Hey there!

Are you aspiring to become a successful brand ambassador or influencer? Then read here to know how to become brand ambassador in 10 effective steps.

But before getting to that, let us first understand who is a brand ambassador.

A Brand Ambassador is a representative of a brand who influences his/her personal following and converts them into potential customers for the brand. They help create awareness of a brand among their audiences or followers.

The recent pandemic has paved way for a huge digital revolution. After which, the brand ambassadors have been classified into 2 types,

• In-person Ambassadors
• Online Ambassadors (Social Media Influencers)

While prominent celebrities used to be in-person ambassadors mostly, anyone can become an influencer nowadays.

Influencer marketing grew very lucrative from $1.7 billion in 2016 to a whopping $16.4 billion industry and is further expected to grow to 24.1 billion by 2025.

Let us now get into the detail.

1. Set a Niche
2. Pick a relevant social media platform
3. Build a Profile
4. Engage with the audience
5. Grow your following
6. UGC campaigns
7. Stay Updated
8. Choose a suitable brand
9. Contact the brand
10. Be in the business

Set a Niche

Firstly, you need to identify your area of interest and talent to create and develop respective content (videos or blogs). There are a few industries that are mostly preferred by brand ambassadors or influencers today. They are,

• Beauty & Fashion
• Fitness & Wellness
• Personal Care
• Gardening
• Creative Arts (Painting, Music, Dance, etc)
• Travel
• Food & Beverage
• Toys
• DIY tips & tricks

and more. For example, Huda Kattan is the most popular beauty influencer with a thumping 50.8M followers on Instagram. She was also ranked 40 in Forbes’ list of the wealthiest self-made female entrepreneurs in the US in 2019.

Pick a relevant social media platform

Once you have identified your niche, choosing the right platform to portray is pivotal to grabbing the audience’s attention with your content. Wrong content in the wrong place results in no progress at all. Here are some,

• Social Networks – Facebook, Instagram, etc
• Micro-blogging sites – Twitter, etc
• Professional networking sites – LinkedIn, etc
• Media Sharing networks – YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, etc
• Photography networking sites – Pinterest, etc
• Social Review sites – Google Reviews, Trustpilot, Yelp, etc
• Community Blogs and Forums

Research well and choose the appropriate social networking sites to establish your presence and grow.

Build a Profile

The next thing you should do is build a social media profile to develop connections and followers. Create your social media profile on preferable and popular social media platforms that are relevant to your interested field. Because this profile is going to be your brand identity.

Show your face and be human to demonstrate your authenticity as it is critical to connect with your viewers and turn them into your followers. The audience would like to engage with only reliable accounts.

99% of Social media users tend to develop perceptions based on the active conversations and engagement of the profiles.

So, develop and share more personalized yet informative content to instantly build trust in your visitors. The more they trust you they will become your loyal followers.

Engage with the audience

Now that you have set up your niche and profile on social platforms, start creating interesting and engaging content that would immediately catch the onlookers’ attention. Continue to post and share more relevant content that reflects your personality and establishes your identity.

Constant engagement with your audience helps build a strong relationship between you and them. It will also increase their trust in you. So ensure to make a frequent presence among them and constant sharing of posts and events online or offline.

For an online brand ambassador, the expected average engagement ratio is 4.84% by the companies to consider you for their brand promotion.

Grow your following

Now, your ultimate goal should be to grow the fan following. This is the number that appeals to the brands or companies when you approach them for potential collaboration or vice versa.

It is not compulsory that you need to own millions of followers to be able to represent a brand. They look for that type of brand ambassador or influencer who fits their campaign requirements.

Let me help you with the detailed breakup here,

• Mega – more than a million followers (like celebrities)
• Macro – 500K to 1 million followers
• Mid-tier – 50K to 500K followers
• Micro – 10K to 50K followers
• Nano – 1K to 10K followers

You can also collaborate with fellow ambassadors on social platforms to attract their audiences and grow your followers. Check this image of Jera Bean collaborating with Lissette Calveiro to promote their niche and engage their prospective followers.

 

Such collaborations help in boosting your number of followers. As much as you increase your fan base, you are bringing more engagement to the brands.

UGC campaigns

Studies show, that 80% of consumers have purchased something via an influencer recommendation and 92% of consumers trust online word-of-mouth recommendations.

Involve your audience in every possible conversation by inviting their reviews or feedback. Acknowledge their comments and try to reply to them promptly. This will trigger loyalty in them and they will continue to follow your profile.

Thereafter, whenever you run UGC campaigns your followers are sure to refer to word of the mouth helping you drive more conversions and ROI for the brands you represent.

66% of the brands are investing in UGC advertising as it assures 12x engagement and 28% conversion rates.

Stay Updated

In other words, keep growing. Along with enhancing your creativity, you should also stay updated with current trends, news, and technical tools as well.

Stay constantly vigilant for fresh information in your field of interest and try to share first-hand information. You need to develop your expertise in your niche to be more visible to the brands of those verticals.

We have witnessed a continued shift in technology in recent years. For example, 2G, and 3G have now become 5G and it won’t stop here. We were initially sharing only text, then photos, and now high-resolution videos and audio. And people are getting used to every bit of it gradually.

Hence you need to constantly try every new social platform or software tool that pops up in the digital market, to expand your digital presence and widen your fan base. This means that if you become popular on Instagram, explore other platforms like YouTube, podcasts, blogs, etc.

There are software tools that link these platforms, try your hands on them and establish your presence on every possible platform to invite followers from across the mediums.

Choose a suitable brand

Once you have established yourself as a creator or say you are now a nano-influencer with a considerable following, research and find a fitting brand that suits your personality and interest. Approach them to share your interest in promoting their product or service.

Acquire the sample products, if any, and try for yourself to get a personal first-hand experience. Since you have built a level of trust in your followers, it is also your responsibility to give them the right thing. Pen down what you like about the product/brand. Create a vlog or blog of the same to help you in pitching for the brand ambassador contract.

Contact the Brand

Contact the brand owner or the company directly over their available channel (website, email, or social media profiles). Find out whether they have any brand ambassador requirements and apply.

Go fully prepared for the pitching with all the required materials in hand – like the sample product review vlog/blog, self-profile statistics/analytics, bio, etc along with a winning introduction.

There are influencer marketing agencies like Happine.cc, SocialSEO, Moburst, and more, to help you find perfect brands depending on your interests and creations and collaborate with them meticulously. At a later stage, when you acquire quite a visible following on social media platforms, companies will start approaching you.

Be in the business

Brands prefer long-term partnerships with brand ambassadors instead of one-off projects – found the Influencermarketinghub. As it is a bit difficult even for a highly engaged influencer to bring in the required sales within a short period.

So it will be a smarter move to design your own packages that you can use to pitch such brands and make it easy for them to finalize the contract with you. Even if you are on short-term projects or one-off, it is better to keep looking for more prospects all the time.

Influencermarketinghub reports that there are currently more than 26 best influencer marketing platforms and 20+ influencer marketing softwares in the industry. Grow along and carve your spot in this billion-dollar industry.

Final Words

So, becoming an ambassador for a brand is not an achievable dream, at least not anymore. We are confident that this read has given you the necessary inputs to kick-start your ambassador career.

We know that searching for the right brand would take hours or days, hence we recommend you check out Happine.cc. This is a platform that helps you find suitable brands to promote and automate payments. It integrates with popular eCommerce platforms too, thereby giving you more opportunities consistently.