In short: Yes! You could literally be making money while doing *almost* nothing.

This is precisely why we’re going to explain why and how you should be leveraging the power of affiliate marketing to drive online revenue.

And the best part?

If you’re using Shopify, you’re in luck because this e-commerce platform already has a directory full of Shopify affiliate marketing apps to choose from and we have rated and reviewed the best of the best.

In this article, we’re going to:

• Introduce you to the benefits of affiliate marketing.
• Showcase our top Shopify affiliate marketing apps.
• Go through the steps you need to take when setting up your own affiliate marketing program.

Let’s jump right in!

Quick Comparison: Top Shopify Affiliate Marketing Apps

Here’s a quick review of the best Shopify affiliate marketing apps, how much they cost, the pros and cons of each and our P2P rating. For more details, we have a comprehensive review below.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Essentially, affiliate marketing uses individuals to promote certain brands and products in order to receive a commission on each sale that they refer.

Affiliates can be literally anyone from existing customers to influencers or other small marketing businesses, and they can promote a product through blogging, social media, or email among other methods.

The brilliant thing about affiliate marketing is that it’s a win-win situation for both parties. Affiliates earn a decent commission for their referred sales, clicks, or leads, while merchants enjoy a fairly low risk sales and marketing effort that can scale easily.

Incentives don’t even have to be cash payments because affiliates can also receive freebies or discounts in exchange – it really is that flexible.

For ecommerce businesses, this makes even better sense because you can also track the performance of your affiliates easily with an affiliate management solution.

The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

In the U.S. alone, affiliate marketing spend reached 8.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, up from 5.4 billion recorded in 2017 according to Statista.com. This steady growth is set to continue and it is safe to say that affiliate marketing is well-worth investing in. 

Affiliate marketing has also taken on a new life as the trend of influencer marketing has somewhat burst its own bubble, and marketers are going back to ‘old-school’ measurable marketing methods. Influencer marketing has now fallen under the umbrella of affiliate marketing.

So, what are the most important benefits of affiliate marketing for ecommerce?

1.Scale Quickly with a ‘Remote’ Sales Team

As a small business, it’s highly likely that you are your own sales team! Or you might have a small core team, but expanding is a costly affair.

Affiliate marketing allows you to connect with and reach many more people who will be selling or promoting your product in a short amount of time. Plus, with affiliate marketing, you only pay per conversion so you’ll steadily increase your ROI.

2.Affiliates are Focused on the Job

There are no lengthy processes involved in making a sale because affiliates are focused on the job – it’s their source of revenue so they are determined to generate revenue for you. This frees up a lot of time you would’ve otherwise used in managing an in-house sales team, so you can focus on growing your business.

3.Multi-Channel Marketing

Affiliates will use any channel that works for them and for you. Therefore, you don’t have to get caught up in highly produced digital ads or campaigns.

Your affiliates could generate both brand awareness and conversions from multiple channels such as social media, email, online reviews, or blogging.

4.Leverage Word-of-Mouth Marketing

74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions.

Your affiliates are people, and you can leverage their reach and influence easily through an affiliate program.

5.Easy to Measure and Manage

Using shopify affiliate marketing apps makes tracking and measuring your campaign a breeze – because it’s all updated in real time and purposely built to integrate with your store.

With unique tracking codes for each affiliate, you’ll be able to easily track sales and pay out commissions – this can even be automated if you use the right tool.  

Now that we’ve got you thinking about all the marvelous benefits of affiliate marketing, let’s get right onto our list of the best Shopify affiliate marketing apps you should be using.

11 Best Shopify Affiliate Marketing Apps

1.Refersion

Refersion is one of the major players in affiliate marketing, and their end-to-end shopify affiliate marketing app brings together all those world-class features in one robust tool.

The app allows you to recruit, manage, and pay your affiliates with a personalised dashboard. Their shopify integrations allow you to automatically create unique coupon codes so you can track sales from any channel.

Pros:

• End-to-end shopify affiliate marketing
• No coding required
• Easy to launch
• Customisable affiliate commissions at product-level

Cons:

• Lowest tier is out of reach for many small businesses
• Only tracks up to 130 affiliate orders p/month
• US-based support only

Price:

• Free Trial: 14 Days 
• Paid Plan: $99 /month 

Website: refersion.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.7 Stars / 761 reviews

2.UpPromote: Affiliate & Referral

UpPromote: Affiliate & Referral is an ideal option for all-size businesses. Especially, the app offers free plan if you’re looking to start your Shopify affiliate marketing strategy without any upfront cost.

You can easily group your affiliates in program(s) with a specific commission structure. Also, you can setup auto-tier commission and lifetime commission to incentivize your team.

The app supports you to build an affiliate team with unlimited affiliates on all plans. Furthermore, you can convert customers into affiliates via a post-purchase popup, or let affiliates invite others with multi-level marketing (MLM) feature. What differs between UpPromote and other apps is that you can list your offer on UpPromote marketplace to approach more ambassadors.

Pros: 

• Free plan available
• Easy to set up
• No coding required
• Access to UpPromote marketplace to reach even more potential affiliates
• Offer multiple commission programs, life-time commission, auto-tier commission
• Pay your affiliates AUTOMATICALLY via PayPal integration, or pay store coupon using Store Credits

Cons:

• Limit approve/ deny the amount of referral orders for free plan.

Price:  

• Free Trial: 14 Days 
• Grow Affiliate: $29.99 per month
• Professional: $89.99 per month
• Enterprise: $199.99 per month

Website: uppromote.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.9 Stars / 1342 reviews

3.Social Snowball

Social Snowball is an automated affiliate marketing app designed specifically for Shopify stores. It automatically converts all store customers into affiliates and encourages them to promote your products by assigning personalized promo codes/links.

Moreover, Social Snowball shows the coupon code at the end of each purchase, on the “Thank You” page, making customers more likely to share the product they just bought.

We particularly like their minimal approach to everything. For example, the affiliate forms Social Snowball creates for non-customers (who’d like to join your affiliate program) can be filled in a few seconds.

You can pay your affiliates in two clicks using one of the six simplified payout methods. And its minimal dashboard lets you keep track of everything.

Pros:

• Free plan available – unlimited affiliates
• All customers become affiliates automatically
• Easy to set up for Shopify merchants
• Easy for affiliates to join the affiliate program made with Social Snowball
• Personalized coupon codes make users more likely to share your products.
• You can pay your affiliates in two clicks!

Cons:

• On the FREE plan, you’ll have to pay 15% of the revenue generated by Social Snowball.

Price:

• Free Forever
• Snow Day: $99/month
• Blizzard: $499/month

Website: SocialSnowball.io

Shopify App Store rating: 5.0 stars / 32 reviews

4.LeadDyno

As one of the most popular Shopify affiliate marketing apps around, LeadDyno is a favourite among small businesses. A really great benefit of using LeadDyno is that you’ll not only get to use a great marketing tool, but also gain access to their large affiliate network for free.

Pros:

• Unique affiliate dashboards
• Mobile app for affiliates
• Free access to their affiliate network

Cons:

• US-based support only, and this can lead to delays in responses
• It requires some level of technical-savviness to set up
• The first tier might be a little pricey for small companies

Price:

• Free Trial: 30 Days 
• Starter: $49 /month
• Plus: $129 /month
• Pro: $349 /month
• Premium: $749 /month

Website: leaddyno.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.5 Stars / 569 reviews

5.GoaffPro

GoaffPro is a great choice if you’re just starting up because their shopify affiliate marketing app offers quite a generous free plan. You can convert existing customers into affiliates through a customised portal, set up product-level commissions, track sales through multiple methods, generate coupons, and manage payments through PayPal.

Pros:

• Generous free tier allows you to run a full affiliate program
• Unlimited affiliates, and uncapped revenue
• Create and send welcome emails
• No coding required

Cons:

• Some customers noted a slow response time to queries
• The jump from free plan to the paid option could become a costly upgrade for some

Price:

• Free Forever
• Premium: $24 /month

Website: goaffpro.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.8 Stars / 376 Reviews

6.ReferralCandy

Referral marketing is part of affiliate marketing. Others might argue that it is a separate strategy, but we’d like to think of it as part of the affiliate marketing landscape.

What differs between referral and affiliate marketing is the relationship between the referrer and the end customer, these two are usually connected by family, friendship or other shared interests. Other than that, referral marketing works the same as affiliate marketing.

ReferralCandy is one of the most popular choices among shopify affiliate marketing apps and they are a pioneer in the affiliate marketing space. To date, they’ve generated millions of dollars in referral sales, so if you’re looking for a “Rolls Royce” of apps, this is one of them.

ReferralCandy also offers an affiliate marketing mode so you can also reach out to affiliate partners.

Pros:

• Powerful end-to-end affiliate marketing features
• Fully customizable emails with pre-designed themes
• Automated payouts
• Customizable incentives (discounts, cash payouts, gifts etc.)
• Detailed, deep analytics
• No coding required
• Built-in Affiliates Mode to reach out to influencers

Cons:

• The steep starting fee might be out of reach of smaller companies
• Customizing certain templates does require a certain level of tech-savviness and might not be very intuitive to use

Price: 

• Free Trial: 30 Days 
• Premium: $59 /month
• Plus: $299 /month

Website: referralcandy.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.9 Stars / 813 reviews

7.Affiliatly

Source: Shopify

Affilatly allows fully customizable affiliate management software. With this Shopify affiliate app, you can create custom links to let your affiliates share your products with ease. This platform lets you build branded registration forms and get email notifications to stay ahead of your program.

Pros:

• The customer support is helpful and responsive
• The free trial is much longer than other platforms
• You can track royalties and other custom partner programs

Cons:

• Poor online resources
• There’s no database of affiliates 

Price: 

• Free Trial: 90 Days 
• Starter: $16 /month
• Advanced: $24 /month
• Pro 1000: $59 /month
• Pro Unlimited: $129 /month

Website: affiliatly.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.7 Stars / 121 Reviews

8.OmniSTAR

Source: Shopify

Providing affiliate management software for aviation businesses, agriculture, mining, and railways, OmniSTAR is a basic Shopify affiliate marketing app. With one paid plan, this software is ideal for startups. The configuration is quick and easy, and the super responsive customer support is available 24/7.

Pros:

• Quick and easy configuration
• The customer support team is responsive and helpful
• Users find the features highly valuable
• The pricing is affordable 

Cons:

• You may find a lot of technical issues with this platform

Price: 

• Free Trial: 15 Days
• Basic: $47 /month

Website: omnistar.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.7 Stars / 32 Reviews

9.MLM

Source: Shopify

MLM by ShoutOut is a completely free affiliate marketing software with basic features. This beginner-friendly affiliate tool lets you manage and pay your affiliates with ease. While this isn’t the top platform for high-level affiliate management, it’s ideal for individual marketers and startups.

Pros:

• Many users say this app makes complicated tasks easy
• The interface is clear and appealing
• You don’t need technical knowledge for this platform
• It’s the perfect app for marketers 

Cons:

• You may run into technical issues
• It’s too basic for high-level campaigns 

Price: 

• Free Forever!

Website: shoutout.global

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.6 Stars / 83 Reviews

10.Simple Affiliate

Simple Affiliate is one of the best Shopify affiliate marketing apps, and all it’s users agree! Boasting five stars, this platform is seamless to use, and you can launch your campaign in a few minutes. The customer support is superb and so are the features. This platform is 100% in-house so you don’t have to manage your affiliates through external portals. 

Pros:

• This app is easy to use and navigate
• Super friendly and responsive customer support
• It’s easy to customize this app

Cons:

• The software tends to lag 

Price:

• Free Trial: 14 Days
• Basic: $14 /month
• Professional: $29 /month
• Enterprise: $249 /month

Website: simple-affiliate.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 5 Stars / 32 Reviews

11.Buzzbassador

Source: Shopify

Buzzbassador is one of the most favorable Shopify marketing apps for micro-influencer marketing campaigns. You can forget messy forms, and focus on branded registration forms that drive quality affiliates. Businesses can track their campaigns in real time and send payments effortlessly. 

Pros:

• The functionality is amazing 
• It’s easy to configure and edit your campaign
• Users say the customer support is impeccable 

Cons:

• The user interface is complicated 

Price: 

• Free Trial: 14 Days
• Launch: $39 /month
• Build: $79 /month
• Scale: $229 /month
• Plus: $499 /month

Website: buzzbassador.com

Shopify App Store Rating: 4.9 Stars / 89 Reviews

5 Steps to Build Your Affiliate Program in Shopify

With so many apps offering “one-click” options, it’s becoming even easier to get started with affiliate marketing on Shopify. However, there is some groundwork that needs to be done to really make the most of your marketing tools.

Here are a few important steps to keep in mind when you’re building your affiliate program:

1.Outline How Your Affiliate Marketing Program Will Work

Define what your sales and marketing objectives are and what kind of affiliate commission you are willing to offer. This can be discounts, free products, coupons, or other incentives.

Then look at what kind of budget range you can afford and what features are a high priority for you.

For some businesses, all they need is a straightforward affiliate marketing tool, while others might require additional communication features such as bulk emailing, automatic payouts, custom dashboards and so on.

Once you get your wish list of features and have defined your commission structure, you’ll be able to pinpoint the right app for you.

2.Pick the Right Affiliate Management Tool

Now that you’ve outlined your basic affiliate strategy, it’s time to find the right marketing tool. Here are a few quick ways you can start researching:

• Look at what tools your competitors are using
• Read online reviews and ratings
• Sign up for trials and demos to get a better sense of how the tools work and judge your comfort levels

Once you’re ready to trial or purchase an app, you simply have to login to your Shopify account, navigate to your chosen app’s listing page and click on “Add app” – then follow in the instructions to set up.

3.Set Up Your Communication Plan

Decide on how and why you’ll be communicating with your affiliates.

Email communication is usually the best way to onboard new affiliates and keep in touch throughout the campaign.

Certain emails can be automated through your Shopify affiliate marketing app, and some require more of a personal touch (such as onboarding emails, customer support, payment queries and so on).

You can also promote your affiliate program on social media, on your website or by other marketing channels.

4.Recruit Your Affiliates

With the right tool in place, you can start to recruit your ideal affiliates.

It’s important that you clearly define what criteria you’re looking for and what you are willing to pay out, and what you are paying out for: sales, clicks, leads, and so on.

You can use your affiliate marketing app to find affiliates on their owned networks, or you can start with your own customer base (as with referral marketing).

5.Track, Measure, Manage and Optimize

Track performance and manage your affiliate program with ease using the dashboard provided by your affiliate marketing tool.

Using the analytics and insights you receive through the app, you can optimize your affiliate program even further.

Final Thoughts on Shopify Affiliate Marketing

While having a diverse marketing mix is always a good strategy, we really believe that affiliate marketing should be a big part of that effort.

While there are quite a few apps that perform similar tasks out there, it’s important to get the most out of your monthly fees. Therefore, we recommend doing your research on each app.

Use articles like these to help you narrow down the search, and sign up for as many free trials and software demos as possible to give you the best opportunity to “try before you buy”.

Our Top Picks from Our Review of the Best Shopify Affiliate Apps

For small businesses just starting out: GoaffPro for their generous free plan.

For enterprise-level businesses, looking for a robust end-to-end solution: Refersion for their established, fully end-to-end Shopify affiliate marketing offering.

References

99Firms: 23 Affiliate Marketing Statistics to Help You Up Your Game

BigCommerce: Word of Mouth Marketing How to Get Happy Customers to Advocate for Your Business

E-commerce CEO: E-commerce Affiliate Marketing: The Ultimate Guide 

Refersion: Can You Do Affiliate Marketing on Shopify? 

Shopify: Affiliate Marketing: How to Turn Product Recommendations into Passive Income 

The post Shopify Affiliate Marketing: 11 Best Apps + Full Guide for 2024 [Updated] appeared first on P2P marketing.

Online and offline, we’re completely saturated with advertising messages. We’ve become all but immune to traditional advertising methods and we’re turning more and more to people like us for trusted and authentic recommendations.

Ambassador marketing leverages this trend to provide an effective, measurable and highly profitable marketing strategy.

For this guide, we partnered with the experts behind Socialladder, an industry leading Ambassador Marketing Solution.

Drawing on their experience with some of the most successful ambassador campaigns, and their technical expertise, we will cover:

• Definitions of brand ambassador marketing
• Different types of brand ambassador programs
• Different types of brand ambassador strategies
• 10 Steps to creating an ambassador marketing strategy for e-commerce
• Ambassador marketing tools and how to find the best solution for your program 

Let’s dive right in!

Who is a Brand Ambassador?

A brand ambassador is anyone who represents your brand, product, event or service. Ambassadors can be existing customers or “superusers” who have been identified and invited to join a brand ambassador program. They can also be influencers, industry experts, your employees or anyone passionate about your brand, what you offer and what you stand for. 

Simply put, a brand ambassador is anyone who markets a brand, product or service through grassroots, face-to-face or “word of mouth” marketing strategies, especially on social media. 

So, what do smart brands do?

They incorporate ambassador marketing into their marketing budget. It’s a win-win. They simply connect with people who support their brand, build strong relationships and create an ambassador community that will help them spread the word in a more efficient way than any advertising campaign can do.

Mind-blowing, right?

A brand ambassador produces results through communication tools either publicly or privately. This can include social media, emails, messaging and one-to-one marketing strategies.

Leveraging brand ambassadors for your marketing creates marketing channels are trusted, authentic, credible and highly effective. Ambassadors spread the word about your brand to a connected, engaged audience that trusts them. With numerous ambassadors, your reach is exponential. 

However, best thing about ambassador marketing is that it is a cost effective approach with a great ROI/ROMI – all it takes is a solid strategy and the help of a great ambassador marketing software solution. 

Sold? Let’s jump into the details and learn how to leverage ambassador marketing for your brand:  

Want to Learn about Ambassador Marketing? Join our Free Ambassador Marketing Course

Types of Brand Ambassadors

There are basically two broad types of brand ambassadors – Influencers and True Fans:

Influencers

• Individuals chosen for their brand fit, demographics and audience
• Purely transactional: ambassadors are paid in fees, free products or services
• Content is usually more professional and polished
• Easier to manage as there’s a clear exchange

True Fans

• Individuals chosen for their brand loyalty, visible advocacy and passion for your brand
• Can include existing customers and employees
• They have smaller networks of colleagues, friends and family, but are highly influential in their circles
• Unpaid ambassadors could also include online reviewers and creators of user generated content/social proof
• Content is more authentic and trustworthy

Why Ambassador Marketing?

Nowadays, programmatic advertising, Facebook, and Google search ads alone won’t do the magic. These types of advertising lack the element of trust and are seen as less credible and authentic.

Recommendations and referrals from those known to us are much more effective. This is where ambassador marketing really shines – leveraging an ambassador’s established relationships and reach allows your brand to reach an exponential number of people, in the right target audience. It also allows you to reach people via a trusted and credible source. 

More and more companies are adopting an ambassador marketing strategy as part of their influencer marketing efforts and peer to peer marketing strategy. This is because ambassador marketing achieves results!

Ambassador marketing takes the age old ‘word of mouth’ marketing and elevates it to a marketing channel that is measurable, trackable and adaptable for best results. 

According to the experts at Socialladder, a key aspect of successful ambassador marketing is being able to track and measure your results. This allows you to see what is working best for different ambassador segments, and different locations. You can then adapt your strategy accordingly, and see the ROI/ROMI for each assigned task or activity.  

Ambassador marketing is also a cost effective marketing channel – you only pay for concrete, measurable actions or outcomes, which cuts down your marketing spend and ensures that you’re paying for results! Payment is often in the form of free merchandise or access to services you offer, which further cuts down your marketing spend.

The benefits of ambassador marketing are huge. Maximizing those benefits comes down to having a solid strategy, that is best suited to your business and your brand. Let’s look at some of the strategies you can use: 

What Types of Brand Ambassador Marketing Strategies Are There?

Now that you know why you need brand ambassadors, you may be curious about what marketing strategies these brand ambassadors will use to help strengthen your brand image and increase sales.

There are many ambassador marketing strategies that brand ambassadors use. However, these can be broadly categorized into three:

1. Social media
2. Online reviews
3. Ambassador/Affiliate marketing software

Let’s run through them, shall we?

1. Social Media

Brand ambassadors use various social media platforms to spread the word about a brand.

In contrast to a banner advertisement, this time, your brand is projected through a person via social media.

Brand ambassadors can help share content or links relating to a brand to their friends and families on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

In many cases, these brand ambassadors are remunerated with product bundles and free samples.

2. Online Reviews

Online review sites are extremely useful platforms through which brand ambassadors can review your business.

If you want to improve your reviews online, all you need to do is enlist the help of your brand ambassadors.

You can in return, pay them per positive review or send them gifts.

3. Ambassador/Affiliate Software

The emergence of brand ambassadors and affiliate software makes it easier than ever to manage and scale brand ambassadors’ social media campaigns.

With these programs, you can track the activity of each ambassador, their value added to your brand and incentivize them appropriately. However, the distribution channel doesn’t really matter, as long as you can track the results and measure the ROI.

You can pay them according to their contribution or send them free products.

What is a Brand Ambassador Program?

It’s established that word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most effective tools a brand can ever employ.

A brand ambassador program is designed to utilize the passion of a brand’s most enthusiastic or loyal customers by giving them exclusive benefits and the autonomy to carry the brand’s message to consumers.

In other words, it is basically creating a word-of-mouth scheme to help a brand, product or service receive optimal recognition and thrive.

Brand ambassador programs are designed to suit the personal needs of a brand, but a brand ambassador program that works for one brand may not work for the other.

Types of Brand Ambassador Programs

There are four types of brand ambassador programs. These are affiliate marketers, informal brand ambassadors, college ambassadors, and requirements-driven influencers.

This video from Adam Erhart tackles how to effectively build brand ambassadors:

Affiliate Brand Ambassador Program

This involves a partnership between a brand and some individuals, usually influencers or bloggers.

These individuals function as affiliate marketers.

This means that they promote a brand and in exchange, get a commission whenever a purchase is made through their promotion.

This brand ambassador program is a win-win for both sides as both the brand and affiliate marketer profit from the purchases.

Pura Vida Bracelets is a great example of a successful affiliate brand ambassador program.

College Brand Ambassador Program

This type of brand ambassador program simply involves a partnership between a brand and students.

The brand leverages the students’ internal connections to raise awareness for an organization and increase its sales.

Other marketing strategies include sporting outfits that advertise the brand they represent, hosting on-campus events, handing out product samples, putting up posters or coming up with ingenious ways to promote the brand they work for.

College ambassador programs are ideal for brands whose target consumers fall within the college or university demography.

Brands involved in college ambassador programs: Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Victoria’s Secret.

Informal Brand Ambassador Program (Referral Marketing)

The informal brand ambassador program is less structured than the other types.

Anyone who shows unwavering loyalty or love for a brand can join this brand ambassador program.

All he or she needs to do is spread the word about the brand to friends and families.

Requirement-driven Brand Ambassador Program

Requirement-driven brand ambassadors complete certain actions for a brand within a specific time frame.

This is an economical way to develop a brand since the company only gives out free products or stipends to their brand ambassadors.

Most of the time, requirement-driven brand ambassadors are influencers with high content engagement rates.

10 Steps to Setting Up an E-commerce Brand Ambassador Marketing Strategy

1. Conduct a Digital Audit and Health Check

   It won’t make sense if you create an entire brand ambassador marketing campaign, spend a large sum of your budget and direct traffic towards an online store that doesn’t offer a smooth customer experience.

   Conduct an audit to make sure the path to purchase is clear and fast! Look at things like:
   – Security
   – Registration processes
   – Merchandising
   – Product tags- Search functionality
   – Page loading speed
   – Mobile responsiveness
   – Check-out and payment processes

2. Outline Your Objectives

   Do you want to change a brand or product perception in the market, or do you want to drive high quality leads to your e-commerce store? It’s important to create a sound ambassador marketing strategy that aligns with your business objectives first.

3. Choose the Ambassador Marketing Program that’s Right for You

   This choice will depend on your objectives, budget, timing and in-house resources. Pick the model that best suits what you need right now, but consider how it will scale as your business grows.

4. Find Your Brand Ambassadors

   Here’s where the fun starts! It’s time to start identifying your truly influential customers and advocates. There are a number of ways to find them:

   Social media: Look for those users who engage with your content regularly in a positive and constructive way. Also look for users who post about your brand regularly on their own platforms using hashtags, mentions or related keywords.

   Product review sites: Find those customers who make a real effort to write reviews.

   Forums and groups: Facebook groups, SubReddits, LinkedIn, Quora, and other forums are a great place to find customers who are actively discussing your products.

   Your own database: A great ambassador marketing tool will make this part simple and accurate by plugging into your databases or mailing lists and reviewing individual social profiles to pick up brand mentions and advocacy actions. 

5. Identify the Best of the Bunch

   Once you’ve created a few lists of potential brand ambassadors, review each one to pull together the best of the best. Consider the following:

   Quality of content: Is their social media content of a high quality? Are they talented writers, marketers or product reviewers?

   Thought leadership and influence: Are they leaders or experts on their owned platforms? Do others follow them for their knowledge and influence?

   Authenticity: is their content personally written, authentic, and relevant? Watch out for individuals who punt product after product. Look for those with a balance of personal content and promotional content. 

   Brand fit: do they fit your brand personality, tone and identity?

   Professionalism: This is something you might only discover when engaging with them, but it’s important to find those individuals who are both professional and ambitious! If they’re an influencer, there are tools you can use to help you assess their track record and successful past campaigns. 

6. Rewards and Incentives

   Your brand ambassadors need to know what’s in it for them. Decide on the kind of remuneration you are able to offer. This can be in the form of free products, early access to exclusive offers, payments, referral bonuses etc.

7. Outreach

   Once you have your brand ambassador shortlist, it’s time to engage with them. This can be done a number of ways:

   A personalized email to invite them to join the brand ambassador program.

   Connecting and engaging directly on social media (e.g. a DM on Twitter or comment on Instagram.)

8. Analytics and Measurement

   Before you implement your brand ambassador marketing strategy, make sure all your analytics and tracking codes or pixels are in place right from the beginning.

   Also outline what metrics you will be tracking such as Reach, Engagement rate, clicks, purchases etc.

9. Listen. Empower. Motivate

   Empower your brand ambassadors with as many resources as possible. Here are some quick and easy ways to do so:

   – Give them access to an image bank with product shots
   – Take the time to give them clear briefings
   – Create a brand wiki or give them brand guidelines and CI
   – Provide dedicated support channels
   – Respond to their requests for materials as quickly as possible
   – Motivate them with bonus gifts, regular challenges or just by regularly keeping in touch

10. Choose a Scalable Solution

    There will come a time when your brand ambassador marketing efforts require the use of a tool or platform. Doing things manually is quite time-consuming, consider using a IRMs or Influencer Relationship Marketing tools to help manage and scale your program.

Ambassador Marketing Tools

Some of the biggest challenges faced by marketers are related to how time-consuming the process of identifying, managing, and processing influencer campaigns can be:

What to Look for in a Great Ambassador Marketing Tool

According to industry experts, a great ambassador marketing tool will offer a comprehensive suite of features, that allow you to manage your ambassador program from end to end.

When you’re evaluating different ambassador marketing tools, look out for the following key features:  

1. Candidate Discovery and Outreach: the tool should offer ways to identify high-potential candidates from your existing customer database, ways to evaluate them, and a means to reach out to them. This takes the heavy lifting out of this initial process, which means you save time and start on a solid foundation, with great candidates.
2. Streamlined Communication Methods: a great ambassador marketing tool should offer a variety of communication methods. These should allow you to easily reach your ambassadors effectively and in a relevant and meaningful way. Look for things like live chat, push notifications, interactive message boards, and strong customization and personalization options. Also, look for scalability and automation options here.  
3. Task Assignment and Tracking: look for options that allow real-world tasks to be assigned and tracked to individual ambassadors, as well as different teams or segments. This fosters accountability and allows you to see which strategies are working best for your different segments, as well as the ROI of each action taken.
4. Integrations and API: evaluate the available integrations and APIs to ensure that the tool is compatible with your e-commerce platforms and the social media channels most suited to your business type and brand image. It should also be able to track different actions, like referrals, sign-ups, app downloads, and email collections, as well as sales and sales sources.
5. Ambassador Feedback Channels: a great tool will help you gather hyper-localized feedback from your ambassadors so that you can create authentic and meaningful strategies for their specific locations.
6. Robust Analytics and Reporting: Look for accurate, real-time analytics, gamification options, customization, budget tracking, and detailed reporting. This allows you to keep track of your progress and keep your participants engaged through progress tracking.

These key features are the foundation your program needs to be successful. There are many great tools available to choose from and we recommend looking into each one to compare your options and find the best fit for your business, the size of your program and your industry niche.

References

Adam Erhart: How to Build Brand Ambassadors – The Modern Marketing Show (Ep 3) 

Robert Allen: Creating a Successful Brand Ambassador Program 

Wikipedia: Brand Ambassador

Alicia Thomas: Campus Rep Jobs: What They Are & How to Get One

Brittni Wright: Brand Ambassador Marketing Strategy: Is it Worth It? 

Cameron Brain: The Brand Ambassador: Who Are They?

CrewFire: The Ultimate Guide To Brand Ambassador Marketing

Mercy Rop: The Data-Driven Marketer

Nicholas Kinports: What is Brand Ambassador Marketing in 2017? 

Tricia Hussung: 5 Best Brand Ambassador Programs

The post Ambassador Marketing – The Definitive Guide for 2024 and Beyond appeared first on P2P marketing.

You can consider peer-to-peer marketing as a form of word-of-mouth marketing, which relies on factors such as customer appreciation to work. 

This detailed guide covers everything you need to know about peer-to-peer marketing, including eye-opening statistics and the best strategies to use for your business.

Are you wondering how to leverage peer-to-peer-marketing to get ahead of your competitors and multiply your profits?

Continue Reading!

What is Peer-to-Peer Marketing?

Firstly, it’s crucial to understand that peer-to-peer marketing is not networking. Instead, you encourage your current stakeholders to direct their peers to your brand by advocating your products/services to them.

Peer-to-peer marketing allows your employees, customers, investors, and partners to become marketing channels. Your company will employ various strategies to appeal to them and provide them with reasons to recommend your company.

Secondly, peer-to-peer marketing is a form of word-of-mouth, but the two practices have their differences.

Word-of-mouth is when stakeholders tell their friends, family, and co-workers about a product they like. Sharing this information is triggered by great customer experiences.

Word-of-mouth is a natural activity that relies on casual social interactions to work. It’s also one of the most organic and effective forms of marketing.

Let me give you an example of word-of-mouth marketing in your daily life:

You call an insurance company for a quote, and the customer experience is unforgettable. The company didn’t keep you on hold for over 30 seconds, and the consultant completed the quote in a matter of minutes. 

That exceptional experience will trigger you to mention it in the most mundane conversations. Without realizing it, you’re helping businesses gain five times as many sales, compared to media advertising.

On the other hand, peer-to-peer marketing describes when a company encourages its stakeholders to advocate their products/services.

In other words, this is an encouraged marketing activity where you (the company) initiate your stakeholders to tell their peers about your product/services.

Let’s explore an example of stakeholder or employee advocacy:

In this case, you are the insurance company. By creating an employee advocacy program, you can offer your employees rewards or benefits to promote your offerings to potential customers.

Before you know it, you’ll have broadened your consumer base, developed a strong workforce with high morale, and maximized your bottom line.

Unlike the example of word-of-mouth-marketing, for peer-to-peer marketing, stakeholders are actively encouraged toward your desired action.

But for word-of-mouth marketing, stakeholders naturally mention a great customer experience to their peers.

Peer-to-peer marketing definitely impacts a business. But why is this true? 

Why Does Peer-to-Peer Marketing Work?

Peer-to-peer marketing is effective because people trust recommendations from those closest to them. Referral Candy confirms this by stating that consumers trust recommendations from friends 7 times more than conventional advertising. 

This makes perfect sense. As a consumer, think about how you feel when you see advertisement campaigns. Immediately, you feel like that company is trying to sell something. Therefore, their opinion of the product/service must be biased.

But, if someone you trust is raving about how astronomically amazing that company’s products/services are, you’re more prone to trust that opinion because it seems unbiased. 

When your stakeholders tell their peers about your brand, it comes off as genuine because that person is not paid to advocate for your products.

This marketing method also helps you acquire user-generated content to appeal to your target audience and provide valuable social proof. 

However, if you’re still on the fence about peer-to-peer marketing, let’s have a look at what the numbers say….

20 Statistics on Peer-to-Peer Marketing

1. 56% of consumers are influenced by their peers while shopping. Source
2. 41% of consumers trust a recommendation from their peers more than social media. Source
3. Consumers casually discuss brands over 90 times a week. Source
4. 84% of consumers confirm they always or sometimes take action on personal recommendations. Source
5. 81% of US consumers are influenced by what their friends share on social media. Source
6. User-generated content rather than brand images or videos appeals to 85% of website visitors. Source
7. Peer-to-peer marketing drives 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. Source
8. After a friend or family member shares a product over social media, 67% of consumers confirm they are more likely to purchase it. Source
9. A shocking 97% of IT professionals get recommendations from their peers before making a purchase. Source
10. Consumers are 4 times more likely to purchase from your business if they’ve been referred by a friend. Source
11. Now, this statistic is going to surprise you – 80% of all Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-business (B2B) purchases involve some degree of WOM marketing. Source 
12. 49% of consumers explain that their top source of brand awareness is friends and family. Source 
13. Customers who are generated through their friends referring them are 18% more loyal than customers gained through any other channel. Source
14. When a friend or family member recommends a product/service, that is more likely to influence a purchase by 50%. Source
15. 82% of consumers go out and find recommendations from their peers before purchasing. Source
16. User-generated content receives 28% more engagement compared to standard posts. Source 
17. 21% of millennials won’t try a product if their friends don’t like it. Source 
18. Think your online ad is convincing the masses? Think again, as only 33% of customers believe in online ads. Source
19. You can increase your sales by 500% through an offline WOM impression compared to an advertising impression. Source
20. 55% of consumers share positive experiences with businesses on social media. Source

The Takeaway

From these statistics, it’s reasonable to say that consumers are looking for user-generated content as an encouragement to purchase from your store.

Peer-to-peer marketing is also a reliable source for authentic user-generated content. And this, as statistics prove, is one of the strongest sales methods. 

Most consumers rely on peer-to-peer marketing as it drives 20%-50% of all purchases. And 82% of consumers proactively find recommendations before purchasing a product. 

Furthermore, leads that are peer-to-peer referrals are 18% more loyal than customers gained through other channels.

This proves that peer-to-peer marketing not only focuses on lead generation and optimizing your profit margin, but also solidifies brand loyalty. Which could later open opportunities for gaining brand ambassadors for your business. 

Also, social media reaches so many stakeholders simultaneously and is used to advocate products/services for brands.

These reasons, amongst many more, make it essential for brands to partner up with social media influencers and affiliate partners.  

Keep reading to find out how influencers and affiliates play an essential role in your peer-to-peer marketing strategy.

7 Peer-to-Peer-Marketing Strategies & Examples

1.Identify Your Target Audience

We’ve already covered that peer-to-peer marketing encourages your stakeholders to drive more stakeholders to your business who are your ideal buyers.

But for this to work, you first need to identify who your ideal buyer is. The more data you can gather on your target audience, the easier it will be to create content that is personalized to them.

Your target audience only has an attention span of 8 measly seconds. And if you tailor your content and products/services to their needs, pain points, and objectives, you can quickly grab their attention. 

Find out everything you can about your ideal buyer persona, including:

• How your products/services can solve their challenges.
• Which social media platform are they active on?
• What kind of marketing material reaches them? 
• How do they respond to your competitor’s products/services?

Understanding your ideal buyer will give you an accurate competitive analysis and a comprehensive insight into how you can develop your product/service to be unique.

Check out this useful video by lemlist for a step-by-step guide to building your buyer persona:

Example

A prominent example of a brand that curated its product according to its ideal buyer is Alienware. Alienware is a gaming division, owned by Dell. They solely focus on manufacturing gaming laptops with features and functionality, every gamer wants.

Alienware has established itself in a specific niche-gaming. Not just tech or electronics. This strategy has allowed the brand to cater to a very specific audience-gamers, not only laptop users. Because of how specific Alienware has outlined their target audience, their product appeals to their customers.

Instead of wasting time trying to sell all kinds of tech gadgets to everyone, Alienware focuses on solving the challenges and pain points of gamers.

2.Establish Relationships with Influencers

If you want to give your entire peer-to-peer marketing strategy a boost, influencer marketing is what you want to do. 

91% of businesses believe that influencer marketing is highly effective. And it’s no surprise that millennials respond to influencer marketing as 40% feel that influencers understand them better than their friends do. 

But you can’t settle with any influencer. These are the essential factors to evaluate:

• The influencer has a large following. If you’re skeptical about an influencer having fake followers, there are ways to check if your influencer’s followers are real.
• The influencer applies to your niche and target audience. 
• The influencer is active on social media and posts a lot of content related to your industry.

Once you’ve done extensive research on your influencer, don’t be afraid to reach out. Over 70% of influencers prefer it when companies reach out to them instead of an agency. 

Example

On National Donut Day, Dunkin Donuts and their agency, Trilla, ran a national Snapchat campaign. The company partnered up with Collab, a digital talent network and entertainment studio to make this campaign a success.

Dunkin Donuts chose 8 influencers to upload teaser content. And on National Donut Day, the influencers took over Dunkin Donut’s Snapchat channel.

All 8 influencers worked to raise awareness about National Donut Day and encourage customers to swarm to Dunkin Donuts. This worked and Dunkin Donuts gained 10 times more followers on their Snapchat channel than they get in a month.

3.Turn Your Current Stakeholders Into Evangelists

Brand loyalty means everything because loyal stakeholders don’t always make rational or price-based decisions. These stakeholders make emotional-based decisions because of their loyalty to a business.

For instance, if you have five employees that have been with you since day one. Those employees aren’t just going to get up and leave when the going gets tough. Based on their emotions and sense of loyalty toward your company, they’ll stick by your side.

But for the employees who have worked with you for a few months, they won’t have that sense of emotion influencing their decisions.

Turning your consumers into evangelists is also beneficial as 82% of businesses agree that customer retention is cheaper than acquisition. 

Ultimately, customer loyalty is an essential factor in any business.

By turning your customers into evangelists, there are more chances of them advocating your products and services to other customers.

This works the same way for any stakeholder. If you turn your investors into evangelists, this will encourage them to invest more and source other generous investors.

Turning any, if not all, of your stakeholders into evangelists is an excellent way to make sure they direct their peers to your company.

But how do convert your stakeholders into evangelists? Here’s how:

• Listen to them. Feedback or any form of communication from your stakeholders should be acknowledged and responded to. Doing this will show them that you care about their experience with your brand and they are a priority. Also, this will help you identify any mutual challenges or disadvantages they experience with your brand. And how you can solve it. 
• Practice loyalty marketing. You don’t have to implement a super-advanced loyalty program, but developing loyalty is a must. Offer incentives to your stakeholders for taking a certain action.
• Provide a fantastic user experience. Give your stakeholders a personalized user experience that responds to them. And allows them to benefit from your business in a way that is convenient and beneficial to them.

Example

Sephora, a retailer of personal and beauty products, used a loyalty program (The Beauty Insider Program) to convert their customers into Evangelists.

The products Sephora sells are not what one would consider “cheap”. So Sephora rewarded their customers with one point for every dollar spent.

Customers could redeem their rewards as discounts or coupons. To sweeten the deal, customers could also redeem exclusive rewards that include in-store beauty tutorials and limited edition products.

The participants of this loyalty program make up 80% of Sephora’s yearly sales.

4.Build an Exclusive Online Community

To practice peer-to-peer-marketing, you need to provide your stakeholders with a space to engage and interact.

Doing this will give them an excellent opportunity to share information, benefits, and testimonials about your product.

Most importantly, you need to ensure that your online community provides your stakeholders with value and is worthwhile for customers to join.

It’s crucial to understand that building an online community requires a lot of work, time, and effort. But once the online community is on its feet, it’s undoubtedly worth it.

Take a look at this video by GoDaddy for more on building an online community: 

Example

MOM365 specializes in baby portraits but made itself a one-stop-shop for parents by building an online community.

The online community approaches questions, concerns, and general communication parents have about birth, baby development, and parenthood.

To reel consumers in, MOM365 used a catchy, relatable motto: “Who better to share their advice and opinions than other moms going through the same thing as you?”

The motto adds personalization to the community and creates an emotional connection between consumers and the online community.

5.Reward Your Online Community

Rewards are one of those things that nobody expects but everybody enjoys. And rewarding your community members will keep them engaged and invested in your brand.

Also, responding to your community members and welcoming new members is just as essential to keep your community active.

But you could never go wrong with rewards. Create a reward program that incentives your community members for achieving certain goals. You can reward them in various forms such as points or badges.

This is the engagement cycle CMX uses for their online community:

Be sure to add as much gamification as possible with your reward program to make it enjoyable and captivating for users.

Example

Marketo, an automated marketing platform, boasted a 79% increase in monthly engagement between July to October after launching their rewards program (Rockstar Rewards Program).

This loyalty program used gamification to reward their community members after achieving a specific goal, such as high engagement in the community.

Marketo received positive responses about the rewards program from their community members. Consequently, within 2 years they had received over 2200 ideas for their product.

This company used 160 of those ideas to enhance their product according to what their customers need.

6.Create Employee Advocates for Peer-to-Peer Marketing

I know people who would run ten miles for their company if they had to. When you ask those people about their jobs, they won’t fail to mention how awesome it is to work for their company.

But why is this?

Because those companies take care of their employees, they create an environment that is stimulating and inspiring for their workers, so people love working for them.

Consequently, those employees will generate more sales. When employees find ideal buyers, they’ll be proud to advocate their company’s products/services to them.

This is particularly effective as those employees will have the knowledge, skills, drive, and belief in your brand to make potential buyers feel a “desire” for your product/service.

Example

Not only does Starbucks host a victorious customer loyalty program, but the company has a successful centralized employee advocacy program, too.

Starbucks created employee partner accounts on many social media networks. On these social accounts, Starbucks encourages their employees to post images, videos, and stories about their product.

The company refers to employees who post regularly as “partners.” Using this term creates a sense of belonging amongst partners. But Starbucks doesn’t stop there.

Partners receive recognition cards for posting on social media, which further encourages more employees to take part. And this shows employees that their contribution to the company is not going unnoticed.

7.Partner Marketing

Collaborating with different businesses and affiliate marketers is what 74% of companies perceive as high-priority.

Primarily because marketing through affiliates or distribution partners allows you to reach a swarm of potential customers.

By choosing the ideal partner that has influence in your industry and an extensive network of trusted customers, you can streamline your sales funnel and close deals quickly.

When your target audience sees your brand besides well-known businesses/affiliates, they have more reason to trust your brand and engage in your content.

Within no time, word about your brand will spread, directing traffic straight to your store. 

Example

Louis Vuitton and BMW, two very elite and adored brands, collaborated to deliver their clients with affluence at its best.

The partnership bore a 4-piece luxurious luggage collection. They ingeniously designed the luggage collection to fit like a glove in the truck of the BMW i8. This entire partnership was a fantastic marketing tactic.

Both BMW and Louis Vuitton’s clients have extravagant tastes. And there are few things grander than a BMW and Louis Vuitton luggage collection.

Plus, designing the luggage collection to the i8’s trunk encouraged all the i8 owners to want this product.

Conclusion

As a form of word-of-mouth marketing, peer-to-peer marketing is one of the best marketing techniques to achieve your business’s objectives.

Consumers heavily rely on peer-to-peer marketing for purchasing recommendations. And through peer-to-peer marketing, brands can solidify employee advocacy, brand loyalty, and brand awareness, amongst other things.

For successful peer-to-peer marketing, it is imperative to use these seven strategies: Identifying your ideal buyer, Influencer marketing, Developing brand evangelists, Building an online community, Rewarding that community, Developing employee advocacy, and Partner marketing.

Follow these seven strategies and their examples closely to get the best out of peer-to-peer marketing!

References

Adweek: Why Consumers Share User-Generated Content (Infographic)

Annex Cloud: 42 Referral Marketing Statistics That Will Make You Want To Start A RAF Program Tomorrow

Cision PR Web: Market Force Study Shows Companies Wield Comparable Social Media Influence to Friends

Comscore: Comscore Study Finds Professionally-Produced Video Content And User-Generated Product Videos Exhibit Strong Synergy in Driving Sales Effectiveness

Extole: 15 Referral Marketing Statistics You Need To Know

Forbes: The Number One Thing Marketers Need To Know To Increase Online Sales

Franchising.com: Influencer Marketing: What Millennials look for in influencers

GetAmbassador: Recommendations Drive Growth

Get The Referral: Referral Marketing Statistics That Will Make You Want to Start or Relaunch Your Referral Program Now

HubSpot: 71% More Likely to Purchase Based on Social Media Referrals [Infographic]

Invesp: The Importance of Word Of Mouth Marketing – Statistics and Trends

Partnerize – Partner & Affiliate Marketing Research: The State and Future of Partnerships Survey 1/4 

Shane Baker: 85 Influencer Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2024

Smallbizgenuis: 40 Amazing Customer Loyalty Statistics

SocialMediaExaminer: 6 Steps to a Successful Social Influencer Marketing Campaign

Social Toaster: 20 Advocacy Marketing Statistics You Need To Know

SpiceWorks: How to Win Friends and Influence IT Pros

The Producer’s Perspective: Some Word of Mouth Statistics that you may not know.

The post Peer-to-Peer Marketing: The Complete Guide for 2024 +Examples appeared first on P2P marketing.

According to the 2019 Influencer Marketing Report: 36% of marketers stated that finding influencers to participate in campaigns and programs is the most challenging, while 24% chose “management of contracts and deadlines” as the most challenging.

Did you know that there are amazing solutions to overcoming these challenges?

In this article, we’re going to introduce you to Brand Ambassador Program Management Software and what they can do to help your marketing program take flight!

Quick Comparison: Top Brand Ambassador Management Software

This is a quick comparison of the best ambassador management software to use:

Keep scrolling for the full reviews below!

What Does Brand Ambassador Management Software Offer?

Most software and platforms offer similar features and operate within the same space, whether they call themselves ambassador marketing tools, affiliate marketing software, or referral marketing platforms.

A good ambassador program management software should relieve you of time-consuming work, such as identifying, managing, and tracking ambassadors, while giving you excellent analytics and reports.

Look for tools that cover the following:

• An ambassador or influencer directory with detailed profiles
• Multiple outreach channels
• Omnichannel campaign management (from setup to reporting)
• E-commerce integrations
• Automation
• Custom incentives or points tracking
• Real-time dashboards and reporting
• Coupons or gift cards
• Contracts and payment management
• Great customer support
• Developer or technical support

4 Best Brand Ambassador Management Software

1.SocialLadder

SocialLadder is an enterprise SaaS solution for creating, engaging, and tracking brand ambassador communities. Consumer focused brands like Benefit Cosmetics, Kendra Scott, goPuff & Live Nation all use SocialLadder to market through their customers and turn them into growth drivers, activating their community to create content and increase conversions. 

SocialLadder’s brand ambassador management software allows you to streamline communication, assign digital and real-world tasks, monitor engagement, and reward successful ambassadors for helping to promote your brand. Your ambassadors are set up for success while allowing you to focus on the overall growth strategy, rather than spending time managing the day-to-day. 

SocialLadder has the tools your brand needs to: 

• Discover: Use machine learning to find customers in your CRM that are an ideal fit to become ambassadors 
• Track: Target and assign tasks to ambassadors (digital, physical and conversion tracking)
• Measure: ROI and unit economics of ambassador activity
• Integrate: Robust API for sophisticated deployments 
• Streamline: Task assignment, communication and ambassador onboarding
• Engage: 100% mobile for ambassadors to keep your community engaged and accountable
• Reward: Inventory and payment management built into the platform
• Scale: Learns automatically from successful ambassadors to help find more 

Website: http://www.socialladderapp.com

2.Refersion

Refersion is an affiliate marketing management and tracking program with over 589,000 registered affiliates and 16,000 merchants. What’s great about Refersion is that you don’t need any technical knowledge to set up and manage full influencer and affiliate campaigns, that integrate with your online store.

Reversion integrates with top shopping cart platforms such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Stripe, and BigCommerce among others, and they offer custom integrations on request.

The basic tool starts at $89 per month with the following features included:

• Tracking of up to 130 affiliate orders per month
• Access to developer APIs
• Coupon code creation and tracking
• Custom reports
• Data migration
• Developer support

Try their free 14-day trial to take it for a spin! 

Website: refersion.com

3.LeadDyno

LeadDyno is a brand ambassador marketing software that offers influencer, ambassador, and affiliate marketing solutions. The platform integrates with online stores such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Amazon Seller Central.

A useful feature on this brand ambassador program management tool is the ability to create and track a variety of marketing activities for ambassadors in the program. These activities can include blog posts, social media content, product reviews, or custom activities to suit your campaign.

The basic plan is $49 per month and offers the following features (for websites with up to 3000 unique visitors a month):

• Unlimited brand ambassadors/affiliates
• Discount codes
• Referral tracking links
• Custom application forms
• Email marketing

Website: leaddyno.com

4.Influitive’s AdvocateHub

AdvocateHub by Influitive is a leading engagement and advocacy tool that offers “on-demand” advocates. If you’re looking for personalized, gamified programs to turn customers into advocates, Advocate Hub should definitely be on your list.

You can create interactive games and challenges that keep brand advocates busy and engaged, recognize and reward them, track and monitor performance, and create in-depth reports all on one platform. They have really mastered the community experience with features like single sign-on, mobile apps, and instant gratification.

AdvocateHub integrates with leading marketing automation software such as Salesforce, Eloqua, and Hubspot, as well as all major social platforms and product review sites.

Pricing for their plans is available on request, but you can expect the following features:

• Automation
• Advocate management
• Community management
• Campaign content library with customizable, pre-built templates
• Gamification
• Referral tracking
• Rewards program
• Dashboards and customizable reports
• ROI Tracking

Website: influitive.com

Conclusion

As marketers, we know that word-of-mouth marketing is incredibly valuable and rewarding – particularly for long-term brand advocacy. A brand ambassador program creates a pipeline of loyal customers and influencers who could be nurtured into becoming true ambassadors through profiling, engaging, tracking and rewarding their online activity in a structured and measurable manner.

But, managing all of this can become a time-consuming and convoluted process if done manually (we’ve all started with a spreadsheet!). Not to mention inaccurate over time. This is why brand ambassador marketing tools are so important to the sustainability of your program.

Our advice when it comes to choosing the right tool is to:

1. Look at your current ambassador program and objectives, highlight the areas where you need help the most, and assign a budget range for your tool.
2. Consult the list above to compare your needs to the features offered by these tools, as well as the price range.
3. Take the time to experience their free trials.
4. Book demos with each of their sales teams as this will give you the best view of the interfaces and features. Don’t forget to ask questions!
5. Read customer reviews and ratings.
6. Check if they offer training and what their customer support hours are.
7. Read the cancellation or contract termination terms and conditions before you sign on, so that you are aware of what the costs are should you be unhappy with the software.

The post 4 Best Brand Ambassador Management Software in 2024 [Review] appeared first on P2P marketing.

If you’ve fallen behind with your ambassador marketing strategy, it can be even harder as ad-blockers are also starting to deeply impact marketing budgets.

What if we told you that old school is still cool?

According to Global Web Index: “[Millennials are] 23% more likely to discover a brand through a vlog, 23% more likely via a celebrity endorsement, and 19% more likely through an expert blogger post”.

Take your brand to places it has never been before with word-of-mouth marketing powered by a data-driven solution.

We’re talking about brand ambassador programs, what makes them successful and how you can create one for your company.

9 Brand Ambassador Programs That Simply Work

1.Red Bull’s Student Marketers

We all know that Red Bull isn’t afraid to experiment. By creating unique college brand ambassador programs around the world, they are rewarded for their approach to authentic content creation.

Red Bull student ambassadors are armed with free tools and resources and are supported by a community dedicated to their success as ambassadors. In addition, the program is dedicated to making the experience fun and in the spirit of the brand.

The result: a highly sought-after student marketing program that reaches all corners of the globe.

Their authentic, localised content reaches the right target market through the use of young opinion leaders who are genuinely passionate about Red Bull.

Want to Learn How to Build a Successful Brand Ambassador Program? Join our Free Brand Ambassador Marketing Course

2.Mercedes-Benz and Friends Club

From students to luxury car brands, ambassador programs are a great fit for almost any loyal customer segment.

Mercedes-Benz took what could’ve been a standard loyalty program and turned it into a true brand ambassador campaign. Members receive an exclusive card loaded with individual discounts and offers, as well as access to some of the most exclusive events in the world.

The result: The club currently manages 80 clubs worldwide with a membership of over 90,000 people!

3.Brita’s Best Roommate Ever Campaign

Ever opened the fridge to find that someone hasn’t refilled the water…again? Brita took this highly relatable situation and turned it into a brilliant campaign.

They used an interesting and unlikely duo of NBA star Steph Curry and YouTube influencer King Bach to create a surprisingly entertaining campaign.

What was even more interesting is that Brita used their traditional advertising campaign ambassador and paired him up a social creator who had a different, but very large online audience.

This campaign gained a very broad reach and gave a fresh voice to the brand.

The result: According to a Think with Google case study, this brand ambassador x influencer mashup generated “over 2 million views and led to a 2,000% mobile search lift.”

4.Coca-Cola’s Company Brand Ambassador Program

How do you harness the existing brand loyalty and customer base that your own employees make up? Well, Coca-Cola did just that and activated their 700,000 global employees through a company brand ambassador program.

Their approach was simple: to inspire and appreciate their associates around the world.

“Coke’s 700,000 associates have the power to positively influence 210 million consumers by leveraging their personal social media network connections.” – Christy Amador, via the American Marketing Association.CLICK TO TWEET

Employees are supported with apps and other material as they channel positive influence through their own social networks and are rewarded for their activity.

The result: According to an article from the American Marketing Association, an employee engagement program like this:

• Saves billions in marketing costs.
• Generates higher productivity.
• Grows business at faster rates.
• Increases employee retention rates at nearly 90% more than companies without brand ambassador programs.

Featured Platforms

Influencity 

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5.Glenfiddich’s Whisky Brand Ambassadors

The Glenfiddich brand ambassador role is one of the most coveted in the industry.

Liquor brand ambassadors in the Glenfiddich program come from all walks of life and are usually already in the drinks industry in some form or are genuinely passionate about whisky.

Glenfiddich trains ambassadors once a year at the distillery and according to their website: “it’s also a great way to emotionally reconnect them with everything ‘Glenfiddich’.”

The administrative part of the role includes compiling marketing reports, organising events and travelling to various markets.

The role is mostly about spreading the word and educating people about how to enjoy the product in the best possible way.

The result:

• The program has a team of 100 enthusiastic ambassadors and is represented in 25 countries.
• The Glenfiddich brand alone accounts of 22 ambassadors.
• Ambassadors ensure that while there’s a consistency in the brand values, their content and engagement with the general whisky-loving public is authentic and localised for each market.

6.Pura Vida Bracelets

This fashion brand has taken advantage of the power of micro-influencers on Instagram and Facebook, and allows anyone to apply for a yearly intake of reps.

Pura Vida gives their ambassadors (or reps) personalised discount codes which are included in their social content. As a result, the brand can track sales and pay a certain a % of those sales back to the ambassador.

They used Refersion to generate those discount codes and track the performance of their brand ambassadors.

Pura Vida sends their reps free products, early access to new products, and other supporting marketing or launch material. The program allows young individuals to make an income while supporting local artists who make the bracelets.

Pura Vida sends their reps free products, early access to new products, and other supporting marketing or launch material. The program allows young individuals to make an income while supporting local artists who make the bracelets.CLICK TO TWEET

The success of the program is actually due to the 3-tiered system which motivates their brand ambassadors to sell more products by increasing the incentives at each level.

Pura Vida also allocates a dedicated manager to ensure that everyone is taken care of and motivated to do more.

The result: According to a recent article on Shopify, Co-Founder of Pura Vida Bracelets Griffin Thall states that:

• They amassed an army of 110,282 reps – over a hundred thousand ultra-motivated brand evangelists dying to promote [their] products.
• With the introduction of the tiered system, sales from reps increased 300% YoY.

7.Lululemon’s Ambassador Empire

This Canadian yoga fashion brand ambassador program is one of the most famous in the world.

Lululemon successfully created an entire “athleisure” movement while growing a global community of ambassadors.

Lululemon put in a great effort to get to know their target audience extremely well and this allowed them to identify influential leaders in those niche groups.

They then created an ambassador program using local yoga instructors who became part of a long-running partnership. There are three categories of ambassadors comprising of yoga ambassadors, elite ambassadors, and store ambassadors.

According to Tyrone Beverly, a store ambassador, in an article on Fashionista.com: “Their agenda is to support your agenda”.

The result:

• The program recruited over 1,600 ambassadors comprising of over 75 professional athletes
• Over 1,500 local “fitfluencers”
• 8 yoga instructors around the world, reaching engaged shoppers both in the traditional and online space

8.The Heineken Experience

The Heineken Experience in Amsterdam directs a large portion of their liquor ambassador program at its 160 students who work at the attraction. By doing this, Heineken used the power of internal brand ambassadors to affect their repeat visitor rates which created even more brand ambassadors!

The program also encourages student staff to outperform each other for extremely generous incentives such as tickets to football matches, Formula One Grand Prix, and even the Olympics.

Dirk Lubbers, the MD of the Heineken Experience owes much of the success of the program to their efforts in picking the right people for the team.

The result: According to an article on Marketing Week, The Heineken Experience has “allowed it to produce lifelong brand ambassadors, leading to a visitor repeat rate of 17%”.

9.Xbox Ambassadors

With a dedicated community and tiered incentives program, the folks at Microsoft have created an extremely sought-after gaming ambassador program aimed at Xbox superusers.

The aim of the program is to reward passionate fans and to create an inclusive community-led environment.

Members are kept active with seasonal, monthly and daily missions or challenges which unlock special rewards and there is a range of ways to communicate with each other through social media, streaming services or old-school chatrooms.

The result: Over the years, Xbox Ambassadors created an almost self-regulated and incentivised community servicing millions of gamers around the world and saving the brand millions of dollars in additional support staff.

11 Steps to Create a Brand Ambassador Program for Your Company

What exactly is the definition of a brand ambassador? Ambassadors are customers or “superusers” of your product or brand who create content or share positive brand experiences regularly.

Brands often invite advocates and ambassadors to join clubs or communities to receive exclusive offers in exchange for their support. Brand ambassador partnerships can be more formal with specific job functions while others can be loosely governed by a core set of values.

Here are a few simple steps that you can start with:

1.Define Your Objectives and Budget

Outline what you want your ambassador program to do for your company.

Ask yourself what your main objective is: is it to sell more products, up-sell current members, or generate more brand awareness? Decide on your objectives, assign a budget to get it done, and make sure you include a budget for incentives.

2.Identify Your Superusers

Look through your existing customer base and find users who are loyal and passionate about your brand. Profile them and have a look at how they’ve engaged with your brand in the past.

Are they brand advocates? Have they taken it upon themselves to become community and brand leaders on your social platforms?

3.Create an Incentives or Rewards Structure

Take a lesson from Pura Vida Bracelets and their 3-tiered system which motivates their brand ambassadors to sell more products by increasing the incentives at each level.

Think about how you would recognize top users – the Xbox ambassador program does this really well by publishing leaderboards and issuing daily challenges.

4.Reach Out

Craft your messages carefully. This can be via email or phone call.

First impressions matter. Write a beautiful email to let the user know you have chosen them to form part of an exclusive group of brand ambassadors, and this will add to the excitement.

5.Reach In!

Don’t forget that your own employees can make great brand ambassadors, look at the examples of Coca-Cola and Heineken above for inspiration on how to turn your internal team of brand advocates into ambassadors.

6.Start Small

Start with a small pilot program and refine the model before opening it up to a larger group. Firstly, this will reduce the amount of support you need to provide, secondly, this will allow you to connect directly with individuals and build a strong foundation.

7.Provide Resources and Material

Arm your brand ambassadors with marketing material and products to help them curate and create content that reflects your brand. For example: look at how Red Bull created an online resource portal for their student marketers while allowing them the kind of creative freedom that has propelled their brand.

8.Monitor, but Don’t Dictate

Keep a close eye on your ambassadors but don’t interfere in their content creation process. Create a style guide if you need to. Monitor their progress and sales through your analytics or referral tools.

Assign personalized tracking numbers or codes to your ambassadors so that you can track the online sales that they refer to or generate.

9.Keep Your Promises

Honor your agreement with successful ambassadors within the agreed upon time frame. Delivering on your end of the bargain too late will have a serious impact (word-of-mouth travels, remember!).

10.Review the Numbers

Review your sales figures and the performance of your pilot program. Apply any actionable insights or learnings to your larger strategy.

11.Rinse and Repeat!

Do it all again with a bigger group because you’re ready to scale up!

Key Takeaways

It can be time-consuming to create a brand ambassador program for your company. However, with the proper planning in place it can become a very rewarding effort in the long run.

Consider choosing a referral solution for your brand ambassador program to take the load off your shoulders so that you can focus on what matters the most for your online store and brand.

Remember to keep these points in mind:

• Choose your brand ambassadors wisely, they must be passionate about your products!
• Start with a small group
• Make marketing resources and tools easily accessible
• Give your ambassadors enough freedom to create
• Provide a support channel and/or a help community
• Invest in ongoing training and create regular opportunities for them to refresh their connection with the brand
• Give your ambassadors tangible benefits (discounts, products, experiences, or payments)
• Track and measure their performance
• Use actionable insights to optimise your strategy

References

Inside the Cask: Chat with Ludo Ducrocq

Lululemon Athletica: How to Beat Nike by Creating a New Category [Growth Study] 

Xbox: Xbox Ambassadors

Xbox: What do Xbox Ambassadors do? Impact that Matters

The post Refersion appeared first on P2P marketing.

In my years as a business owner, I have seen that referrals help you close a deal faster, build trust, and rapidly increase your conversions.

These are the 13 of the best referral program ideas that you can use to grow your customer base!

Before we launch into the ideas, let’s make sure we are clear on what a referral program is.

What Is A Referral Program?

A referral program is a systematic reward system used to get people to recommend your business to other people.

It is like traditional word of mouth marketing, but a referral program is more effective as the customers making the referrals gain something from the referrals made.

The rewards you give to your customers for helping you acquire new customers are called referral incentives.

These incentives come in different forms, ranging from discounts on subsequent purchases to free cash.

Referral programs are great. You not only gain new customers, but you also foster trust and loyalty in your existing customers. Your old customers keep coming back for the incentives, creating another avenue for long term revenue.

Now, you know the benefits of an excellent referral program. However, you don’t have any referral program ideas for your business. We are here to help you out of that dilemma!

These referral program ideas, selected from some of the best referral programs in 2019 and 2020, will help you get yours going.

Let’s take a look at some referral program statistics:

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13 Best Customer Referral Program Ideas

Referral programs are not one size fits all. What works for SaaS might not work for a small goods store.

Therefore, we have taken the liberty of explaining the type of businesses for which each referral program idea listed below could work well.

So, lets jump right in!

1.Social Gifting

Social gifting involves rewarding the referred friend instead of the referrer. Rewards do not always move people. But, gifting their friends with something thoughtful can push your referral program faster than any other idea.

Try the World used this idea for their anniversary celebration. The advocate gets to send a free box to three friends of their choice. The referrer does not get anything from this action other than the satisfaction of giving a friend a gift.

This idea will work well for a company that just wants to build awareness. If you know customers will buy your products once they know of it, you can make use of the social gifting referral program. It also strengthens the loyalty of your existing customers.

2.Free Cash

You can give out free cash to your customers for referring your brand. PayPal used this idea in their referral program. They experienced a 7-10% growth daily, which increased their customer base to over 100 million users.

While this idea worked perfectly for PayPal, you might want to take some time to think it out before using it in your referral program. Since this idea costs money, you might not want to do it for long. PayPal stopped the Refer-A-Friend bonus once they reached their target users.

If you are giving out money, you must ensure that you are using a secure referral program software. Good software will protect you from hackers. You will also be assured that you are getting good profits for the money spent.

3.Mystery Gift

You must understand the type of customers that your products attract before you start a referral program. While some customers will like to know what they are getting for referring your products, some customers wouldn’t mind some mystery.

MeUndies offer their customers a mystery gift when they refer the brand to their friends. The beautiful thing about this idea is its convenience.

Since it is a mystery, you can give your customers anything you have at hand that you are willing to give. This referral program is one of the best referral programs for small businesses.

4.Discounts on Subsequent Orders

Discounts on subsequent orders are an excellent referral program idea for products that you know your customers will keep coming back. This idea works well for brands in the fashion industry and other industries that cater to necessities.

Amuze, an exclusive fashion store, implemented this strategy by giving its advocates and their referred friends 25% off their next flash sales purchase.

You can use the approach if you want to increase the rate at which your customers come back for return purchases.

5.Charity Donation

Everyone loves to do good and look good. Instead of making your referral program about your advocate and the referrals they make, you can give a gift to a charity on their behalf.

This idea not only looks good for your brand, but your advocates also feel great about contributing to a good cause.

However, ensure the charity aligns with the goals and values of your brand and customers. For instance, if you sell gifts and toys for children, you can donate to a children’s charity.

6.Competitive Tiered Rewards

Making your referral program into a bit of a game is one of the best strategies for making it work. This program involves dividing the rewards into tiers that customers try to reach. The awards get bigger as they climb the scale pushing them to do more for your brand.

As the tasks keep increasing, so does your reach. However, this idea is one of those short term referral program ideas. You might soon run out of tasks or reach your target customers limits.

7.Referral Contest

A referral contest is not just a fun referral program idea, but you also gain much, much more because there is only one reward for the one winner.

Huckberry used this idea in a popular contest that rewarded the highest referrer with $1,000. You get people to refer your business to as many people as they know with this strategy, increasing the awareness of your business.

You can also increase brand engagement with this type of referral program idea. Ask your customers to tweet about your brand, like photos on Instagram, etc. These actions will keep your brand in mind while increasing your reach to other customers.

8.Free Information

Information is power. You can give your advocates free information, in the form of courses or workshops, for referring your brand to someone. However, this concept will only work if the information is worth the action.

If your customers find the information unhelpful and irrelevant to your brand, they might even turn back on you by badmouthing your brand. When using this idea, ensure that your customers don’t go through a lot of hassle to refer you.

GetResponse uses this idea by giving advocates a free digital marketing course. The course is worth up to 200 dollars. Existing customers get this bonus when they refer up to 3 friends.

9.Subscription Credit

Subscription credit is a quite popular referral program idea.  You don’t lose much when you offer subscription credit to your customers. Your customers also see it as a great incentive. It is one of the best b2b referral program ideas.

This idea reinforces the commitment of your customers to your brand. It also increases the chances of repeat purchasing. Customers use their credit to buy more from your store.

10.Discounted Services

Discounted services work well for a business whose customers will always need subsequent services. It is one of the powerful referral program ideas for hairstylists. Their customers will still need another hairdo.

If the customer knows that they could get a discount by bringing a friend, he/she sees it as a good deal. Your shop gains a new customer, more sales, and almost free publicity.

11.Upgraded Services

Sometimes, it doesn’t have to be a new thing. No one can resist the offer of a better version. If your business, as a SaaS or similar company, has a Premium version, you can make use of this referral program idea. You just give customers who refer a certain number of persons to your brand access to the Premium version.

Dropbox made use of this idea in one of the best referral programs in 2018. They offered customers additional storage space for every referral made. A customer could earn up to 500 MB on successful referral.

12.Free Goods and Services

Everybody loves freebies. You can give your customers certain goods and services for free every time they make a referral. This concept works well for both small and large businesses.

You just have to carefully select the goods and services you want to give out to your customers. Pick out products and services that would not cost your business much but would be appreciated by your customers.

For instance, if you offer a free clothing item resizing in a clothing store for each referral, it might not cost you much, yet your customers would appreciate it.

13.Cash In-Purchase

Unlike the free cash idea, you instantly get your customers to give you back the money you give them with this idea. Many stores use this idea by giving their customers cash in the form of coupons that they can use to get discounts on certain products.

You can also use this concept if you seek employee referral program ideas. Your employees will be glad to get some of the products they sell while still doing the same thing they do daily. It gives them more incentives, which means better productivity for you.

How To Make Your Referral Program Work?

Now, you have an array of referral program ideas to choose from for your program. You have to pick a referral program that suits your business and your brand. However, it is not only about picking the right referral program.

Check out this video by Partnership Playbook featuring top digital marketing influencer Kelvin Thompson on Referral Programs:

Several factors determine the success of a referral program. You have to take note of them in the implementation of your referral program ideas. Some of the factors you have to consider are;

Uniqueness of Your Brand:

Even if you are using an idea for a referral program, you have to align it to fit into your brand’s image.

Ease of the Program:

To create enough traction and increase conversions from your referral program, you must ensure that it is easy for your customers to refer your brand.

Attractiveness of the Program:

This factor concerns more than just incentives. Ensure that your referral program flyer is beautifully designed to draw the attention of your customers.

Your Choice Of Software:

The right referral software makes the program easy for you to manage and comfortable for your customers to join.

Final Thoughts on the Best Referral Program Ideas

Start by putting these factors in place, along with the right referral program idea. Are you still wondering whether to use a referral program for your business?

Let me remind you of Mark Zuckerberg’s words:

References

Business2Community:8 Highly Effective Refer-A-Friend Campaign Ideas 

Invite Referrals: Customer Referral Program Ideas – May the Best Army be Yours  

ReferralRock: Absolutely, Positively Best Referral Ideas (by Experts) 

Sales Camp: 11 Best Referral Ideas to Acquire More Customers 

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