No Bandwidth, No Problem: How to Launch an Ambassador Program Without the Extra Headcount

Our recent LinkedIn poll revealed that most influencer marketing teams are very small, with 63% of respondents saying their influencer marketing program is managed by just 1 or 2 people. 

This is the case for the team at Care/of, the cult favorite wellness brand known for its personalized nutrition products. Despite being a small team of 2, Paige Hackworth, Growth Marketing Associate, and Arielle Tsoran, Senior Associate of Paid Endorser Marketing, were able to launch a successful brand ambassador program that quadrupled Care/of’s engagement. 

We were lucky enough to learn Paige and Arielle’s brilliant strategies that allowed them to achieve such amazing results — without adding any extra headcount. In this blog, we’re sharing their tips and tricks so you can do the same. Let’s dive right in. 

Invest in an influencer marketing platform that meets your brand’s needs.

If you don’t have much bandwidth but want to scale your program, you’ll need a tool that provides the right technology to support your unique goals. Without an influencer marketing platform, you may be stuck doing manual tasks and using spreadsheets to keep track of everything, taking away precious time from building meaningful relationships with creators and actually running your campaign. 

But not all influencer marketing platforms are created equal. To choose the right one, you need to vet a handful of platforms, comparing features and pricing and getting a feel for the team you could potentially work with. If you’re in the market, check out our article, 12 smart questions to ask before choosing an influencer marketing platform. 

After extensive research, Care/of selected Aspire as their influencer marketing platform of choice based on the tools we provide for managing and scaling their always-on brand ambassador program. 

Leverage influencer discovery tools to find creators who align well with your brand. 

The success of your campaign can really depend on who you choose to work with. The more aligned you are with your influencers, the better response you’ll get from your target audiences. Particularly for a brand ambassador program, you need to find well-aligned partners, as they will represent your brand for a longer period of time. 

To find Care/of ambassadors, Paige and Arielle used several different influencer discovery tools on Aspire. In particular, Aspire’s influencer search engine proved to be the most useful tool for the Care/of duo, as they could filter creators by location, demographics, and even aesthetic using Image Search. This made it easy to find creators who were perfectly suited to their campaign without having to spend hours manually scrolling through Instagram hashtags. 

Streamline your workflow so you can focus on building meaningful relationships.

A brand ambassador program is the perfect chance to build deeper relationships with creators, thereby creating more authentic campaigns. These long-term partnerships allow creators to really integrate the brand into their everyday lives, making it easy to seamlessly incorporate the brand into their content. 

Knowing this, Arielle and Paige used Aspire’s customizable workflow and automated product fulfillment to streamline the entire process across hundreds of ambassadors, leaving them time to focus on strategy and relationship-building rather than tedious manual tasks. 

Test and invest.

Measuring ROI is a key step of any marketing campaign. That’s why one of Paige and Arielle’s top priorities was to prove the success of their campaign through hard numbers. With Aspire’s robust in-product sales tracking capabilities and social analytics, they’ve been able to experiment with social channels, different types of content, and a range of creators to find what resonates best with their audience and drives conversions.

Through this data-driven approach, the team identified what resonated best with their target audience, driving higher conversions. In the span of just one quarter, Care/of achieved remarkable results, including:

• 80% increase in the number of creators they collaborated with
• 85% increase in product-related posts
• 313% boost in impressions

Now, armed with data and trends, the Care/of team is able to make more informed decisions around talent booking and content repurposing which allows them to better invest their influencer marketing budget.

Need more tips? Check out our full feature of Care/of here. 

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