The majority of brands see advocacy as a random assortment of social media posts but in fact it is a structured data challenge. The advocacy software market will be worth $5.8 billion by 2035 because forward-thinking organisations are substituting rudimentary influencer tracking (e.g., influencer Excel spreadsheets) with structured tracking of revenue at an order level.

In this article, we will destroy the myths about community expansion and expose the very specific tracking, structuring and rule-sets necessary to create a profitable machine.

The Core Myth of the Brand Ambassador Program

Many leaders think that a brand ambassador program is simply an extended influencer contract. This is untrue. While an influencer may generate an immediate spike of visibility, a brand ambassador will generate consistent results via predictable and traceable channels.

Unfortunately, due to the reliance on cheap solutions to manage these programs (e.g. tracking only likes and shares), most organisations ignore actual revenue data when managing their brand ambassador program.

Vanity vs. Order-Level Facts

You cannot pay your expenses with social media reach. While the standard advice is to focus on word of mouth, the truth is that you need to focus on the order-level data, accurate attribution, and precise customer journey tracking.

A successful brand ambassador program is measured by the revenue produced for each ambassador in dollars rather than the overall amount generated by the community as a whole.

Strategy: Set Up Tracking Before You Hire a Brand Ambassador

To have a successful system, you should be certain about your tracking before recruiting anyone to be an ambassador.

If you begin sending invites to individuals before your data flow is accurate, it will be difficult to determine which individual made the referral that led to the sale.

Setting Up UTM Campaigns and Your CRM Tracking

If your data is not flowing into the main sales application, it is essentially useless. Each ambassador should have a specified UTM structure that links to custom fields within HubSpot or Salesforce.

This ensures your team knows exactly who provided a new lead and what time frame it took from that lead being provided to becoming a customer. When brands have connected these systems, they are no longer guessing but rather seeing the actual ROI of every campaign.

The Hybrid Compensation Plan

Everyone wants something different, thus a standard program limits compensation to financial income only. A well-designed plan allows for multiple types of rewards to keep your ambassadors motivated continuously.

The entry-level tier could be used for products donated as gifts and for affiliate sales cash awarded directly. Also, status in the community could be utilized as an incentive reward for the most active users.

Instead of using three entirely different platforms to reward them, most companies today have found ways to combine the three into one single platform to have all of the data in one central location.

Structure, Workflows, Rules, and Picking the Right Software

Without a rigid framework, your business will soon find its budget drained by fraudulent activities, duplicate tracking of your ambassadors, and a poor-quality data set. As such, rules should be implemented as barriers to protect your budget.

Prevention of Fraud and Checking Payments

One of the primary reasons manual programs are prone to being inadequate is due to a lack of control over payments. There needs to be clarity regarding duplicate referrals, as well as the existence of fake accounts and the timeline in which referrals must be made before they will be eligible for payment.

When a customer purchases a product through a referred link, the commission must be automatically canceled when they return it. To accomplish this, your finance department requires an audit trail you can confidently rely on.

• Any commission over a specified dollar amount will be subject to manual verification.

• All payouts in cash must be held for 30 days to consider any returns or cancellations of products.

• Users must be automatically blocked from using their own referral codes for personal purchases.

Picking the Best Brand Ambassador Program Tools

The platform you select is the single most important part of running your brand ambassador program. You should choose a tool based on how it integrates with your current systems, not by what features it includes from common lists.

If you are a consumer company with stringent social media tracking and rapid settlements, you may want to consider BrandChamp or Roster. Influitive offers enterprise companies extensive data integrations and control.

Upfluence and Modash are useful when you're looking to integrate influencer discovery into your daily operations. SaaSquatch and Friendbuy are outstanding at developing hybrid models that combine referral programs and loyal customers in one platform.

Measurable Results and Large Growth

With a proper architecture, your financial performance blows paid advertising out of the water. The data supports that structured methods to acquire customers dramatically change the economics of customer acquisition.

Big Returns on Investments

The average campaign yields a return of $3 for every $1 spent. The top quartile shows that each dollar invested generates an average of $12 back. Likewise, in terms of lifetime enjoyment of the partnership, it is evident that customers who are recruited through ambassador programs will spend, on average, 25% more than cold traffic (new customers who were not referred).

A case in point is Rosefield Watches, which, through their strict tracking of ambassador program data and focused efforts on selecting true ambassadors, were able to achieve 167% return on ad spend and double their conversion rate.

Furthermore, across all ambassador/influencer programs, the cost of acquiring customers is reduced by 54% on average by utilizing ambassador channels instead of using standard, paid media. In addition, many established ambassador programs can generate 10%-25% of a total new business.

Final Thoughts on the Brand Ambassador Program

An advocacy platform can no longer be treated as a marketing initiative but must be considered a key function of the overall business. Trying to operate the advocacy platform using multiple, disconnected systems, spreadsheets, and “hopes” will yield failure.

Successful companies create a tightly integrated data-driven engine that directly links all ambassador-related activities to their bank account.

When you treat ambassadors as a genuine sales channel with consistent rules, thorough tracking, and fair reward systems, the growth possibilities within your ambassador program will be greater than nearly all other available methods.

Questions and Answers to Help You Fix Problems

How can you eliminate drop off from new ambassador onboards?

Most people quit within their first week of joining the ambassador program due to the lack of clarity on program rules, and/or confusion on how to utilize the software. In order to address this issue, create a user-friendly, highly visual step-by-step start guide.

Connect the ambassador's first small reward to completing the onboarding process as opposed to just successfully selling a product/service. If the ambassador is rewarded early for completing their onboarding process, they are much more likely to stay committed.

What are the main differences between measuring gifted and affiliate models?

Gifted models require measurement of the quality of the content and the brand lift generated by the ambassadors, which takes longer to see a return on investment (ROI), and is more difficult to quantify.

Conversely, affiliate models focus on order-level tracking with clear ROI and an immediate financial return. It is critical to note that gifted and affiliate models require different measures of success and cannot be compared based on the same metrics.

Why do manual payout programs fail when they grow?

Due to the number of small payments being processed through different tax jurisdictions and return timelines, spreadsheets fail. Manual checks result in payment delays, which ultimately lead to the loss of top-performing ambassadors in your program.

As such, the use of automated payout systems is critical to maintaining high levels of trust among ambassadors and minimizing administrative overhead for your company.

When should you move from a basic referral program to a larger platform?

If you can no longer track social click-throughs automatically into your CRM, it is time to consider migrating to an enterprise platform.

If you or your employees spend more than five hours per week checking data manually to pay ambassadors or you are unable to eliminate duplicate payouts, the cost of your current program far exceeds the cost of upgrading to an enterprise platform.