What Are the 20 Benefits of an Engaged Community for Your Business?

Have you heard of the “trust crisis”?

This concept refers to consumers’ awareness of the commercial and communication strategy behind every advertisement. Added to this is the enormous amount of information and stimuli that your target audience – your future customers – are bombarded with daily by brands: they become impervious to any form of advertising communication from brands.

The consequence of these two phenomena is simple: traditional advertising alone no longer converts. This trust crisis is further amplified by the era of online fakes, as fake news, fake followers, and fake reviews gain ground on the Internet. Consumers are now wary of all types of communication, and understandably so.

It then becomes vital for the company to rebuild a genuine connection with its potential customers.

And who is more legitimate than your customers to become ambassadors of your brand? And to convince their network, or community, of the relevance of your product?

This is where the brand ambassador program comes in. Trustt offers software that helps brands integrate your program and manage it on their online site. We explain why and how to establish this program that allows community engagement around your brand and products.

What Are the Advantages of Having an Ambassador Program?

Your brand’s ambassador program, beyond giving voice to your customers and influencers, allows you to collect community UGC and strengthen your online reputation. This step brings you several benefits to sharpen your marketing strategy.

Strengthen Your Customer-Centric Strategy

Opting for a customer-centric strategy involves placing customer satisfaction at the heart of every marketing step. This approach consists of making your customers’ needs the priority of your company. The customer-centric approach is highly valuable for your company, as it puts the interests of your clientele before even selling your services. It is therefore a considerable asset for the image of brands in the minds of potential customers.

Launching an ambassador program is a method that aligns perfectly with your customer-centric approach, as you give your customers the opportunity to make their voices heard and express themselves freely on the Web. You show your community that you are not looking for biased or censored reviews and that you do not sponsor customer reviews. Thus, you prove your quest for authenticity, quality, and comprehensiveness in consumer feedback, and in a continuous improvement approach to your offer. Your customers will therefore feel listened to, valued, and placed at the heart of your brand’s purpose. This community engagement has real strength for brands that want to expand their connection with their customers while improving their communication method.

Benefit from an ROI-Focused Approach

Also, launching an ambassador program is a very interesting operation from a return on investment perspective. Indeed, a traditional online advertising marketing campaign is expensive and time-consuming to set up. Having your customers talk about your products and articles is completely free and operates without the intervention of your team. When we know that word-of-mouth marketing converts five times more than a traditional media communication campaign – according to the international consulting firm BCG – we quickly understand that putting customers at the heart of your marketing strategy can be beneficial for you. The ROI of an ambassador program is therefore one of the main reasons for its success with brands and their companies.

Trustt Supports You in Succeeding with Your Brand Ambassador Program

Convinced of the benefits of implementing a brand ambassador program on your online site? Don’t overlook these 3 tips to ensure the success of your approach:

Define the Objectives of Your Ambassador Campaign

Your ambassador program serves customer satisfaction objectives as part of your customer-centric marketing approach. But it’s primarily a lever to accelerate your visibility on social networks, enhance your product pages with qualified consumer feedback, and ultimately boost your sales both online and in physical stores. It is therefore necessary to know what your objectives are, and to analyze the outcomes of this program.

When launching your ambassador program, it is strongly advised to have set clear intentions beforehand to evaluate the relevance of your program at the end of your product test. What do you want to improve? How can you quantify this objective? What type of communication will you develop for your targets?

Engage Ambassadors Who Share Your Values

Having ambassadors who talk about your brand is a very good thing, but benefiting from quality online content aligned with your brand image is even better for boosting your visibility on the Web!

To achieve this, using a solution like Trustt allows you to obtain a panel of ambassadors accustomed to product testing and particularly inclined to provide comprehensive feedback on all aspects of your products.

On the influencer side, the data collected by Trustt allows for establishing matches between influencers and your brand. Thanks to a machine learning algorithm, SophIA, you save precious time by finding in just one click THE influencers who share your area of expertise and your values.

Thus, benefit from authentic and comprehensive content that exactly reflects your brand image on the Web. To collect quality UGC, building a specific panel of ambassadors should therefore be at the heart of your marketing strategy.

Nurture Your Relationship with Your Ambassadors

Finally, it’s important to maintain the connection with your ambassadors, in the same way you pamper your best customers. For example, consider commenting on the publications of influencers and ambassadors on social networks (Instagram, TikTok, blog, etc.).

You can also share them in stories on your brand’s account. Also, don’t hesitate to thank – as much as possible – the contributors who create content on the Web, amplify the reputation of your products, and more broadly of your company. This ongoing communication with your ambassadors is crucial for sustaining your customer relationship!

Personalize the messages you send to your ambassadors as much as possible to sustain your relationship by creating an emotional connection and a win-win collaboration!

Collect the Reviews and UGC Obtained

Once the campaign is completed, ambassadors are invited to leave comprehensive and quality feedback on the product in question. This can be enriched with before/after photos or even videos.

If you have the Trustt Reviews module, these reviews automatically appear on your company’s website (thanks to the rich snippet, the small description displayed in Google search results)

You can also find all the social media posts generated by ambassadors who have an audience (the influencers chosen by your brand), and reuse them on your communication materials.

Glossary: The Brand Ambassador Program

What is an Ambassador Program?

As you’ve understood, an ambassador program is part of a communication and promotion strategy aimed at showcasing your brand and/or products to your prospects and gaining reputation. It is therefore a tool to recruit representatives of your brand. These representatives proudly carry your brand’s colors by conveying your values and missions and by giving their impressions to help you improve.

Who Can Be an Ambassador for My Brand?

The brand ambassador uses their ability to influence their network, or audience circle, to communicate their promotional message. However, this representative does not necessarily come from the world of influence, and, following the logic of advocacy marketing, can take the form of different types of ambassadors:

• The employee ambassadors: it’s often forgotten, yet your employees are excellent internal relays for your brand! They know your company’s mission by heart and have every interest in making it thrive. Your company’s employees can thus help you make your brand resonate on professional social networks (like LinkedIn) to introduce your brand (their employer) to their network, and thus develop your B2B audience. At the same time, this internal approach strengthens the employer brand image and helps foster employees’ sense of belonging and trust towards companies, while reinforcing the pride they can feel in their work. The employer brand image is indeed an essential element not to be forgotten, and your collaborators have their role to play!

• The collaborator ambassadors: in the same way that your employees can represent your brand, various collaborators, although external to the companies, can convey the brand image on their social networks (Instagram, TikTok, blog, LinkedIn, etc.) if they find it beneficial. Acknowledgments after a collaboration, network development, highlighting their employer, maintaining their e-reputation… Your collaborators can also be good ambassadors for your brand. It is therefore essential to involve your collaborators in order to showcase your employer brand! These collaborators can indeed be a real asset for your company.

• The influencer ambassadors: these are naturally experts in promotion, it “’s even their job! Calling on them allows you to” amplify the reach of your communication, benefit from the person’s community, strengthen your online reputation, consolidate your customer “’s engagement and, of course, boost your sales. The question remains as to which type of” influencer will be best suited to your brand and your objectives. GenericProductName helps you choose your ideal influencers thanks to its expertise in influence and proprietary community creation. The software thus allows you to select the most suitable influencers based on the quality of their work and their alignment with your company’s values. They help grow your brand’s e-reputation and awareness through social networks (Instagram, TikTok), or blog articles for example.

• The customer ambassadors: finally, you must allow your own customers to become ambassadors of your brand, as they are the most qualified to talk about your products with an even more authentic and objective perspective. They become prescribers when they buy your product for their entourage. Your customers are not influencers, they are not paid to talk about your products because it’s not their job, but they have tested them and will be sincere and authentic when sharing their experience! These ambassadors are true spokespersons for your brand in whom their audience has complete trust.

Thus, as you will have understood, your company’s ambassadors can be of several types: employees who feel a form of recognition towards their employer, collaborators, but also customers or influencers.

As a result, your potential customers – those who are hesitating, seeking information, scouring the reviews present on the Web, online blog articles, and reviews from ambassadors on Instagram, TikTok, blogs, etc. – will be attentive to users who have consumed your product. This is where the entire interest of the ambassador program lies, which will recruit your customers as spokespersons for your brand. This provides an opportunity to build a sincere connection between businesses and future consumers. Here too, Trustt accompanies you at every step of setting up your ambassador program on your website to allow your community to apply for your campaigns. These consumers will thus be able to share their experience via UGC and become future actors in the success of your brand, and more broadly, in the reputation of your company!