Here's how to segment your ambassador outreach beyond just follower count and engagement.
Mayank Sehgal
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In the past, ambassadors/influencers were pretty much thought of as online billboards or spokespeople for different brands, with their main value being that of a platform on which a brand could stand and reach a larger group of people than otherwise.
Today, however, things aren’t that simple. As social networks have evolved and matured, people, including creators and influencers, on these platforms have matured as well.
Ambassadors are no longer just a platform—they’re businesses, writers, photographers, video creators, comedians, models, influencers, community leaders, evangelists, and usually, a combination of some of these roles.
In previous posts, we covered finding your top ambassadors through a technique of farming—today let’s talk about something more tactical: how do you segment your ambassador outreach?
Let’s learn.
Segmenting by size (follower count + engagement rate) is the first “obvious” way of segmenting that comes to mind, but today let’s talk about segmenting by skill and by closeness.
Not all ambassadors or influencers are the same, and different ambassadors can be used for different types of marketing objectives.
These are folks that are very good at telling stories—they make engaging Instagram stories, carousel posts that are content-rich, potentially long form, and get people to invest time and energy into the content and the brand.
These people are incredible to collaborate with on campaigns where you want to share your values, talk about a complicated product, show people how to use your product in different ways, or generally inspire people.
Content like this can reach fewer people since not everyone will stay engaged till the end of a long story or carousel, but will often reach more relevant people.
These guys are GREAT at making TikToks and Reels — short-form videos that are visually appealing, educational in an entertaining way, and generally have a high potential to go viral and reach a lot of people.
This kind of content is great for brand awareness, but may not necessarily inspire a lot of referrals/affiliate sales since people’s attention spans are extremely low when consuming these types of videos.
However, the way to make revenue from these ambassadors is to use this content as ads. That way you combine the sticky nature of these videos with a strong call-to-action and Facebook/Meta-level targeting.
Best of both worlds!
These are people that have a strong hold on their community—they have high levels of trust, engagement and a significant relationship with members of their community.
This means that people generally take what they say very seriously, and their posts receive very engaged comments and feedback.
If they recommend you or your product, it means a lot—because they don’t generally recommend things too easily, which is how they’ve been able to build a strong amount of trust in the first place.
One example of someone like this is the YouTuber Casey Neistat—a recommendation on his YouTube channel can make or break a product.
These are people that can take GREAT photos—they’re good at photography, lighting, set design, and generally making products look GOOD.
I would encourage you to make great relationships with them, because if they’re passionate about your product they can do some great work for you, at a far lower cost than hiring a professional, and achieving more authentic-looking results.
These are ambassadors that make for great models. They know how to pose, and they are (or are helped by) good photographers.
If you’re into clothing, footwear, watches, anything on the body—these are your gals (or guys).
Again, if they’re passionate about your brand, they’ll share it, and you’ll have some great content that you can use for your ad campaigns or maybe even your feed.
Another way to segment your potential ambassadors is on whether they’ve purchased something from you or not, or whether they follow you or not.
These are people that have actually paid for your products at some point, and they represent a strong potential to convert to an ambassador, especially if they really love your product.
These are people that have never purchased something from you, though they might have received a gift from you at some point.
These are people that don’t necessarily follow your brand on Instagram, but they follow other brands, accounts or people that you look up to.
They represent a high likelihood to enjoy your “universe” too, once they get to know about it.
It’s possible that profiles fit into multiple of these categories at once, but I would look at what the main strength of a profile is, what is the closeness of the profile, and what is the size of this profile.
And then you want to cross-categorise. As an example, for an adventure-focused watch brand I would have the following categories:
You get the idea.
By segmenting your ambassador outreach, you’ll be able to:
It’s a no-brainer to do it!
Are you already segmenting your ambassador outreach? What have you seen so far? How are you doing it?
