Hire Ambassadors

NOT Influencers

byJeph/Sep 12, 2023/inAdvice, Consumer Behaviour, Social Media, Strategy

In the age of influencers, this is a hot topic. You don’t have to shell out cash to get someone to push your product. Instead, you can simply connect with people who genuinely appreciate what you’re offering and give them more reasons to spread the word.

You can’t buy influence. But you can buy influencers.

A topic that comes up A LOT these days, we get the question all the time, “do you work with influencers?” My answer is always the same. We’ve tried, we haven’t got great results so we don’t like to do it.

Then a podcast with the ever so smart Saul Colt had this brilliant moment of insight.

Hire ambassadors, NOT influencers. -Saul Colt

Hire Ambassadors, NOT Influencers

Ambassadors already love your brand. Ambassadors want to talk about your organization more than you do! An ambassador that’s given the reigns to do something meaningful will always end in a better result than paying an influencer for a moment of stardom. Give the people who already like your brand a reason to talk about you a little more.

Why is hiring influencers a bad thing?

Well it’s not bad, just not well thought through. Sure they probably have thousands if not millions of followers, but are those followers going to like your brand? Highly unlikely. And if they do, are the really a fan of yours or were they just listening to the person they follow?

When you hire an influencer you’re paying someone to share their influence with you. Think about that, if it’s a famous person already then yes you may get some residual boost in sales, impressions, awareness, etc. But if all this person does is have a ton of followers on social media, that’s not going to translate to your brand/following.

Stop Looking for the Easy Way Out and Grow an Honest Following on Social Media

You don’t need hundreds of thousands of followers to achieve success on Instagram or TikTok. No, some of the best accounts aren’t the most followed, they’re the ones that are the most real. They are unapologetically themselves. They don’t try to be something they’re not. They don’t try to buy their way up the corporate social ladder. They don’t care about going viral. They just want to communicate with their customers and potential customers.

Before social media, who were the influencers?

Before Facebook took off there was a way brands could use the clout of a famous person to elevate their perception in the marketplace. Remember Wayne Gretzky on the cover of Prostars? Influencers have always existed, we just never called them that.

Growing up a hockey player, my room was covered in posters of my favourite players. I still remember (and probably still have it somewhere) my Sergei Fedorov White Russian Nike poster. And to the obvious question, “did it make me want to buy Nike hockey equipment?” Yup, it sure did!

Brands have always used “influence” to sell. We just called it celebrity endorsements. It was a very common and very successful way to get to an new audience for a brand. But there is a dark side to using influence to sell. What if what you’re selling isn’t good for society? What it what you’re selling actually kills people?

A simple Google search for “old cigarette ads” will land you with a bunch to choose from. Funny now but can you imagine at the time reading about doctors who recommended Camels?

Influence is a powerful thing, be careful how you use it.

When Influence Works

I was ranting about a local influencer one day and I was interrupted by someone who had hired this person. They said it worked. They paid them for several posts and out of that it worked. They made more than enough sales to cover the cost of the hire gun. They made sales based on what they had done with this influencer.

JEPH YOU’RE WRONG!! INFLUENCERS WORK!!

This individual actually liked the product they were selling, sorry, that’s not an influencer anymore, that’s an AMBASSADOR!!

Not all influencers are bad, some actually work!

People want to buy from people who they know, like, and trust. If you follow someone for a long time you will eventually get to know them, like them, and by default trust them. Even though you may not have any clue as to who they are. Growing trust in your social media accounts is the important part, influencers/ambassadors can just speed up that process.

Just like me trusting an NHL superstar will his equipment selection, it kind of doesn’t make sense when you think about it. But we’re all susceptible to it. I mean yes, I wanted the best hockey equipment, but did I need to use what the pros were using? No.

Be careful who you’re listening to, they may have been paid to influence you.

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