How to turn your regular customers into dedicated brand ambassadors

How to turn your regular customers into dedicated brand ambassadors

Online and offline marketing can be a pricey thing if you're on a shoestring budget.  Lucky for you, there are methods you can use to reduce the cost of marketing efficiently, like getting your regular customers turn into your own brand ambassadors.  Brand ambassadors are loyal clients or customers who liked your service or product so much that they will talk about you wherever they are, primarily through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Those customers, who will be turning into brand ambassadors, will really need to trust you and your company before they start to yell your name from the mountain tops.  A brand ambassador will always talk good about your company and refer it whenever the conversation is right.  You'll need to build great relationships with these people before they start to talk about you in a positive light, and that takes time.

If you have a lot of sales coming through your website on a daily basis, it will be difficult to build a relationship with all of them.  Instead, what you can do is use certain strategies that will work with your entire customer list and seem like you're still talking to them one on one.  Below are 6 great ways to talk with your customers and figure out who will be your brand ambassadors.


Customers should be able to communicate with you 24/7
You'll need to stay in the customers mind, and doing that means you need to consistently be posting content to your website, advertising, and even sending out newsletters so they remember you.  If people consistently see your business name, logo, website URL, ad, etc.  They will think about you more often, which is always a great thing when it comes to business

You'll need to be a real person to them, not a robot, so they can relate to you somehow and not think you're just an automated system sending out canned responses.  Open up a conversation with some customers and use their actual names in the emails or chats so they can feal like more of a friend and not a customer.  You will need to teach all of your employees to do the same thing, if you have any. 

If a customer does reach out to you with a concern, or even with some happy words, you need to respond to them as soon as you can.  How the reach out to you is irrelevant, they can contact you however they want and they will think they're doing the right thing, even if it's a comment on your Facebook page.  Even though they won't use the proper channels to contact you, you'll need to respond to them wherever they are.  I've actually had people post on forums, asking me a question, and expecting me to come in like I own the forum and I need to respond immediately.  Luckily I found the thread they started on the forum and was able to respond to them within a few days.  Basically, you never know where they will ask you questions, so you always need to be monitoring your social media profiles, forums you're active on, blogs, etc. in order to find anyone who's asking you a question.


Reward Loyal Customers
Rewarding a loyal customer goes a long way if you think about it.  The reward doesn't even have to be anything extravagant, it can simply be recognition on a blog post you're writing up about certain customers and how they made your business better.  You can give away products to select customers, just be sure the products don't hurt your bank account because that's never a good thing. 

I've seen one company go as far as to purchase concert tickets for a customer who liked a specific group.  They then turned into immediate brand ambassadors because of it lol.


Over deliver every chance you get
Some people will say this is going the extra mile, others will say you're over delivering, but both have the same results.  If you're doing more for the client than they expect of you, you're going to push an image that you're there for them and you want their experience with your company to be the best it possibly can.  They will appreciate you going above and beyond what is required of an online sale or the purchase of a service, and they will likely share your website whenever the time arises.

You can do this in many ways, for instance, if you're packaging the items for shipping you can add in a hand written note to a bunch of the packages.  The note doesn't have to be extravagant, just a little thank you for purchasing from us and your signature will go a long way.  You didn't have to hand write them a note, but you did anyway because you're grateful of them thinking of you for their purchase.  They will see you did this for them, when you didn't have to, and they will share the love with their friends and family on Facebook and possibly other social media platforms they frequent.

This has to do with the ripple effect as well.  When you throw a stone in a lake, it creates ripples, and each time you over deliver will throw more stones in the lake that will create more ripples.  The ripples are customers sharing your content with friends and family, which will result in even more sales because you took a minute out of your time to thank them with a nicely handwritten note

I have to warn you, do not use a font that just looks like the note was handwritten and print up a few thousand.  People are dumb, they will notice that you didn't actually take the time to write the note but you did take the time to make them think you did.  If you do this, you will actually create a negative effect because people will think you're trying to dupe them into thinking it was hand written, when it wasn't. 


Turn angry shoppers into happy ones
You need to listen to every client and person on your website, regardless if they are happy or not.  A lot of angry shoppers will voice their concerns quicker than the happy ones, that's why a lot of bad reviews should be taken with a grain of salt because the amount of good reviews never made it to the website or platform that is collecting them due to happy people not always feeling the need to review something if they like it.

Angry customers will usually contact you directly, and if you don't respond right away, they will post on social media which will hurt your brand pretty bad.  You need to put out the fires before the reach any sort of social media platforms or blogs.  If you have to ship out an entirely new item, because something was wrong with the first one, do it and save yourself from the wildfire that can spread from one bad review.


You need to be a likeable person
Even if you are angry most of the day, you need to portray yourself as energetic and happy so people will like you.  If you are angry all day, and portray yourself as an angry person, no one will want to tell their friends and family about your products or services.  Hopefully you're not an angry person and you can actually convey that you love what you do, the brand ambassadors will show themselves and that's always a beautiful thing.


Your customer support has to be top notch
All of your customers should be treated the exact same... With amazing support from you and your team!  You can't be selective when it comes to responding to a client, you need to treat each one the best you can and solve all their problems while answering all their questions.  You never know who will start to tell everyone about your website, and this is why you need to treat everyone with respect as well as answer everything they ask.  Don't just answer the questions they ask, answer questions you think they're going to follow up with in order to show you're going above and beyond the call of customer service lol   This is also a great tactic to use to decrease the amount of time a potential customer takes to make a purchasing decision. 



In conclusion
Brand ambassadors are a great thing to have when it comes to building up your brand online.  People will go to their perferred social media platform and share your products or services with their friends and family.  They will talk about how much they loved the product or praise the support they got from Jane Doe, then your authority within your industry will rise because of the brand ambassadors you're creating


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Thanks!

Razzy