– Helped his business boom. – You don't have to be a major celebrity. – It's native advertising,
it's word of mouth. – Welcome to The Journey. I'm Nealey. – And I'm Emma. – And today we're talking about how a brand ambassador
can grow your business. Can you give us the inside scoop of what a brand ambassador really is? – Yeah, and they're closer than you think. It could be an employee, (laughs) where, here? It could be someone that
already works for you. It could be just a huge
fan of yours, a customer. It could also just be
someone in your community that has a huge influence. – Perfect. So with brand ambassadors,
I've heard this term called influencer marketing, what is that, and how can we leverage that
with our brand ambassadors? – Yeah, so there's a ton of
creative ways to do that. Once you do find that brand ambassador, what you can do is you can encourage them to post about you, but on
their personal account.
And why would you do that? Of course–
– Why would you do that? – Grow your following,
because then you reach out and you have this customer. Actually, let me give
you a really cool example that happened to me last year. My buddy, Kyle, he owns
a grip tape company, Cloud 9 Griptape over back in the Midwest, and he wanted to leverage
brand ambassadors to do influencer marketing. So what he did is he
sent some free grip tape out to friends of his that have
a good Instagram following, and just, you know,
gently encouraged them, hey, once you grip your
deck and go out and skate, I'd love it if you could
tag Cloud 9 Griptape.
And it helped his business boom because he got in front
of a targeted audience. Obviously, if you're sending grip tape to people on Instagram who
have a skateboard vibe, they're gonna have the audience
you want to get in front of. – Right, so if maybe
you're a clothing artist, or whatever your business is, find people in your niche
that has a decent following. They don't have to be a major celebrity, they're little micro-influencers, right, couple thousand followers,
sometimes even higher, and reach out to them and say, hey, I've got this free product, or I have X ad that I want you to run, and see if you can make some
type of arrangement to– – Yeah.
– Get your name out there, because we trust social reviews,
and people talking about another business pretty darn highly.
– Yeah, brand authenticity is
another big reason to do it because again, you might
be pushing your product. Like, I was at a trade show,
a big food show in L.A., and I came across this
brand called Field Roast, and as a vegan, they're one of
my favorite brands out there when it comes to alternative meats. And they sent a package
of, like, a t-shirt and some free products to try. Do I have a huge following? No, but I went and I posted
about it 'cause I was stoked.
I cooked with it, I took
videos, and I tagged them, and that helped them to get
in front of a larger audience. And then I felt so valuable,
I went and bragged about them to all my meat-eating friends,
and kinda converted them a little bit actually,
now that I think back. – What is it, like, 25% of,
like, positive interactions, those people go tell 10 of their friends? – Yeah, so it doesn't
hurt even if that person doesn't have this huge following.
But make it fun, make it
into kind of a game of, like, what could you send me that's
related to your business, or your customers or Nealey? He loves free stuff. And encourage them to do something, and then tag you (laughs). Yeah. And another thing,
'cause I'm thinking about what I get asked all the time from local heroes like yourself is, okay, where is the return
on investment here? What's super rad is you
can have a discount code, or a coupon, that then you hook it up with your brand ambassador, encourage them to go spread
the love to their friends.
– Okay. – And then it's easy to track, you know, how many people did actually come into your store or your shop, and spend money based on or because of that brand ambassador? Easy to link it back. – Yep, so everyone gets
their own unique coupon code. So Emma, you get a code,
I get a different code, so you can see, cool, Emma
did a lot better than I did, so probably gonna focus my attention to give Emma a little bit
more content to promote, and me, not so much. – So why this is also really effective, and why you want to
definitely get out there, start thinking about who would
be a great brand ambassador for you, get on board
the influencer marketing, is because it's native advertising, it's word of mouth, right? So, like, back to my buddy, Kyle, shout out to Kyle, Cloud 9 Griptape, if he is sending out this cool grip, and all these people, tons
of people in California, in Indiana, in New York,
they're putting his grip tape on their boards and they're
out there shredding, that is telling the
world that this grip tape is high quality, so I'm gonna get on board with Cloud 9 Griptape
because it's not Kyle pushing it in front of
your face on his Instagram.
– Yeah. – It's actually his customers because they're so stoked on the brand. – Yeah.
– Word of mouth marketing. – And it doesn't come
off as salesy or pushy, it's just, hey, this person
thought this was pretty cool, I might think that's pretty cool 'cause I'm just like them. – I'm just like, exactly,
very organic and very true. Hey, it hooked me (laughs). All right, that's a wrap.
Thanks for tuning in. You learned all about brand ambassadors, what they are, who they are, and why you should go and get one. – Perfect. So make sure you comment below
your favorite tip from today. Like this video if you did,
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Thanks for watching..
