“Every dark cloud has a silver lining.” Remember that saying? For Brand Ambassadors and for brands banking on demos as a means for driving trial of your products, it’s certainly easy to see the COVID-19 pandemic as a dark cloud. So where is the silver lining?
Many progressive-thinking brands are considering their options for taking their in-person marketing online via social media, and more importantly, keeping their BAs working. This is a perfect time to think about what will be most effective in the social sphere.
Gaining influence
Conventional thinking is that a brand can get the broadest exposure by employing “online influencers” to shortcut building their social presence. But is this really the best way to accomplish your marketing objectives?
Let’s go back to the basics of why we are doing that marketing in the first place. If you’ve been doing (or even considering doing) demos, it’s probably because you know it’s among the most effective ways to drive trial of your product – and ultimately, to drive sales.
A successful marketing & sales engagement requires:
If you want to go online, you can hire an “influencer”, but they for sure don’t know your product, and they may not even know how to sell or have any real influence. To make an influencer successful for you, you probably need to train the influencer on your company and product(s) and give them an ongoing motivation to engage and sell.
On the other hand, your existing BAs are probably quite talented, and many of them are incredible networkers… and they already have 2, 3, and 4 down pat. Under normal demo circumstances, by putting the BA into a store, the brand is in effect providing prospects for the BA to engage with. But if you now also ask them to market to their network, that can also take care of #1 (the prospects). And all of this occurs with next to no training or waiting period. Additionally, there’s the added benefit that the BA is certainly motivated to keep a built relationship with their friends and family; and if they get a spiff on sales, you’ve covered every aspect of success.
Measure everything!
Another aspect of conventional social media marketing is that brands rarely even track the marketing or sales results of their influencer activities. This is largely because there’s no convenient way to do so. That means you’re flying blind and don’t know what’s working, what’s not, or where to make improvements. But this is exactly what a platform like Promomash (shameless plug, I know) can greatly simplify… and if you’re already using such a platform to track the performance of your ambassadors, it’s a simple task to use it in the social sphere to do the same thing.
Here are a few examples of the types of virtual demos that you can try:
Let’s summarize:
So, if a brand wants to move some of their marketing online, there are advantages to utilizing their existing Brand Ambassadors. They can be a great addition or alternative to using conventional online influencers. At the very least, the learning curve can be MUCH shorter with existing BAs, and it makes sense to compare the results you can get with them against the results from using conventional online influencers. We already work with several brands who are utilizing their BAs to great effect – and you may be surprised to find it to be an excellent opportunity for you as well.
What's your experience with taking your Brand Ambassadors online? We'd love to hear from you...and if your brand is working on options for mobilizing your BAs online, our Client Success team has plenty of ideas we would be happy to share.