Are you interested in becoming a successful brand ambassador? Great, because brands in home decor, furnishing, art, and every possible area of the interior and exterior design world are looking for brand ambassadors! This could be a great opportunity for you to build several revenue streams and a strong personal brand. 

What is a Brand Ambassador?

As a brand ambassador, you have a passion for the products that you want to promote. That’s absolutely crucial. If you are an interior designer, you most likely have your favorite items that you use in your projects. You might be a regular customer of the brand and enthusiastically endorse it to others even outside of your projects.

You can become a brand ambassador for these products and earn extra income by promoting them to your audience. Or, if you don’t sell services such as interior design, you can still become a brand ambassador, build your personal brand in association with the brand or several brands you endorse, and make a nice living doing that. 

Benefits of Being a Brand Ambassador

There are several benefits of being a brand ambassador.

• You can launch a completely new brand and career for yourself, without actually creating your own products. 
• You can add new and exciting revenue streams to your existing business, and many times, these are somewhat passive. This means that after you have created the needed assets and promotions, they can bring you revenue for years to come. 
• You can leverage the brand’s audience to build your own personal brand and business. You will also build your authority when you are associated with respected brands. 

Qualities of a Successful brand Ambassador

Companies who are searching for brand ambassadors for their products or services are looking for people with certain qualities. If you want to become a successful brand ambassador, you should: 

• Understand marketing 
• Be established on social media
• Be a consistent communicator
• Have a genuine passion for the industry and products
• Have a certain style that fits the brand’s aesthetics and values 

You see, being a brand ambassador means that you are serious about your own brand and willing to increase your own reach. You need to decide the niche you’re in, and define your personal style as an interior designer or decor enthusiast. 

You also need to be a great marketer, which is very beneficial for you in case you decide to build a business in the interior design space since marketing is one of the most important skills when it comes to building a brand and running a business. 

“What if I don’t have established any social media following?”

Well, don’t let that stop you from becoming a successful brand ambassador, but realistically, to be accepted as a brand ambassador, you need to show some proof that you can reach people. Social media is the best and most cost-effective way to reach thousands or millions of people. Brands want you to have the audience because the reason they have ambassadors is to reach new audiences. 

So, if you’re not yet building your social media presence, that would be the first step to focus on! 

Strategies for Building an Audience

The people who follow you are called your audience. Here are several great strategies for building your audience. 

Decide your niche & target audience 

First, decide your niche in advance. Is it interior design, or fashion? Or maybe food, wellness, exercise? Decide the niche you’re in, and try to think long-term when creating your niche. Just like when building a business, you need to be specific about who you are talking to, who are your audiences, and what they care about.

For example, are you looking to attract new mothers or fathers with your brand? Then your messaging is likely very different than if you’re attracting, for example, retired people who love to play golf in Miami. 

Craft Your Message

Crafting your message is important, but also quite hard. This is about identifying your special point of view, what you stand for, and why, and then putting it into words that people can easily comprehend and remember. This is also important to think about: A successful brand ambassador should use the tone of a brand to communicate its messages. Influencers often use their own brand voice. Of course, you get to personalize your own messaging, but the brands want you to align your message with theirs when promoting their brand.

Choose your main platform

Then you need to choose your main platform. It’s hard work to build several platforms at once, so pick the one that fits your personality, maybe the one that you enjoy the most, and also where your audience hangs out. 

Select the products and services you want to affiliate yourself with

There are many great affiliate, trade, and ambassador programs for design professionals, you need to decide which ones are the ones that you want to affiliate with. One great sign is if you are a happy customer of the brand because then you can create authentic marketing materials.

How To Be A Successful Brand Ambassador On Instagram

Do you enjoy Instagram? And do your people hang out on IG? Then maybe IG is your choice. Getting started with social media platforms, particularly Instagram, is quite simple:

• Decide the name of your account. You can change it later too, but preferably not. So, choose a name that you can see has longevity and is serious. An account name such as babypigs7868676 doesn’t make you particularly trustworthy and professional (sorry, babypigs7868676)
• Decide special themes for your account. You might want to have some special concepts such as a video each Tuesday, or live chats with people in your industry. 
• Make sure to create a proper presentation of your account profile. 

Read also: how to grow your interior design Instagram account 

What is expected from you as a brand ambassador?

As discussed earlier, to become a successful brand ambassador, you need to be professional. You also need to have a certain following, even if many brands want to work with micro-influencers as well. A micro-influencer is a person with 1000 – 10 000 followers, is niched down to specific topics and is generally passionate about the industry and products. 

You also need to be consistent with your messaging. You might want to promote the brand’s products already before you are officially an ambassador, to show that you really appreciate their products. This also puts you on their radars, so remember to tag the brand when you talk about their products! 

Brands are looking for authentic ambassadors so if you already have purchased from the brand, even better. If not yet, maybe that would be the best starting point. Then you can also create lots of original images that you can use in your marketing. 

What’s even better – many brands are constantly looking for user-generated content, so if you own the product and take beautiful pictures of how their products look like at your home or at your client’s homes, you will increase your chances to be visible in the brand’s feeds too, which in turn will result in more visitors and followers for your account too! 

Lastly, I already mentioned this briefly, but having the ability to take gorgeous pictures is golden. Brands are always looking for user-generated content, and your audience is looking for original content, so a great skill development would be to learn how to take pictures. You don’t have to become a professional photographer, just taking simple iPhone pictures is good enough! 

So, how do I get started as a brand ambassador?

As a personal brand and individual creator, you need to go through a brand’s ambassadorship program to become selected as one of its ambassadors. Look out for your favorite brands whether they have ambassador programs and if not, you can reach out and ask if it’s something they are planning to launch.

Many times, CMOs are planning these programs years ahead before they launch, so it’s a great idea to ask directly if they are planning to launch one. If not, maybe you can create a personalized deal with them.

Should you become a brand ambassador? 

If you want to become known in your industry, then yes, it’s a great way to build your personal brand. If you want to add new revenue streams, then absolutely, you should work with some established brands to make that happen.

But if there’s no connection between your personal brand and the products, then maybe you shouldn’t confuse your audience by promoting products or services that don’t make any sense to you or your audience.