Turning Employees into Brand Ambassadors: Harnessing Your Internal Talent

Brand Ambassador

What are brand ambassadors? How can I become a brand ambassador? How can you turn your employees into powerful brand ambassadors?

This blog explores how to leverage internal talent to create authentic, passionate brand ambassadors. By fostering a strong, values-driven workplace culture, you can align employees with your brand’s mission and empower them to represent your business externally. Learn practical steps to nurture this culture, from clear communication of values to leadership-led examples, and discover how providing tools and training can enable employees to promote your brand authentically and consistently.

 

Companies today increasingly rely on brand ambassadors to build authentic connections with audience members. One of the best ways to sell a product or service to your customer base is to have a loyal group of people who will advocate on your behalf.

External influencers are great for this because they can connect your brand to their fan base, significantly expanding your reach. However, some of your best advocates may already work for your business.

Your employees deeply understand how your business operates and the company values, and they also have unique insights into the brand’s mission. That said, turning your employees into brand advocates is a great strategy to add to your marketing operations.

Turning employees into brand ambassadors allows you to promote your brand authentically and consistently, strengthening your brand image, fostering a positive workplace culture, uplifting your employees, and promoting engagement.

This blog will explore the steps you can take to transform your employees into impactful brand ambassadors and build a culture rooted in values that empower your team to advocate on your brand’s behalf.

Table of Contents:

Fostering a Strong Internal Culture Rooted in Values

Creating a Culture Where Employees Feel Safe, Seen & Heard

Connection Between Positive Internal Culture & External Brand Perception

Practical Steps for Developing a Values-Driven Culture

  1. Define & Communicate Values Clearly
  2. Lead by Example
  3. Recognize & Reward Behavior

Clear Communication on Mission, Vision & Values

Connecting Personal Values with the Brand’s Greater Purpose

Strategies for Consistently Communicating Foundational Elements

Empowering Employees to Represent the Brand Externally

Conclusion

Fostering a Strong Internal Culture Rooted in Values

Any successful brand ambassador strategy starts with a solid internal culture. Your business’s culture is critical to how customers and employees feel about the company. For employees specifically, the workplace culture can also shape their perception of the job. You want employees to feel connected to their workplace and proud of where they work because this excitement naturally extends beyond the office walls, which is how you turn them into brand ambassadors.

Workplace culture directly influences how employees interact, collaborate, and contribute to the company’s goals. Because the office culture can significantly impact employee attitude and loyalty, you want to create a positive culture that fosters enthusiasm for the brand. Conversely, a toxic workplace can have adverse effects, driving up rates of disengagement and turnover.

Creating a Culture Where Employees Feel Safe, Seen & Heard

If you want your employees to become passionate brand ambassadors, you must create a workplace culture where they feel safe, seen, and heard. It’s essential that all employees, regardless of their title or position in the organization, feel comfortable and confident expressing their ideas without fear of criticism or judgment. By encouraging idea-sharing, you promote engagement and drive innovation.

You want your employees to feel safe. The more comfortable employees are with sharing ideas and thinking outside the box, the more likely they’ll be to take risks and contribute meaningfully to the organization, strengthening their connection to the brand.

This concept of psychological safety is crucial to any positive workplace environment, especially if you want to foster open communication and team collaboration that boosts your brand image and reputation.

Similarly, you must also ensure your employees feel seen and heard. This makes them feel like valued pieces of the organization, which can make them feel more committed to the company’s overall mission. You can easily achieve this through simple check-ins, encouraging regular feedback, and creating open channels of communication that you encourage employees to use.

Connection Between Positive Internal Culture & External Brand Perception

A positive workplace culture is great internally, but it also impacts your employees’ external interactions and the overall perception of your brand. Employees with a healthy relationship with the company and a positive image are more inclined to share their experiences with customers, clients, and people in their personal networks. This positive employee advocacy is more powerful than any kind of traditional advertising you could use for your brand because it’s more authentic, trustworthy, and relatable.

That’s why fostering a culture that nurtures employee growth and well-being is important. You need to take genuine care of your employees if you want them to speak highly of your brand and paint you in a positive light.

Practical Steps for Developing a Values-Driven Culture

Knowing how influential workplace culture is for your employees and your external brand perception, it’s a good idea to start focusing on developing a culture driven by values. Keep in mind, though, that this isn’t something that happens overnight. Encouraging employees to become brand ambassadors requires intentional leadership action and a commitment to maintaining those values across all levels of the organization.

The setup of every business differs from the next, but you can start by taking some of these practical steps to create a values-driven culture for your workplace:

  • Define & Communicate Values Clearly
  • Lead by Example
  • Recognize & Reward Behavior

 

1. Define & Communicate Values Clearly

You must start by clearly defining your company’s core values and then communicating them to every employee. This includes your mission, vision, short and long-term goals, and how your company values fit into every business interaction. These values should be aspirational, realistic, and specific, as they’ll serve as the cornerstone for all your brand’s operations going forward.

Once these values are defined and communicated clearly, they should be part of all hiring, onboarding, and performance evaluations to ensure they guide your business and employees throughout the organization.

2. Lead by Example

Your leadership teams need to embody the company’s values. Otherwise, employees won’t feel inclined to uphold the values themselves. When your employees see leadership talking the talk and walking the walk, so to speak, they’ll be more likely to follow suit.

This is important because if you want employees to become brand ambassadors, you’ll need to ensure they thoroughly understand your brand and what you stand for so they can effectively communicate that when advocating on the business’s behalf.

3. Recognize & Reward Behavior

When employees exemplify the brand’s values, you must recognize and reward them for their behavior. This can be done through public acknowledgment, like shoutouts on social media, awards, or even promotions. Recognizing and rewarding this behavior sends a message to the rest of your employees about how important it is to align with the company’s values.

Clear Communication on Mission, Vision & Values

Employees can only become brand ambassadors if they thoroughly understand the company’s mission, vision, and values. Without that understanding, your employees can feel disconnected from their work’s larger purpose. Instead, you want them to be engaged and motivated to contribute to the brand positively and uphold your values outside of the office.

Your employees can’t promote what they don’t understand. Beyond clearly defining business goals, you also need to provide opportunities for them to learn how they personally connect to the brand’s values. When determining the brand’s mission, values, and vision, a sense of clarity helps ensure everyone is aligned and working toward the same goals. This feeling of alignment fosters belonging and purpose for employees, which are two essential feelings if you want them to become brand ambassadors.

Connecting Personal Values with the Brand’s Greater Purpose

One of the most powerful ways to turn employees into brand ambassadors is to show them how their personal values can align with the company’s mission and greater purpose. Employees who feel like their work is aligned with their beliefs and values will feel more motivated and fulfilled in the workplace, leading them to have only positive things to say about your brand when out in the world.

A good way to reinforce this in the workplace is to have your leadership teams regularly discuss how the brand’s goals impact the business as a whole and the community at large. Showing employees the positive impact of their work helps give them a sense of purpose outside of their day-to-day responsibilities, and this may be something that resonates with them on a deeper level, making them feel proud of their work and glad to be on the team.

This understanding and sense of belonging are great forms of encouragement, as they can inspire employees to go above and beyond for the brand, especially when they know the positive impact their work is having on a larger scale. Everyone wants to feel like they’re contributing to something meaningful and bigger than themselves, and your employees are no different.

Strategies for Consistently Communicating Foundational Elements

Communication should be consistent, ongoing, and integrated into every aspect of your business operations, from defining brand values to explaining the impact of the team’s work. Several strategies can ensure employees stay aligned with the company’s mission, vision, and values at all times.

This integration into the company culture should start from the moment a new employee is onboarded. On day one, you should introduce them to all the elements that make the brand what it is and how they fit into it. This is how you set the stage for them to become brand ambassadors down the road. Again, leadership should also be bought in so they can answer any questions and guide employees who may not fully understand how to uphold the brand values or how they fit into the overall mission.

Along the lines of ensuring consistent communication, you should also leverage internal channels like newsletters, company meetings, and other platforms like Slack to provide regular check-ins on the brand’s progress toward its mission and general updates that are important for the entire team to know.

Empowering Employees to Represent the Brand Externally

Turning your employees into brand ambassadors goes far beyond creating a positive, values-driven work culture that they feel excited to discuss. For employee brand ambassadors to truly work, you need to equip them with the proper tools and training to represent and advocate for the brand effectively.

Any employee turned brand ambassador should have clear guidelines on how you expect them to represent the brand externally. You can provide training sessions on brand messaging, social media use, and customer interactions to ensure everyone is on the same page. You can also take training a step further by providing them with templates to use and examples of brand-aligned communications they can refer to.

One of the greatest, most accessible tools your employees can use to advocate for your brand is social media. As part of your brand’s social media strategy, you can encourage employees to share their positive experiences with the company on socials, posting about company events, highlighting their achievements—and the achievements of the organization as a whole—or even just sharing what it is they love about their job. This is a very impactful way to drive meaningful online engagement that’s done in a genuine, authentic way because it’s coming straight from the employees themselves.

Conclusion

If you want to strengthen your internal workplace culture and your external brand perception, consider providing your employees with the tools they need to become loyal brand ambassadors.

Fostering a values-driven workplace culture that clearly communicates the mission that fuels your brand can give your employees ample opportunities to engage externally and feel motivated and confident to promote your business to potential customers and other people in their personal networks.

Empowering employees with the tools and training they need to confidently represent the company while also recognizing and rewarding those who embody the brand’s values sustains this ambassadorial culture over time. As employees grow in their roles and align with the company’s purpose, their enthusiasm and advocacy will naturally expand the brand’s reach and influence.

Turning employees into brand ambassadors allows you to promote your brand authentically and consistently in a way that strengthens your brand image, uplifts your employees, and promotes engagement.

Your employees already have an in-depth understanding of what makes your brand tick, and harnessing their talent and passion can allow you to create a powerful network of brand ambassadors equipped with the necessary tools to champion your mission and brand values and boost your reputation.

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