Since influencer marketing exploded as a tactic, demand has grown and prices have soared – now many marketers are finding that it’s no longer performing as they would like. The overall word-of-mouth marketing industry is thriving, generating 2X more sales than paid ads, but as consumer trust drops and influencers inflate their rates, many brands are looking for new ways to benefit from word of mouth.
This is why ambassador marketing is growing.
Ambassador marketing is building a community of your customers, fans and followers and working with them to hit your overall marketing and business goals. Whether that’s getting more genuine content, building buzz and engagement around your products, or increasing lifetime value, ambassador marketing can help.
Why Ambassador Marketing Will Soar in 2023
1. Influencer Marketing is Losing Trust
Only 4% of people say they actually trust what influencers say online. With many examples of influencers making mistakes when working with brands, it’s easy to see why consumers may be a bit warier about the messages they are sharing.
2. People are More Likely to Trust Recommendations From Those They Know in Real Life
In fact, 92% of consumers say they trust recommendations from friends and family. People are much more likely to listen if a close friend or member of their family tells them about a product or brand.
3. Going Back to the Basics of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, With a Twist
Ambassador marketing utilises the original concept of word of mouth, people who are so passionate about a brand or product that they are telling everyone they know. By doing this at scale, and rewarding your loyal community for their contribution it becomes word-of-mouth marketing in overdrive!
4. Tapping Into the True Voice of Consumers
A recent Forbes article states, “Savvy retailers and brands are evolving their influencer marketing to meet consumers’ changing expectations and looking for more authentic engagement models that tap the true voice of consumers to unearth new insights they can use to develop new products and boost engagement and sales.” Brands are becoming more aware of the benefits of authenticity and listening to their real customers.
5. Genuine User Generated Content
85% of consumers find visual UGC more influential than brand photos or videos and UGC results in 29% higher web conversions than campaigns or websites without it. People like to buy from people, and user-created content adds a more human side to your messaging.
6. Increase Customer Retention & Lifetime Value
Once your customers join your ambassador community they are more likely to be engaged and loyal to your brand. They feel like they are part of your team and especially appreciate exclusive events, freebies and discounts that make them proud to be involved.
7. Build Buzz Around Your Brand
Your ambassador community is like an army – when you have new product launches, discounts or special events, you can work with your army to build a huge amount of buzz. It’s like an extension of your marketing team.
8. Acquire More Customers
With your current customers happy and creating loads of great content and buzz around your products, this is going to bring in new customers too. By getting your existing ambassadors to share exclusive discount codes and affiliate links, you can increase your sales and bring these new customers into your ambassador community to continue the cycle.
9. Increase Consumer Trust
IDEAL OF SWEDEN have been doing ambassador marketing for many years. They say, “The relationship between ambassadors and their followers builds something traditional marketing never could – trust.”
Think that ambassador marketing could be good for your brand? We built our platform to help you make the most of this tactic. Originating as an in-house tool for jumpsuit brand Onepiece, we give you tools to automate the manual tasks of ambassador marketing such as making payments while making it easy to scale your community to any size.
