7 Mistakes You May Be Making When Hiring Brand Ambassadors

A lot goes into planning an experiential marketing campaign, from choosing a desirable location to design elements to engagement strategies. But if your efforts are falling flat time and again, your brand ambassadors may be the root of your problem. Below we’ll look at some common mistakes that you may be making when hiring your brand ambassadors.

7 Mistakes You May Be Making When Hiring Brand Ambassadors 

1. Waiting Until the Last Minute

Often, brand ambassador staffing is the last line item on to-do lists. Unfortunately, that can have dire consequences, especially with the demand for in-person events and experiences at an all-time high. By securing your brand ambassadors early on, you can rest easy knowing that you have a solid, experienced team.

2. Not Interviewing Them

Your brand ambassadors’ number one task is to represent your brand in a positive way. Because of this, do not rely solely on their resume when hiring them.  Instead, conduct an interview over the phone to get a good feel for their personality. In doing so, you’ll ensure that they are capable of representing your brand the way you expect them to.

3. Undervaluing Their Worth

Brand ambassadors play a significant role in event ROI and they can make or break your event. While understanding their value can be complicated, there are many factors to consider, such as:

• Role and responsibilities
• Specialty skills
• Experience
• Expectations
• Competitiveness of the event if it is a large event with many activations taking place (the more competition, the higher the pay scale)

You must know your staff’s worth when creating your budget. As a result, you’ll get the most bang for your buck by getting the right people for your event while staying within your target budget. 

4. Dragging Out the Hiring Process

Many brand ambassadors rely on experiential marketing events as a primary income source. With that said, committing them to your event is very important. If you drag out the hiring process or delay communicating with them, they may see that as a red flag and move on to another opportunity, leaving you scrambling. 

5. Not Being Upfront About Their Responsibilities

In some cases, experiential and event marketing work can be challenging and demanding, whether it’s long hours, weather conditions, the volume of interactions, or other things. Not everyone is cut out for every experiential job; therefore, it’s important to be as upfront and transparent as possible about what the job entails and your expectations. 

6. Not Being Mindful of Your Target Audience/Attendee

When you hire brand ambassadors, they need to be able to relate to your target audience. For example, if you are promoting AARP, you would want to hire brand ambassadors from older generations that have more in common with who you’re targeting. A potential AARP customer would most likely be more inclined to listen to messaging from someone closer to their age or their children’s age rather than someone from their grandchildren’s generation. If applicable, identify your target consumer to determine who can best represent your brand.

7. Setting Unreasonable Goals

Setting KPIs for your brand ambassadors to measure the success of your event is important, but be realistic when setting those goals. Your goals should be attainable, if they aren’t, you won’t truly understand your ROI, and your brand ambassadors may lose their motivation.

Take the guesswork out of hiring your brand ambassadors by partnering with an event staffing agency that specializes in providing brand ambassadors. For almost two decades, ATN Event Staffing has provided brand ambassadors for thousands of experiential marketing events, brand activations, and more. We specialize in delivering top-tier talent while providing exceptional customer service. 

Whatever your brand ambassador staffing needs are, we’ve got you covered!