Last Updated on December 30, 2020
You have undoubtedly read about the importance of partnering with influencers (sometimes referred to as brand ambassadors) in order to build awareness, garner product reviews and increase your sales. Effective brand ambassadors will work to drive results for your brand because they want to improve their relationship with you. However, these hard-working, high-quality influencers are hard to find unless you know where to look. Follow this process to find marketing brand ambassadors that can help your influencer campaigns.
Track Different Social Media Hashtags
If you want to find members of your niche or industry who are willing to promote your brand, then you need to be a part of that community. Create a list of the top hashtags that people use when talking about your brand or products and start tracking them. As you monitor these hashtags, look for people who are engaging, interesting, and posting regularly about the topic. These are your potential influencers.
As you find these profiles, comment or message them to see if they are interested in becoming a brand ambassador and joining a transaction with your brand. The goal is to take the conversation off of social media to discuss the business expectations and benefits of being a brand ambassador. Not everyone will be interested in representing your brand, but you can start to build a group of people who will be happy for the promotion opportunity.
Talk to the Who’s-Who at Conferences and Trade Shows
Conferences and trade shows offer additional opportunities for you to identify influencers and form relationships with them. You can see that these people are experts in their field enough to captivate a room full of people. Use your time at these conferences to introduce yourself and pitch them on becoming a brand ambassador.
Even if you cannot attend the conference, you can still check the speakers’ list and follow the conference hashtag to see who is leading the discussion online. This way, you can gather a list of hundreds of active social media profiles to see which ones have the potential to become future influencers.
Create Guidelines for Brand Ambassador Criteria
Searching through social media can become a rabbit hole of Alice in Wonderland proportions. Instead of getting overwhelmed, get organized and take steps to find influencers that meet certain niche, size, and engagement rates.
Some brands create target personas for their influencers so team members can easily identify whether these brand ambassadors meet set criteria. Instead of reaching out to hundreds of brand ambassadors of people on social media in hopes that they provide the results that you want, you can limit what you are looking for and reach out to a few dozen influencers instead.
Additionally, certain websites let you find the top people talking about a specific topic. While this site isn’t meant to form influencer connections, it can help you learn more about hot issues in your industry and who is talking about them.
Invest In Influencer Management Tools
There is good news for brands taking their first steps into brand ambassador marketing: you don’t have to find, onboard, and vet influencers on your own. Instead, you can find tools and services that specialize in finding and training influencers so they are ready to work hard for you.
For example, Intellifluence has an Influencer Discover Tool that makes it easy for brands to search, filter, and find influencers. Each of these influencers has set criteria, and you can find the ones that are ideal for your brand. Plus, because almost every one of these influencers have worked with other brands before, they aren’t new to the idea of being a marketing brand ambassador and will some idea of what you are looking for in campaigns. Some networks simply provide a list of potential influencers, while Intellifluence is a warm network – meaning each and every influencer has joined on their own and are waiting to hear from brands. This encourages a much better working relationship from the very beginning which translates to better results.
With just a few clicks, you can develop a strong list of influencers to work with and start honing your marketing efforts.
Work With Influencers Who Have Expertise in Your Area
As you begin finding potential influencers online or through Intellifluence, make sure you are forming partnerships with people who are serious experts in your field. For example, almost anyone can use the #brandambassador hashtag on Instagram, but that doesn’t mean they are the right fit to promote an accounting, plumbing, engineering, or hairstyling company.
Influencer marketing means constantly adding and reevaluating the people you work with. Test their expertise and look for ways to measure whether or not they know what they are talking about.
Effective influencers come in all sizes. You may discover that the best influencers for your brand are actually smaller peer influencers who have strong ties to their communities. By searching the web and using the right tools to find what you need, you can get a strong brand ambassador marketing campaign up and running in a few weeks.
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