The brand ambassadors that you choose can make or break your experiential marketing event. Brand ambassadors are essentially the face of your brand. At an event, they are responsible for warmly greeting attendees, ensuring they get the most out of the experience, and building a relationship with them.

Attendees that speak to these brand ambassadors feel as if they are talking directly to your brand. For this reason, it’s important to thoroughly train brand ambassadors before allowing them to represent who you are as a brand. Here’s how you can prepare a team of ambassadors for an upcoming event:

Start With Etiquette

Start off slow by going over basic etiquette rules with the team of brand ambassadors that are going to be working at your event. Every good brand ambassador will know they shouldn’t roll their eyes at guests, slouch, or cross their arms so they seem unapproachable. But, there are other etiquette rules that need to be discussed, especially when it comes to social media.

Do you want your brand ambassadors to post about the event on their social media accounts? If so, make sure you establish guidelines on what can and cannot be posted. For example, posting a selfie at the event with the brand’s hashtag is harmless. In fact, it’s free promotion. But, brand ambassadors shouldn’t post photos of themselves drinking alcohol at the event or tweet about how bored they are. You can’t control what they do or say while they’re not representing your brand, but there should be rules put in place over what they are allowed to post while they are on the clock.

Introduction to the Brand

A brand ambassador will not be able to represent your brand if they don’t know who you are, what you stand for, and what you are selling. Therefore, an important part of the training process is introducing brand ambassadors to your brand. Help them understand who you are selling to, what you are selling, and why your target audience will want to become customers. A brand ambassador doesn’t need to be able to rattle off all of the ingredients in every single one of your products. But, they should be informed enough to answer guests’ questions and speak confidently about the products or services that you are offering.

You should also make sure the brand ambassadors know what kind of personality your brand has so they know how they should communicate with guests at the event. Should they be bubbly and outgoing when approaching customers? Or would you rather them be serious and professional? These are the questions that need to be answered during training so brand ambassadors know how to conduct themselves during the event.

Media Relations

Another topic that may need to be covered as you prepare brand ambassadors for the event is media relations. If you are planning a small and intimate event, there may not be a need for media relations training. But, if you are inviting influencers and journalists to cover the event in order to increases brand awareness; this is an important part of the training process.

Go over some of the key points that you want brand ambassadors to mention when talking to members of the press. For instance, let’s say you are launching a new food product that is organic, gluten-free, and non-GMO certified. In this case, the three main points that should be mentioned in every media interview are:

• The product is organic.
• The product is gluten-free.
• The product is non-GMO certified.

Don’t give brand ambassadors scripts to memorize. Even the best brand ambassadors will sound rehearsed when they have to read from a script when speaking to the media. Instead, focus on making sure they understand the key points that you want to get across. Ask them to answer the questions as naturally as possible while still incorporating these key points.

Responsibilities During the Event

Every brand ambassador should show up to the event knowing exactly what they are going to be doing that day. Make this happen by going over everyone’s responsibilities before the event. For example, assign a few brand ambassadors to the entrance of the event so they can greet customers and help them find what they’re looking for when they arrive. These brand ambassadors should be very familiar with the layout of the event and the different activities that are going on. They should also know about parking, restrooms, and other general information that people tend to ask whoever is standing by the entrance. The responsibilities of this type of brand ambassador are different than those of a brand ambassador who is stationed around the product demo area. That’s why it’s so important to go over roles and responsibilities ahead of time.

Role Playing

A strong brand ambassador knows how to communicate with guests at the event and keep them engaged in conversation. At the end of the training program, test your brand ambassadors’ skills by doing role playing exercises where you pretend to be a guest or member of the media at the event. Doing this exercise will allow you to see how much of the information the brand ambassadors absorbed during their training. Do they remember the key talking points for the media? Are they asking guests to fill out a contact form so you can capture leads at the event? Take mental notes during the exercise—or have someone else stand back and watch—so you can help your team improve before the event.

Work with Factory 360 on your next experiential marketing event so you don’t have to take on the task of recruiting, hiring, and training brand ambassadors. We work with a highly trained and professional team of brand ambassadors that are eager to represent your brand and connect with guests at events. To learn more about our services, contact us today to schedule a free consultation.