your list might look very different based on your industry and category.

That said, doing this work will allow you to perpetually test different messaging, incentives, and channels with each audience. And from there, you can easily evaluate the specific factors that drive the highest number of desired outcomes. Over time, this will help dramatically improve the results of your referral program.

Numbers + Relevancy = Powerful Referral Marketing Results

In our experience, referral marketing success is almost always driven by a scientific blend of quantity (participants) and relevance (messaging and incentives). When companies add as many potential brand ambassadors as possible to the top of their referral funnel and they are relevantly rewarded for their ambassadorship, good things happen. 

Let’s say you sell solar energy systems directly to consumers. Instead of limiting your program to existing customers and incentivizing it with a coupon for 20% off the referrer’s next purchase (we only buy solar energy systems once every decade or longer), you’d see better results with more expanded outreach and a more relevant offer.

For example, you might open the program to contractors, environmental activists, and energy efficiency bloggers, and offer a dual-sided incentive that gives the referrer a cash bonus and the referee a 20% discount on their purchase. There’s also a high likelihood that you have fans of your solar energy systems who have never bought from you before, but aspire to someday. The chances are good some of them will be excellent ambassadors for your brand.

Now, think about the impact you could have by reaching out to your highest performing brand ambassadors to personally thank them for delivering a referral. This could come in the form of a simple call, email, handwritten letter, or special gift based on the ambassador’s interests (e.g., early access to new, high-demand products). Over time, that kind of effort and attention to detail pays huge dividends.

Think that’s impossible to accomplish at scale?

That’s the beauty of referral marketing automation. Enrolling ambassadors is simple. Segmenting ambassadors by specific attributes and customizing campaigns is easy. Optimizing campaigns is straightforward and pays huge dividends. And managing the referral tracking and rewards process is completely automated.

As you’re building your referral program, don’t waste your time making assumptions about who will best help to grow your business. Instead, focus your time, energy, and talents on creating messaging and referral incentives specific to each customer segment. Then, focus on optimizing those referral campaigns after they’re live and you have real data to work from. You, and your bottom line, will be happy you did.

Do you want to learn how to turn more of your customers, partners, affiliates, and fans into revenue generators? Request a custom demo from one of our referral marketing software experts today!

The post The Right Way to Enroll, Segment, and Engage Your Brand Ambassadors appeared first on Ambassador.

Click for sound

Many brands are venturing outside of their office and within their network to find early adopters that can take out some of the mass marketing legwork by driving word-of-mouth. For many companies, the ideal marketing campaign is self-sustaining — an organic ripple that migrates throughout target markets and accurately represents your brand.

If you’re looking to get your business off of the ground while building a valuable consumer base and smoothing out the kinks of your product, you should start marketing to early adopters. Yes, those early adopters. The pillars of modern marketing myth and Everett M. Rogers’ legend that purchase first and ask questions later, then tell all of their fearful friends about what they can expect in the ominously near future.

Early adopters may not be your first choice, but when targeted correctly, they can build buzz within exclusive inner circles and eventually entice mainstream customers to give your product a try. Read on to learn about the qualities that your marketing team can master to think like an early adopter.

Dream Big

Don’t sleep on the power of user insight.

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia realized early on that hosts would play a major role in his business strategy. He wanted visitors to feel welcome and have a memorable experience with each stay, but wasn’t reaching the audience or driving the revenue that he had anticipated. While visiting a core group of early Airbnb hosts, he was able to step into the shoes of his prospective customers. The friendly and generous hosts were great in person, but the home pictures displayed on the website didn’t capture the welcoming spirit that he encountered on his trip.

Gebbia decided that professional images of the housing options would give visitors a more realistic glimpse of what they could expect from their stay. After implementing this change, Airbnb doubled its humble revenue of $200 per week. Gebbia admits that early adopter observations helped his company grow from one spare air mattress to a network of over 600,000 hosts that work to create a curated customer experience. For some startups, actual experiences from early adopters can deliver insight that influences product strategy and positively alters the company’s trajectory.

Think Bigger

Know when it’s time for a change.

When San Francisco startup Lumoid announced that it would rent out a limited batch of Apple Watches for a less expensive daily fee, Apple early adopters everywhere rejoiced. To build on that excitement, Lumoid furthered its existing “rent, try, buy” method and introduced a string of notoriously sought-after products to their lineup.

Talk about an innovative inception story. By appealing to a target market of aspiring early adopters, Lumoid early-adopted early adopters.

Since then, Lumoid opened up the possibility to explore other industries — ranging from photography to wearables — by understanding that the desire to adopt early and update often was a growing trend. Marketers should mimic useful patterns of early adopters  to create an agile way to reach their consumers.

Reach Higher

Discover new ways to grow.

A year after announcing the early adopter program on their website, Grove released a follow-up video showcasing testimonials from early adopters of The Grove Ecosystem. The at-home gardening system naturally appeals to a niche audience of environmentally conscious, health-savvy consumers, but this video was a subtle way to give a broader audience a sneak peek into the features and benefits of the product.

Who knew that oregano, tomatoes and a temperature-controlling app could be so endearing? Here’s the takeaway for marketers: Each early adopter campaign should bake social proof into it and empower customers to take the leap from brand awareness to brand preference.

Remember Innovative Marketing

Since early adopters are the first to ‘buy into’ your product or idea, they’re typically the best candidates to generate buzz. To find those early adopters, however, you must first learn to think like them.

Every market and product category contains these initiators who spread word-of-mouth, but it’s up to you to find, understand, and entice this important group. When you do that, your ideas migrate to the masses and the ‘diffusion of innovation’ reaches a successful endpoint.

The post Innovative Marketing: Think Like An Early Adopter appeared first on Ambassador.

Download the Last Minute Holiday Referral Marketing Kit, our marketing experts have you covered with referral marketing strategies to help you hit those holiday revenue goals!

The post How to Thank Your Brand Ambassadors this Holiday Season appeared first on Ambassador.

 With the gamification industry projected to reach $2.8 billion in revenue in 2016, here are 3 ways to use gamification to engage ambassadors:

1. Sales

With technology readily available at our fingertips more often than not, businesses can boost sales by easily rewarding brand ambassadors for referrals, purchases, shares, and more. A great example (that you might even be using) is My Starbucks Rewards loyalty program. Customers using the mobile app are rewarded with stars for every drink purchased, earning a free drink after a certain threshold is reached. Gold status customers are more likely to get their coffee at Starbucks each and every time, even becoming ambassadors by referring their friends and family to use the rewards program.

According to Fortune.com, “the ‘My Starbucks Rewards’ loyalty program now has 10.4 million active members, up 28% from a year ago, and those shoppers now account for about 30% of business in North America.”

2. Experience

The brand experience is one of the most important elements of a successful referral marketing program based on gamification. By breaking the process down into simple steps, giving recognition, leveraging competition, and creatively using rewards, companies can increase referrals from brand ambassadors and, ultimately, drive new sales.

Lunatik, a technology accessories company based in Chicago, engages their ambassadors with a fully branded experience with program levels, discounts for reaching different levels, and even commission-based cash. The referral program is easily explained in a quick video on their rewards page on their site and a mobile app makes it easy for ambassadors to always be engaged and connected to the program.

3. Loyalty

Building brand loyalty by adding gaming elements to your referral program is another inherent attribute to gamification. Encouraging continual engagement through points, badges, levels, and more, companies are able to keep brand ambassadors interested and loyal to their program. By motivating and rewarding interactions, brands are creating true loyalty.

Gamification is becoming a popular way to engage brand ambassadors and continue bringing in referrals and sales for companies. Gamifying your referral program can be just as valuable and profitable to your business when done the right way. As with any game, everyone loves to win!

The post Using Gamification to Engage Your Brand Ambassadors appeared first on Ambassador.

This is the third year in a row that Ambassador has been featured as one of the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment – its independent businesses.

“If your company is on the Inc. 5000, it’s unparalleled recognition of your years of hard work and sacrifice. The lines of business may come and go, or come and stay. What doesn’t change is the way entrepreneurs create and accelerate the forces that shape our lives.” – James Ledbetter, Editor-in-Chief, Inc.

This achievement would not be possible without two crucial components…

First, our amazing team of Diplomats who consistently live our core values, which we refer to as OUTCARE. These are our guiding principles of how we operate, how key decisions are made, and how each employee acts. 
Second, our amazing customers. Thank you! We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with you and we look forward to many more years of success with you.

We’re committed to doing more with less and focusing on our long-term goals: building trust and lasting relationships.

We’re truly humbled by the recognition and are always looking for talented Diplomats to join our team.

The post Ambassador Software Ranked on the Inc. 5000 for the 3rd Consecutive Year! appeared first on Ambassador.

We get it. Which is why we pulled together an infographic to show you three key steps our customers are taking to run successful programs using referral automation:

The post How Does Ambassador Work: Steps to Success appeared first on Ambassador.

If you want to become a paid nano-influencer or micro-influencer, you’re in the right place.  We recently discussed how you could build a nano-influencer or micro-influencer platform that is poised for rapid follower growth by defining a niche, choosing a color scheme, and identifying the buckets of social media users who will be most interested in the topics you want to represent as an influencer.

Building a platform as a micro-influencer used to be considered a hobby that most people did “just for fun,” and only a small percentage of people at the top make money. Previously, the paradigm was that making money as an influencer would require years of work devoted to follower growth; making meaningful income from promoting brands was as aspirational as becoming a rockstar. The advent of referral marketing platforms like Ambassador, which empower everyday people to earn money when they refer others to brands they like, makes it possible for nano-influencers and micro-influencers to make money creating content about their passions, especially if they have follower counts under 10K.

In this post, we’ll look at how to grow your followers, how to build trust with your audience as an influencer, and how to convert your influencer platform into a lucrative side hustle where you make money as an influencer with brand partnerships, getting paid every time one of your followers completes a purchase.  The key to getting paid as a micro-influencer is building trust with your social media followers.  When you are ready to make money as a micro-influencer by recommending products, that trust will yield lasting dividends.

1. Get involved in your online community.

This is audience development 101: when you are building a social media platform, establishing rapport with other accounts active in your space by liking and sharing others’ posts is important.  Commenting on others’ posts is key: this is how you build visibility among the people who are also interested in your area of expertise and meet your first “mutuals.”  Your mutuals– the people whom you develop a relationship with in comments and over DM– serve as your Instagram support system and are also your first “power users.”  The odds are good; in time, your mutuals will share your posts, and this will begin the snowball effect of your work gaining traction and building momentum.

One important tool in becoming a nano-influencer or micro-influencer is following other nano-influencers and micro-influencers’ accounts. You can monitor the trends in your corner of the influencer marketing space, stay up to date on what your fellow micro-influencers are creating and posting, and gather inspiration for your content and your own perspective. 

2. Don’t focus on growing followers– focus on creating exceptional content.

It can be tempting to obsess over hashtags or to namecheck influencers with larger followings in your content to try to jump the Instagram algorithm or inspire a larger account to share your work. The best use of your time is to create really good content.  Ask yourself, “What do I have to say that no one else is saying?” or “What is my unique perspective?”

With anything you post, ask yourself, “Is this shareable?”  Would this content I’ve created make someone pick up her finger mid-scroll and lean towards her phone to see more?  With anything you post, ask yourself, “Does this add to the conversation?” or “Am I creating something that has some element of uniqueness?”

When you are writing content, especially if it’s the caption to a TikTok or Instagram post, write the caption in a way that inspires users to comment.  With each and everything you post, ask yourself, “Does what I’ve written inspire someone to leave a comment? Does my writing motivate someone to weigh in with their own experience?”

3. Use a spreadsheet to analyze your metrics and look for trends.

You may find it helpful to use a spreadsheet to plan your content.  You will definitely find that it is helpful to use a spreadsheet to analyze how your content performed.  Look for trends in view counts, likes, shares, comments, and follower growth.  What posts are performing the strongest?  What do those posts have in common?  What day or time of day did you press publish?  

At the end of the month, look at which of your posts performed best by analyzing the data in your spreadsheet.  What stands out about the post that performed best?  What do the top-performing posts have in common?

If you’re serious about building traction as a micro-influencer, spending time analyzing what’s working– and making a plan to do more of that–is one of the most powerful investments of your time.

4. Devote effort to building trust with your audience.

One of the ways that nano influencers and micro-influencers are more powerful than influencers with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers is that nano influencers and micro-influencers have a relationship with their audience members.  When a micro-influencer is really on top of her game and thinking about building trust, she will devote time to engaging directly with her followers in the comments and in her DMs.

You may want to earmark 15 minutes a day to respond to your DMs or a one-hour block a week to respond with hearts to all your messages.

If your area of expertise is at all sensitive or personal (related to social justice, trauma, health care, the law, or finance), you may want to create a post or a set of stories that you save to your highlights with your boundaries. You can specify that you can’t give advice over DM or that you would prefer that people not send you personal stories. If you are interested in an added income stream, you can sell one-hour “peer support” or coaching calls with followers to hold space for their stories or give advice– as long as you are very clear that you are a peer, not a professional, and your advice is not a substitute for legal advice, health care, or the equivalent in your space.

In time, you’ll figure out how to curate the right level of interaction with your followers.  But in the beginning, forging a personal connection with the people who are connecting with your work is the single most important factor in becoming a nano-influencer or micro-influencer.  The followers who feel like they have a direct connection with you will be most likely to engage with your work, share your content, and buy the products you recommend.

5. Don’t wait for #sponcon contracts – build your revenue with referral marketing

We follow nano-influencers and micro-influencers– and often, we develop “parasocial” relationships with them– because we feel connected to them and trust them.  When a micro-influencer has a great platform that feels sincere, we are likelier to buy products or explore brands she has recommended. We are much more likely to buy products recommended by nano-influencers than we are to buy Pepsi because Kendall Jenner did a tone-deaf commercial.

In fact, social media users devoting more time and attention to the work of nano-influencers and micro-influencers is contributing to a big shift: we follow people on social media because we respect their viewpoints and trust their content.

This sets the stage for a shift to micro-influencers using referral marketing platforms to monetize their work. Rather than accepting a contract to publish #sponcon from brands that may or may not appeal to their audiences, micro influencers can start to grow their revenue by recommending helpful, trusted products that they truly believe their followers will try and enjoy.  Nano influencers and micro-influencers can conduct their business using a referral marketing platform–like Ambassador– to build campaigns and get paid for promoting the products their audience members are interested in and want to purchase.

The shift from micro-influencers jockeying for flat-fee content sponsorship contracts from arbitrary brands to building authentic referral campaigns specifically for brands they believe in is part of the shift towards micro-influencers having outsized power. The tide change is that social media users prioritize trust and authenticity when deciding whom to follow on social media and what action to take after absorbing their content.  When nano influencers and micro-influencers monetize their content by promoting brands that feel relevant and get paid based on how interested their audience really is, it contributes to the growing trust we feel in the micro-influencer space. It makes Instagram accounts with fewer than 50,000 followers paradoxically much more powerful than larger accounts.

Every micro-influencer starts as a nano-influencer, and that’s why this shift towards referral marketing revenue over flat fee #sponcon is so exciting. Nano-influencers have the opportunity to earn money even as they are starting out, creating literal value even as their accounts are getting off the ground.  

If you follow the above steps, devoting energy to quality, unique content, and authentic connection with your growing audience, you’ll find you move from nano-influencer to micro-influencer faster than you can say “selfie.”

The post How to Become a Micro Influencer, Part II appeared first on Ambassador.

Driving sign-ups for your referral marketing program is the first step to building a referral marketing program that will deliver sky-high ROI, far surpassing what you might spend on traditional flat-fee influencer marketing or digital advertising campaigns.  The more crucial next step is engaging your referral marketing ambassadors and reminding them that they are part of a community of people with shared interests and a shared passion for a meaningful product or service.

1) Create an internal communications strategy

Communication with your internal marketing ambassadors is critical. Create a monthly internal newsletter campaign to communicate with your referral marketing ambassadors as a group. You should also create a channel for referral marketing ambassadors to contact your marketing team directly; we recommend establishing a human connection between someone on your marketing team and your referral marketing ambassadors. 

2) Build a referral marketing community

People who thrive have support networks. The pandemic has primed us to look for community online.  If you can create a sense of community among your referral marketing ambassadors, they will feel motivated by the human connection… and by observing one another’s results.

One way to increase buy-in for your referral marketing initiatives is to create an opportunity for your referral marketing ambassadors to meet one another, share best practices, root one another on, and observe one another’s progress. You could do this through a private Twitter or Instagram account that only accepts follow requests from your ambassadors, through a community management platform like Circle or Mighty Networks, or through a listserv.  You will want to create a community management guide, setting some ground rules and expectations for how you expect ambassadors to communicate with one another without you moderating each and every conversation.  (After all, your referral marketing ambassadors are inveterate hustlers!)

3) Create a mindset for your ambassadors: they are micro-micro influencers

Remind the members of your referral marketing community: referral marketing is a side hustle. People generally know that word-of-mouth marketing is powerful for brands… but how many people think about the side income opportunity inherent in recommending worthwhile products to friends?  Encourage your referral marketing ambassadors to see themselves as micro-micro influencers. They can introduce their friends to a worthwhile product or service and monetize their own ability to influence others.

4) Publish a monthly leaderboard in your internal newsletter

Who are your top-performing referral marketing ambassadors? Publish a list of your top 20 highest-performing referral marketing ambassadors in your monthly internal ambassador newsletter.  Sometimes a healthy sense of competition can be motivating.

5) Use your internal newsletter to share timely marketing collateral

Use your internal ambassadors newsletter to share information and marketing copy around any milestone marketing events or seasonal pushes for your product. You can equip your ambassadors with the tools to build sales month-over-month and make progress as a team toward coordinated sales pushes.

6) Create a sense of celebration around your CEO

The rule is the same for referral marketing ambassadors as it is for employees: people want to work harder for leaders they like.  In the startup world, there’s a reason why leaders ranging from the late Steve Jobs to Sara Blakely to Whitney Wolfe Herd have a following (or, in Jobs’ case, a once-rabid fanbase).  Make your founder or CEO’s origin story part of what motivates your referral marketing community to feel like they’re part of something bigger.

Allow your referral marketing community members to hear your company’s leadership talk about why they feel personally invested in your product or service or what calls them to do the work they do. Your CEO could author a section of the monthly ambassador’s newsletter or send periodic tweets denoting authorship with their initials. If they speak from the heart and meaningfully communicate a passion for the product, that will have a contagious effect on your ambassadors.

7) Plan a fireside chat with your CEO or CMO

Plan a “fireside chat” with your CEO. Give your referral marketing ambassadors an opportunity to put a face to the name.

Announce that a virtual event is scheduled and let your ambassadors know they can submit a question for the CEO or CMO to answer in advance.  Give the people who have submitted on-brand questions the opportunity to ask their questions, with their audio and video on, in real-time during the fireside chat. The positive feelings created in that hour alone could deliver serious ROI for your referral marketing program.

8) Celebrate your top referrers

Plan a quarterly virtual lunch with the CEO or CMO to celebrate your top 10 referral marketing ambassadors.  Send everyone $30 gift cards to GrubHub or Seamless; on the morning of the lunch, send everyone a reminder email to place their lunch orders at 12pm so everyone can join the meeting and eat together at 1pm.  Once everyone has dabbed their face with a napkin, take a group screenshot so you can share the photo of your CEO with your victorious referral marketing ambassadors on whatever internal communications platforms you use.

9) Cultivate unexpected delight

Earmark a small budget for perks or company swag and try an experiment.  Surprise a few referral marketing ambassadors at random with an unexpected gift. Give it a year, and see if the people who received unexpected surprise gifts started making more referrals.  If so, this is called “the power of moments.”

10) Develop referral marketing mentors

Look for power users in your referral marketing community.  Who has the strongest referral marketing numbers?  Consider creating a program where top-performing referral marketing ambassadors mentor folks who are new to your referral marketing community.  It could be as simple as allowing new sign-ups to book an introductory phone call with a seasoned referral marketing ambassador.  Alternatively, you could invest time and resources in a thoughtful mentorship program, where your referral marketing power users receive training to mentor a cluster of promising new referral marketing ambassadors who make “x” number of sales in their first quarter.

Given the sky-high ROI on Ambassador referral marketing software, any investment of time from your marketing team in building the success of your referral marketing program will yield lasting, measurable dividends.

The post 10 Ways to Motivate Your Brand Ambassador Community appeared first on Ambassador.