Brand Ambassadors for a Spectacular 2015

As the craziness of the holiday season picks up for the last minute shopping for retailers and businesses are experiencing the holiday lull, some of us are still thinking about how we’re going to execute 2015’s marketing plan and really make next year spectacular. I would normally tell you a list of things I tell business—SEO, Social Media, mobile. You can do anything in 2015, but it’s really about execution.

Well darlings, I’m going to throw out another phrase you should have engrained in your brains if you’d really like to make 2015 spectacular. You’re going to need brand ambassadors.

Brand ambassadors are:

· Current clients or customers

· They love your business and tell you

· Multiple transactions and/or returning customers

· Are active on social networks

Communicating with your brand ambassadors is another conversation. Traditional, one size fits all marketing methods don’t work. You really should customize your forms of communication with this group because they’ll be marketing your business (for free). It may take a little extra time on the front end, but when these folks start talking and spreading the word about your business and you’re seeing profits rise, it’ll be worth the effort.

Video Email. This is fairly new. Essentially, you’ll create a video specifically for your brand ambassadors where you pretend like you’re talking to one person (but really quite a few) and conveying whatever message you want. You could talk about an extra special offer just for them, sending a video corporate greeting card for holidays, birthday, or anniversary, or using the video as a newsletter. After you create the actual video, upload and send using a video email service company like Inviter.

Engage on Social Media. Your brand ambassadors are probably very active on social media. Find them by searching for your company name in any social channel. You’ll notice that a select few will talk about how much they love your product or service. You want that to happen, so keep the momentum going by engaging these amazing people. Thank them publicly. Offer them a discount for being so loyal. Find ways to keep that conversation going. If you know their birthday or anniversary (or other major life event because you should be paying attention to their activity), give them a public shout out. It makes them feel like you care. More importantly for your business, it keeps your name out there in the social media sphere and could drive more business.

Meet IRL. Since these spectacular brand ambassadors are active on social media, go one step further if you can and arrange to meet IRL (in real life). I’m talking about a tweetup, happy hour, whatever. It’s a social gathering for brand ambassadors (but you don’t call it that—find a different name for this gathering). Make it something enticing and engaging. Have drinks and food available. Whatever the theme or purpose of the event, make sure to make your guests feel extra special and valued. Chances are, they’ll be tweeting live about your event and posting pictures on Facebook and Instagram…exactly what you want.

So what should you actually expect is a lot of social mentions. These social mentions will ultimately help increase your social authority which will impact the value of your social channels with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. Don’t let Google fool you. Authority on social impacts how you rank in search results. Big picture is that this drives traffic to your website and hopefully increases conversions (although that is never guaranteed). It will also drive brand awareness. It won’t happen overnight, but it will help you grow your business in the long run.