Digital Horizons
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Digital Horizons
How To Use Brand Ambassadors to Amplify Your Social Strategy
Imagine having a roster of content wizards at your disposal, crafting assets that not only dazzle but also embody the essence of your brand. That's the art of selecting and collaborating with the right brand ambassadors, a topic we navigate with Bianca's expertise shining a light on every step. We'll guide you through the digital maze, from the discovery of potential influencers on Instagram and TikTok to the nuances of personalized outreach. It's about creating symbiotic relationships that elevate your brand and delight your ambassadors; a strategy where everyone wins.
There's a finesse to fostering these partnerships and measuring their triumphs, and in this episode, we explore just that. We talk about how to cultivate long-term, non-transactional relationships with influencers that can lead to genuine and enthusiastic advocacy for your brand. And because the proof is always in the pudding, we delve into the metrics that matter—from unique codes that link directly to sales to the underestimated power of shares and saves. Tune in for a masterclass in maximizing your digital presence and leveraging influencer partnerships to their fullest, propelling your brand into the social media stratosphere.
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director Walker Hill Digital
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
I kind of see it as there's two types of ambassadors. So you have the ones that you're kind of leveraging their following, so they're the ones with a bigger reach, so they've got, I guess, quite a lot of followers. Maybe their videos have great engagement, always hit a huge amount of views. And then you've got the other side ambassadors, which you're kind of more using for content creation. So maybe you don't really have the ability to take high quality content.
Speaker 2:It's a good way to get someone who essentially does it for a job to film a video and then you can use that across your socials. Welcome to the Digital Horizons podcast. I'm your host, james Walker, and today I am joined with Bianca Stockinger. Bianca has been with us here at Walker Hill Digital in a account management style role, but I think that there's so much more to that in terms of what you're doing. I think that the account manager his title definitely does not cover anywhere near the scope of what you're doing in your day-to-day.
Speaker 2:Bianca's been working with us for the last three years, I believe.
Speaker 1:Three years and a few weeks.
Speaker 2:Nice. Does that mean, we missed your three years thing?
Speaker 1:No, in a few weeks.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, I thought you said, and a few weeks, and that would have been embarrassing because we just fucked that up.
Speaker 1:Well, I organize everyone's anniversaries.
Speaker 2:Okay, it would have been me, it would have been your fault.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not telling someone it was my anniversary.
Speaker 2:That could have been a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and so Bianca today is going to be talking to us about how to use ambassadors to amplify your organic social media. Bianca, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. We've talked about getting you on here for so long I know, I've always been like no, I've got nothing to talk about. Well, that's right, we couldn't find a topic.
Speaker 2:But I was like, hold on, you actually created this whole thing that we do here for clients, and so you kind of are the exactly right person to be talking to about this. And there's so much value that businesses can take away from this, because it is pretty much almost a free way of getting exposure for your business and very limited actual output or time required as well to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I noticed it was something that I did like it was my bread and butter at my previous role before at Walker Hill and it was such a strong aspect of my organic socials management there that was something we didn't offer here. So I was like let's give it a go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I guess tell us a little bit about your background and what you were doing in your previous role and how that worked, and then what you're doing now in terms of your digital marketing strategy side.
Speaker 1:So I've been in the digital marketing industry, I'd say for five years now. My previous role was at a beauty company called Loving Tan and it was very organic, socials heavy. I ran the Instagram, the TikTok, the Facebook, the Pinterest, any social media platform. There I ran. And then I also did the PR management. So that was managing the influencers, negotiating their contracts, doing PR send out. So if we had a launch, we would send out like specific PR packs to do with the launch. If there was like a celebration day, like the 4th of July, we would send PR packs. So it was a huge role and so that was my prior experience before coming to Walker Hill. Then I've been here for three years and, as you touched on, I look after all the clients here.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so I think you identified to us that, hey, there is an opportunity for, especially like some of the brands that were working in hospitality or e-commerce, or I mean really any of them maybe not professional services that could be using this style of marketing. So maybe if you can just tell us a little bit first of all what an ambassador or brand ambassador is, Well, I kind of see it as there's two types of ambassadors.
Speaker 1:So you have the ones that you're kind of leveraging their following, so they're the ones with a bigger reach. So they've got, I guess, quite a lot of followers. Maybe their videos have great engagement, always hit a huge amount of views. And then you've got the other side ambassadors, which you're kind of more using for content creation. So maybe you don't really have the ability to take high quality content. It's a good way to get someone who essentially does it for a job to film a video and then you can use that across your socials.
Speaker 1:So I like to do a mix of both with all our clients, because I think both are important, but, yeah, both have different purposes.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so when you're, I guess, thinking, all right, cool, I'm going to take a step and using an ambassador for my business to try and get some of this type of marketing going, what is it that people should be looking for when they are trying to select an ambassador for the business?
Speaker 1:Often with the clients that we have that do this. I'll look at a few different demographics that I think they should hit. So, say, if it's a hospitality brand, I think, well, they might want foodie influencers there, so people that do food reviews, but then they might want more like mum influencers. Then they might want local influencers. So I try to hit each demographic. So it's kind of essentially three different audiences, looking at the content and kind of expanding the reach as far as you can. And yeah, I'll do research into each area With each ambassador.
Speaker 1:Obviously you've got to make sure they align with your brand values. So it is kind of important to make sure you thoroughly look through their content, make sure, obviously, they don't do anything controversial, or make sure, if you're, say, a beauty brand, you're not reaching out to an ambassador who only talks about sport or something like that. So kind of checking over those important things as well as making sure their engagement is consistent, like they just didn't have one video that was good and then nothing else is performed. Making sure they're consistently posting. But yeah, I feel like you want to make sure you're doing quality over quantity, like there's no point just reaching out to anyone who's posted a video and hoping that yours will work. It's really making sure that they align with your brand as well.
Speaker 2:So I guess you need to look at it as they need to be actually your target audience ideally, so if you've got a men's fashion brand that suits, say, a 40 plus person. That's the ideal person you're going to be getting. You're not going to be getting a mummy blogger to go and use your products.
Speaker 1:Well, you'd essentially think about it the same way. You'd think about setting up your meta ads, like you're setting your target audience there, you're doing your age range, your genders, your locations and stuff like that. It's the same thing. You've got to make sure it aligns with what you want, otherwise you're hitting the wrong audience and you may they're just it's not going to.
Speaker 2:People might watch the video, but it's like we know that there's people out there. We know that there are people who are probably going to be keen to promote our brand, possibly if you give them something in return most likely. But where are we going to find these people?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there are a few different ways. One of the ways that I look for them is if you have a known competitor in your space, looking through their tagged photos and seeing who even they previously worked with. Obviously, you don't want to always work with the same people that your competitors have, but it's a good way to start that seed of. Okay, this is the type of person they're working with, and then going through there.
Speaker 2:That is so good. I wouldn't have thought about that. That's a really good way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tagged photos is a great way to find similar ambassadors. And then Instagram does have the handy feature that if you do go on someone's profile and you click a little drop down, it says similar accounts and then you can go through those. So I'll go through.
Speaker 1:I'll find one person that I love and then I'll go through all the similar accounts and do that, and you can kind of end up in a rabbit hole. You find another one, you get similar accounts and then you just end up going, going, going. That's probably the two best ways I can find it. Another one is going on the explore page on Instagram and just hoping. Obviously, if you've engaged with similar content to what your brand is, there'll be similar content on your explore page, so you can find people have posted about it there as well.
Speaker 2:Okay and like is there software? Are there other platforms, third party, or do you find that actually just doing it in the app? Like, say, I want to find a TikTok person. Am I just looking on TikTok or how are you doing that just in platform?
Speaker 1:I guess with Instagram and TikTok there is also the other feature of like the hashtags that you can click on. You can see people if they've posted Foodie Brisbane before. Then you can look at all the people that have posted Foodie Brisbane. So that's really helpful. I haven't really used any tools. I know there are tools out there like Social Blade and stuff like that. I prefer just to do it in platform because I feel like it's a little bit easier.
Speaker 2:But yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there are platforms that do it. Yeah, I'm sure there are platforms that do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you've got a list of people. Now, how are you actually managing this process? Because obviously you can't just pick two people and hope that something's going to come out of it, because you've got to reach out to them and all this kind of stuff. So what's the management process of? Once you've identified people, what's the next steps from there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do have like a kind of an eight step process with it because obviously you can reach out to 10 people, one might reply, all 10 might reply. So kind of some parts of it is luck of the draw. Especially if you're doing an exchange just for a voucher or a product, you're like you're not paying influencers at the end of the day, like they are probably getting contacted by a lot of brands. So I guess that kind of segues to the fact that unfortunately the service isn't for everyone in the fact that you need some sort of brand equity, like if you're contacting an influencer and you have 100 followers, your quality of content's poor. If you're not offering them anything, they've got no reason to do content for you.
Speaker 1:So I would say to brands who are looking to do this make sure you have a strong enough digital presence that ambassadors would have reason to work with you. Not, you don't have to be like the biggest page at all, but like make sure if they are, because the first thing they're going to do is click on your profile no-transcript. You have to remember they're putting their name to your product. So, you have to be a brand they want to represent.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. We're talking about how I mean we're looking for people that we want to align with, but it's both ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it works backwards.
Speaker 2:So if you've got a shit feed and there's nothing appealing about it. Why would they want to promote this brand? Because then it's obviously going to have a negative impact on their personal brand. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Like, say, they're sprucing your product, they're putting your name in your product, so you have to, or yeah, it's a two-way street. So that kind of is the first step when, before you send out any of the messages reaching out, make sure that your profile looks like of someone, a business that they would want to work with.
Speaker 2:So step one is clean your shit up and make it look good yeah.
Speaker 1:And obviously I know there are like new businesses out there so they might not have a lot of feed posts on or anything like that. In those circumstances you might have to go down the route of paying influencers to get those first few through before you're able to do the more like free ones. But I guess it's kind of dependent on your product and everything like that, I mean for hospitality.
Speaker 2:You know a new restaurant's just open. They're not going to have a lot of content, probably on their page, but you want to make it, you know. Hopefully you've got an appealing enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's different with restaurants because people get excited about new restaurant launches. That's easy to spruce, being like come down to our launch and at the end of the day it's a restaurant, so they're not really like representing a product as such and it's a bit more exciting. This is more for like, product-based things or maybe a service. But step is obviously reaching out to the ambassadors, making the message not too spammy, like everyone.
Speaker 2:I'm sure everyone gets those like spammy ones in their message request but like no followers collab with us and you'll get free stuff.
Speaker 1:You don't want to look like that so tone down the emojis. Tone down like everything. Make it super just personal, if you can yeah um and make very casual.
Speaker 1:So you you can. One of our tips that we do is either follow the ambassador as well, just so, like you pop up twice, they can see you kind of genuine. If you want to like a recent post, don't go crazy and go like like all their photo, because then you will look spam. But yeah, there's that. And then we also say your business is on Instagram and on TikTok. Reach out via the platform you're stronger on. For example, the ambassador might be on TikTok and have a great platform on there, but if you don't have a strong profile on there, don't reach out on there. If you have a great Instagram with a lot of followers, just contact them via there. It just looks a bit more legit than contacting from your brand new profile on TikTok.
Speaker 2:I see quite a few actually have an email in their links. Are you just DMing or are you actually contacting via the contact details that they're putting in the profile?
Speaker 1:I'll always do DM first. It's a little bit faster. If obviously they're not hearing back or anything like that, try email. It might work. A lot of them that have emails. Then they do it because they want to start negotiating money and stuff like that. But I mean you can try any kind of avenue to contact them without harassing them.
Speaker 2:So I'm seeing this kind of like in the spreadsheet, right. So I'm saying that you've got your list of them, you've probably got the message, but I guess, before all this, you've got to work out what your offer is. What is it you're actually going to message them to, entice them to actually want to have anything to do with your brand?
Speaker 1:Exactly so. It needs to obviously be something of value. You don't want to be stingy because then it's like, well, why would they do it? So if it's like a hospitality client, we will generally offer them a voucher for them and like a friend, to go dine and have a dinner and a drink so they can get a full experience. Because you also want, at the end of the day they're taking content, so you don't want them to take a terrible video because all you did was give them like a $20 voucher to go get one thing.
Speaker 1:It needs to be also a good video. It's just not worth it.
Speaker 1:Well, you want them to have the experience that you're ideally wanting other people to come and pay for that experience so that you want them to be doing exactly the same thing, yes, and say for example, if you're a hospitality business, if you need to make sure you tell your staff that these influencers are coming. There's nothing worse than when the staff are not aware Because you want them to. Like, every, obviously, customer should get a good experience, but these ones you need especially good experiences with. So I'd say that's important. And then, obviously, if it's a product, making sure like you can obviously stagger it depending on the ambassador, but giving them like a range of products to try not just sending them a singular product and stuff like that. So we lay it all out in a spreadsheet and we have the ambassador an example of a good piece of content for them. That like we an example of a good piece of content for them. That like we want them to do a similar one of how many followers they have, their engagement rates, how we're going to contact them and what stage they're at so we can keep track of them. We kind of we give them three chances to reply. We do a few different contact methods and if not, we just mark them as lost.
Speaker 1:But yeah, we go through each stage. We obviously reach out to them, organize the content, organize the visit, organize the product, whatever it is, and then a really important part of it is sending them an example video of what you want, because realistically, when it is free content, you can't be too strict like do this, do this, do this, because you're not paying them. They're doing this kind of as a good offer, so sending them an example video of what you want and just being like, oh, I would love if you can create something like this, just so they have guidelines, because sometimes you think they're going to do what you want and you get the content through and it's like doesn't hit the mark, and then it's a waste of your time, their time, your product and in the free circumstances, you can't really ask them to reshoot.
Speaker 2:And so you're probably being that you can't stop them from either, probably even posting it either. So I guess that's also something that you've got to. When you are vetting and choosing the people you want to work with on this sort of thing, you need to make sure that, even if it sucks, it's not going to have a negative impact on your brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the thing. So, like I've worked in both spaces, like I've worked with like paid influencers that have paid thousands and thousands of dollars, you have the opportunity. They send you the content before you make changes. The final product that goes out is exactly what you want. With the free stuff. They post it before sending it to you. So you just want to have as much of a guide in place that you can so that what goes up is what you want. Even we've done in the past just like filming tips. A lot of them don't need it because at the end of the day, you're like reaching out to ambassadors. They're meant to know how to do content, but it doesn't hurt just being like oh, we'd love if you can showcase this or make sure you mentioned this, if you can.
Speaker 2:So yeah, okay, and so I imagine, from actually that first initial touch point of reaching out and maybe they've responded, there is liaise and make sure you get the outcome that you're hoping to achieve out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if some of them say, for example, you reach out to one, maybe they do have a bit of high followers, you're hoping that they will do a free video and they're not, they say you need to pay them or whatever. I still review those and see if there's something else we can make work. They might not do a full video, but would this person be worth it if they just posted some stories and if they offer free stories or they might offer to just be like, yeah, I'll feature it in a video if I love it, and just taking that chance that it might be worth it. If it is a big enough influencer and they just happen to mention it organically, those circumstances are worth maybe the $50, $100 it costs to just send them the product, because you never know.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess you also want to back your product. So if you're not confident in your product and what you're doing anyway, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just send it, like obviously you don't want to do that to the ambassadors that don't have the reach. That's not worth it there. Like more often than not, unfortunately with the landscape at the moment like there'll be people with 2000 followers being like yeah, I would like to be paid.
Speaker 2:I'm like what for.
Speaker 1:But those bigger ones that like that off chance they do mention it like can change your brand realistically.
Speaker 2:And so from, I guess, testing different offers and different things, as you've said, what do you find the typical price point in terms of the value of what you're giving is normally what's enough to get people across, because you obviously don't want to give away too much as well, because this could become an expensive thing if you are trying to get a lot of people that you're running through this. So what sort of dollar value would you recommend people start with as a trial?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think if you just reflect on, like, what your average order value would be.
Speaker 1:So if it's a hospitality business, say like more of a restaurant, if you think about, okay, how much does two customers getting dinner and drinks cost and that's what you should essentially offer, just to kind of, I guess, make it make sense for the ambassador.
Speaker 1:Same with the products If you think about if you have a range of them, if it's worth them having trying one from each range, or if it's like comes in a set, just kind of making it make sense. So it's actually an experience for the ambassador, not just getting one product and being like, oh, okay, cool, like and obviously there are the different side of it. We can do the more pr pack thing, like if you're an e-commerce brand and you have budget for that, making an experience for them as well. Like if you can send a bit of information about your product within the pack and everything like that, make it an experience. So they might be likely to film it when they receive it and put it on their story and that could be an additional piece to the content they're already creating. So there's a lot of different ways to make it more unique and for you to stand out as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, so say, we've gone through and we've done this process and we've had some misses in terms of what deliverables we've been receiving, but some of the ambassadors or influencers that we've worked with have been outstanding and we want to, I guess, create a bit of an ongoing relationship. What would you recommend and how would you approach that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's definitely worth holding onto those ones because you can tell when you get a good, genuine ambassador that you know resonates with their audience, they get great reach and they have genuine engagement as well. So you do want to nourish those relationships. Little things like remembering little details, genuine engagement as well. So you do want to like nourish those relationships. Little things like remembering little details about them as well, like we used to back in my old company, like we would note down if they had a boyfriend or something like that.
Speaker 1:Or if we could tell when their birthday was. Clearly we would do holiday presents, like Christmas ones. Obviously, this is like bigger PR budgets and stuff like that but if you can do those little things, if you notice it's their birthday, sending them a happy birthday message or something like that. Or if you say you're a restaurant and you have a new menu launch, inviting them back to try the new menu not necessarily asking for content, but just being like hey, we'd love to have you back Just little things that you can do to nourish the relationship. So then, if you do need content again, if you do want to do another collaboration, that you've got that strong relationship and it's a bit less transactional, it's a bit more like they are working with your brand because they love your brand as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, perfect, okay, cool. So and then, how are we measuring whether this is a worthwhile investment of? Obviously, whatever you're handing out or giving away for free and your time involved in doing this?
Speaker 1:How are we measure the return on this? Yeah, because it's not as obvious as other things. It's not like an exact purchase afterwards, especially with, say, a hospitality business. You can't exactly see. Well, do I have more people in my restaurant now? So I think it's always good to check the metrics of each post that goes up so see how the views went, see how many comments, see if there's likes, shares Shares is a really good one, especially because that's obviously someone being like oh I love this, sending it to their friend, or something like that, or saves. But you can trial codes with the ambassadors as well. We've done that with a few of our e-commerce clients. So you'll give them a unique code. So you can either do a unique code for ambassadors in general or for each individual ambassador, and then you can measure the redemptions from that. So we've seen success from that with one of our clients. You can either put the code on top of the video or in the caption and then it gives you a direct, measurable result from the content.
Speaker 2:So I've seen quite a few of those even just popping up on my feed with people putting up a code. It's good for measuring, but is there also potential for them being able to make it more worthwhile for the ambassador to say hey look, if a hundred people use this, we'll pay a cash bonus, or we'll incentivize it further from that because you can measure the performance of it, and so that would be like all right, cool, we're going to give 10% off, but you also get 5% or something on top of each sale or something.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, some ambassadors really want to use them because it shows if they're confident in themselves. Like they know. If I use the code, I know it's going to get redemptions. Then I can ask for payment, maybe for the next video and stuff like that. So it is important to measure, especially if you see potential in an ambassador and maybe think down the track that you would want to pay them, having that step of actually saying, well, okay, they might get 100,000 views, but are those views just views, or are people actually engaging, being influenced by this person and wanting to buy what they are talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I guess you also got to be cautious of like I know we've got videos on our feed that have had hundreds of thousands of views but we're paying to boost them, yeah, so I guess that's also. I mean checking and metrics other than just views, because views are very easily influenced by putting budget behind. So if I'm like a micro-influencer and then I'm showing how I'm getting hundreds of thousands of views because I've put a little bit of investment to boost my profile up, I think those other metrics, like, as you're saying, shares and saves and stuff, are so important because they're much harder to influence by putting budget behind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you see a video with 300,000 views and it's got 42 likes, you're like that doesn't add up. You can tell straight away, especially with TikTok. It's very easy to boost your views and then click on it. And if it's got no actual genuine engagement, you can tell that they've paid for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So I mean it sounds like that this is a really good strategic way to get content for your pages but also to get reach that you wouldn't already have, especially when you're starting out and you haven't got much of a brand presence, to get in front of people who you wouldn't typically get in front of, without having to boost or put a budget behind it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it is a kind of a cost-effective way for a business if they don't want to spend a lot on ad spend, if they just don't have the money for it, can be a really cost-effective way just to get your brand name out there. It's a bit more of an organic way to do it and it's, yeah, lower budget.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, cool. Well, bianca, thank you for your time today. I'm coming on the show. I'm definitely going to convince you to come back on again when we can think of another topic to talk about. There's got to be something I'm sure we can talk about how to. I'm just going to leave that there, I don't know. We to the show today.
Speaker 1:We'll be back next week with another episode Thanks. Thank you.