Brand Ambassador Program: Which Figures to Consider? (2023)

Deployed in many companies, brand ambassador programs, or employee advocacy programs have become increasingly popular over the years. But what are the indicators that determine the success of such an approach? Discover them all in this article.

1. What is a brand ambassador program?

A brand ambassador program, or employee advocacy, relies on “employee ambassadors”. It is an approach that consists of transforming employees into spokespeople for their company.

Indeed, employees are nowadays considered as one of the most efficient communication channels. It is generally on social media that employees express themselves, and this is especially the case on their LinkedIn accounts.

Employee advocates share content about both their professional and personal lives to promote the company they work for.

A brand ambassador program is a very effective approach in B2B, but it also adapts to B2C; B2B decision makers as well as final customers can be influenced through employee ambassadors.

2. Why is a brand ambassador program important?

Employee social media posts generate 8x more engagement than executive posts, according to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer study.

An ambassador group of just 20 employees equals a potential audience of 5,000! These are numbers that a company cannot ignore. This is because a message is more credible when it is delivered by someone you know.

This idea is also confirmed by the Nielsen Global Online Customer Survey: 90% of customers trust the advice of people they know.

When a brand transmits the same message to its customers, it is often perceived as advertising or marketing in the broadest sense, and therefore, viewed with a potentially negative impact.

This is important because employees, with their frequent comments on social media, reach an audience that is not necessarily the main target of a brand. Who doesn’t have, among their contacts, study buddies or acquaintances made outside their professional framework?

All of these people can potentially be exposed to a brand’s content if it is shared via this relationship. This would not be the case if the brand shared the same content. Employee brand ambassadors therefore have the power to make it more visible and reach a wider audience.

The benefits of an employee advocacy program for a brand are huge.

3. What is the best way to measure the impact of a brand ambassador program?

It’s undeniable: we are all micro-influencers, even on Sundays during a family meal, when we share an anecdote or a moment of professional life with our loved ones.

But it is on social media that advocacy is most powerful. Let’s see what the indicators are to determine if your brand ambassador program is an effective communication channel.

Organic reach

Organic reach is simply the number of people who have seen a content piece on their news wall. We distinguish the gross reach (an imprecise number, which takes into account the people exposed to the content, regardless of the number of times it has been broadcast) and the net reach (number of people who have been exposed only once).

The calculation of the net reach requires specific values for each social network, but also for the sector of activity, the geographical area, etc.

Engagement rate

The engagement rate is the most common indicator used by professionals to measure content performance. It is measured in clicks, shares, comments, reactions, and mentions.

If a content piece gets good results in terms of engagement, it means that it corresponds to the interests of the audience it is intended for. In other words, social media users appreciate the content you publish!

Traffic generation

Content shared by ambassadors can drive their audience to your company’s website. It depends on the content: a job offer, the release of a new product, an event, etc.

Many measurement tools allow you to monitor the number of people who land on a website from the content of employee advocates. This is true if the content has been shared from an employee advocacy tool capable of injecting tracking information.

Conversion and bounce rate

Once the audience has landed on your website, you need to be able to analyze their behavior. Did they download the document? Consult the job offer? Purchase the product? Leave their contact information?

If the conversion rate is too low, you should analyze the bounce rate. Is the message of the social media content consistent with that of the web page? Does the web page live up to the audience’s expectations? The important thing is not to frustrate the people who land on your site.

As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression! If you disappoint your employee advocates’ audience, they will be disappointed too. And their engagement will suffer.

Equivalent Paid Media (EPM)

Today, the algorithms of social media platforms promote people’s content to the detriment of corporate posts. Hence a large portion of them are invisible to your brand audience. As a result, you have to pay to make your target audience click, and the click is expensive!

Indeed, if the unit value of a click is low, it is necessary to generate thousands, even tens of thousands of clicks for the ROI to be positive. The bill can quickly become expensive—and reduce your margin.

When an ambassador shares content with their network, not only will it be more visible (because the algorithm favors it), but it will also generate more engagement, thanks to the trust relationship between the contributor and their audience. Therefore, the benefits of an brand ambassador program are significant in terms of EPM.

4. What other indicators should you consider, and how can you improve employee advocacy?

It is important to remember that a true social media ROI number only makes sense if it is linked to a “bigger picture.”

When deploying a brand ambassador program, the temptation may be to seek a short-term benefit and result. This would risk losing sight of the longer-term objectives that determine the value and uniqueness of a company.

Taking advantage of a trend just to get likes and comments doesn’t bring value if it annoys the audience or blurs the brand image. It can even be detrimental in the long run.

Besides, social media ROI on a brand ambassador program is not limited to the marketing department. There are other variables that need to be taken into account in the overall calculation.

Employee engagement

A brand ambasador program also offers advantages to employee ambassadors. Indeed, highlighting one’s employer brand is rewarding for an employee.

It is an important sign of trust when a company lets them express themselves publicly on its behalf. It is a very motivating employee advocacy strategy that naturally increases the feeling of belonging of employees and the engagement of teams.

Increase in digital skills

Often, it is necessary to train employees on social networks so that they know how to promote a brand. This allows them to adopt best practices and become “digital champions”, while permitting them to add their own personal touch.

By developing new skills, you value employees, and you also empower them. Thanks to an employee advocacy program, top performing ambassadors can even establish themselves as thought leaders on social media. Thus they contribute to the digital transformation within the company, and it is a win-win situation.

Employer Brand

The need to recruit is a crucial issue for many companies at the moment. More and more specific profiles are in demand. Hence the importance of giving maximum visibility to your job offers, especially on LinkedIn.

But visibility of employer branding is not the only issue: in order for a candidate to consult a job offer, he or she must have confidence in the company offering it.

A brand ambassador program is an excellent way to promote the employer brand. The relationship of trust between the employee and his or her relationships on social media can only be beneficial to a company as a potential employer.

Many tools exist to monitor the rate of leads generated on a brand’s recruitment page from employee posts.

E-reputation

The strength of a brand lies, among other things, in its image. While building a good brand image is a long and laborious process, its destruction can occur quite suddenly. Bad buzz on the internet can happen to anyone.

This is why marketing teams constantly monitor the e-reputation of their brands. E-reputation is the image conveyed or experienced on the web on different media such as search engines, review platforms, social networks, etc.

Brand perception, brand awareness, percentage of positive feelings towards the company, number of mentions of the company on social networks… employee ambassadors can play a role in any system that aims to improve these indicators.

An effective employee advocacy platform can lead to very good results in terms of e-reputation, as they can influence it in a positive way.

5. Sociabble, the effective employee advocacy platform for your brand ambassador program

The implementation of a brand ambassador program can be done by simply asking employees to share content. But as soon as you want to adopt a professional approach that can be deployed on a company-wide scale and, above all, measured, the use of a dedicated employee advocacy tool becomes essential.

Sociabble is an employee advocacy tool that allows you to aggregate company and employee-generated content, organize it by interest, and make it shareable on virtually any social media channel with a single click.

Thanks to Sociabble, you can track several indicators such as content performance, ambassadors’ behavior (with segmentation by department or geographic area, for example), the evolution of your company page followers, lead generation, paid media equivalent, and more.

Available on desktop and as a mobile app, Sociabble offers a cutting-edge employee communication and employee advocacy platform. It comes backed up with expert consulting, launch assistance, training, and CSM support. We’ve already helped industry leaders like Renault Group, Edenred, and L’Occitane perfect their communications and advocacy, and we’re always happy to chat.

Want to see Sociabble in action? We’d be happy to discuss how we can help you, share examples, and explain more about tracking metrics through our employee advocacy platform. Drop us a line to schedule a personalized demo today!