Brands that recruit college brand ambassadors have been around for quite some
time, and for good reason. Having a student represent your brand is a great way to
quickly increase brand awareness and promote a positive reputation on campus.
Although the reasons brands recruit ambassadors have not changed much, the act of
properly marketing to college students is always in a state of change. As technology
and communication channels evolve, college students’ needs and desires also
change. Recruiting college brand ambassadors requires a lot of work – interviewing,
training, activity planning, managing and reporting are just a few tasks. Here are
three different ways to recruit brand ambassadors while staying relevant to today’s
digital world.
- Look out for students with a large social media following
Social media is second nature to college students – they constantly have their
smartphones with them and are interacting with others on social media. It is
important to find brand ambassadors who have access to a robust and active
network of students. It is not just about how many people follow them on social
media – it is about how actively engaged they and their followers are on each
respective platform. Brand ambassadors need to have connections that personally
know and trust them.
- Go where your audience is
It can be difficult to find brand ambassadors on college websites. Therefore it is best
to reach out to specific schools and discover how to recruit on site. It is also
important to decide what channel to interact with them on. College students used to
decide between needing a laptop or a desktop for classes. Now, they consider
whether or not having a tablet will be enough. According to the Boston Globe, some
students even write papers on their smartphones. Make communication easy by
meeting them where they are: through mobile.
- Use data to track sales
There are ways to track data to see how well your brand ambassadors are doing
through digital codes. Sites such as bit.ly offer the ability to give each campus rep a
different URL or access code. This gives your brand the ability to track which reps
are driving the most traffic. This increased accountability means that with the right
amount of encouragement, brand ambassadors can become important components
of your marketing strategy. It also raises the bar for campus reps to step up their recruiting game.
