7 must-have tools for your brand ambassador program
Imagine you’re baking cookies. What would you need? In addition to all of your ingredients, you’ll have to use the right appliances to make your delicious creation. For instance, you’ll need a mixer to thoroughly combine your ingredients together and, of course, an oven to bake everything in.
Much like baking cookies, building a brand ambassador program requires the right tools to be successful. Finding the right people, activating them in creative ways, and growing your community of ambassadors is no cakewalk. But with the right tools and strategies, you can easily join forces with your biggest brand enthusiasts to run a campaign that boosts awareness, reaches new customers, and drives sales.
In the past, we’ve given you tips for turning influencers into ambassadors, as well as ways to find brand ambassadors on Instagram. Now, we’re getting down to the nitty gritty parts of running a brand ambassador program, with 7 tools you absolutely need when you launch an ambassador program.
1. Aspire Ambassador Academy
Don’t know where to start when it comes to your brand ambassador program? You’re in luck. Enroll in our Ambassador Academy, a 6-part, step-by-step course that will teach you how to launch a successful program. Complete with video walk-throughs, our marketing strategists have put together this all-encompassing online class to equip you with:
- An introduction to ambassador programs
- An overview of how the definition of “influence” has evolved
- The fundamentals of brand ambassador programs
- Ways to source ambassadors
- Best practices for managing your ambassador program
- Methods for measuring the success of your program
Take the free 6-part course to master brand ambassador strategy!
2. Searchable dashboard
Finding the right ambassadors for your brand is arguably the most important step in creating a successful program. These people are the ingredients to your cookies. The higher quality they are, the better. This will set the foundation for your campaigns, so it’s crucial to recruit well-aligned, authentic, highly engaging people to be your ambassadors.
While you can find ambassadors by emailing or direct messaging creators on social media, this manual process can be extremely time consuming. And without enough bandwidth, you won’t be able to reach as many ambassadors as you’d like. That being said, a smart search tool is necessary to find the right ambassadors in a quick, efficient way.
One example of this is AspireIQ’s Connect tab. Our searchable dashboard allows you to quickly find brand partners who align perfectly with your brand. In addition to our text search tool, we offer image search, which allows you to drag and drop any image you’d like in order to find creators who produce similar content. If you have a stockpile of images that you know perform well or that perfectly align with your brand’s aesthetic, you can source more images similar to them in no time with this tool.
3. Contract template
Collaboration contracts are crucial to any brand ambassador program. This is the legally binding document that ensures that both brands and ambassadors hold up their end of the deal. Think of it like a strict recipe you have to follow.
Have a contract template ready so that you can formalize your partnership once you connect with your ideal ambassadors and agree to work together. It should lay out, at minimum, these components:
- Duties of the ambassador - This outlines what the brand expects the ambassador to do. For example, attend a certain amount of events per year, on what channels they should post about the brand, if they should leave the brands handle in their bio, etc
- Deliverables and due dates - Here is where you will outline any content requirements. This includes how much content should be delivered, how often it should be posted, if the brand needs to approve content beforehand, etc.
- Compensation agreement - You’ll need to determine how you will compensate your ambassador. This could be monetary or with a free product. You should include at what cadence they will be paid.
- Copyright and content usage - Clearly outline who has rights to the content that is produced throughout the partnership and for how long.
- Confidentiality - Ambassadors often get exclusive first peeks at products. If this is the case, you should include a confidentiality agreement which protects sensitive information.
- Length of contract and termination - This defines the duration of the contract and guidelines around how either party can terminate it.
- Dispute resolution - In the event of a dispute by either party, the contract should outline when to take legal action and who will be responsible for legal fees.
- Exclusivity (optional) - Some brands ask ambassadors to sign non-compete clauses which forbid ambassadors to promote competing products during the duration of the contract.
4. Payment system
Typically, brands choose to pay ambassadors a flat payment for the entire long-term partnership. However, some choose to pay creators based on their ability to impact their followers’ choices. This is because many companies have different standards to determine their brand partners’ level of influence, such as engagement rates or number of sales driven.
Whichever way you choose to compensate your ambassadors, decide on the payment system you want to use. Consider factors such as:
- Frequency: How often you’ll pay your ambassadors
- Minimum or threshold: How much an ambassador can earn
- Levels: How much commission can increase based on performance
- Structure: What metric will measure the ambassador’s performance (sales, leads, clicks, etc.)
5. Relationship management system
Managing conversations and relationships with multiple ambassadors can be difficult. Instead of trying to keep track of dozens of emails and DMs, have a proper relationship management system set up to have an organized way to handle all of your partnerships.
AspireIQ’s Manage tab offers a fantastic solution to streamline brand ambassador relationships. Within this section of the platform, you can not only have real-time chats and SMS exchanges with each of brand partners, but also send mass messages to a select group of ambassadors. In addition, you can keep track of any products that are being shipped, create custom links and coupon codes to track conversion events by each ambassador, and keep a record of your payments.
With a relationship management tool like this, you can ensure that you’re not risking ruining relationships with your valuable brand partners by missing a conversation or ignoring their questions.
6. Real-time analytics dashboard
According to a LinkedIn poll we ran, marketers find that the most challenging part of building and maintaining a brand community is measuring impact. To understand how your brand ambassador program is affecting your overall marketing efforts, find a campaign analysis tool.
Keep track of how many impressions your ambassadors are making, what your total media value is, and more. Prove the value of your ambassador program and get buy-in from your brand’s leadership team by tracking these hard ROI numbers.
7. Content library
Now that you’ve found your ideal brand ambassadors and started your partnership, it’s time to get your content library ready. With all of the amazing community-generated content produced by your ambassadors, you’ll want to create a space to store and organize it for future use. Rather than just keeping everything in a file on your computer, invest in a smart content library that is searchable.
AspireIQ’s content library empowers brands to easily access, organize, and share content from any brand ambassador. Quickly search through assets with Smart Tags and give access to your teammates with our Google Drive integration. In addition, you can go beyond social media metrics and track content performance on paid aids with our Brand Access Manager feature to prove the value of your ambassador program.
Grow your brand ambassador program with the right tools
Launch your brand ambassador program on the right foot by getting set up with the right tools. Find passionate brand enthusiasts, nurture long-term relationships with them, repurpose their content, and analyze your campaigns with a full suite of management tools like Aspire Elevate.