It’s a crowded, noisy retail world these days. Consumers get loads of information from and about retailers through apps, social media sites, email, advertising, deal aggregators, virtual shopping centers, and bloggers. Some good, some not so.

While price remains high on the list of what influences a sale, especially among millennials, even among them word of mouth is still king.

Enter the brand ambassador, to whom retailers have increasingly turned to get out the word about their products and their brands since at least the 1990s. Done right, brand ambassador programs can elevate the visibility and trust consumers have in your brand — and lead to sales. Ambassador programs essentially allow a retailer some control over that all-powerful word-of-mouth machine. Here are some things to know:

Brand ambassadors are already some of your biggest fans

Fans love, love, love what they love, and they love to talk about it. Bringing on customers that already love you and are already probably touting your brand is simply a smart move. But how do you to find them? Advertising for them can work. But don’t forget that many of your biggest fans reveal themselves through social media: They’re the ones who are already commenting on your social network pages and “liking” your products. 

Start with your own employees, too, who know your company and your product best. Talk to potential ambassadors, whether from within or outside your company, about your brand as a lifestyle choice beyond your product lines. 

View your ambassadors as experts

Lululemon’s ambassador program taps people who are involved in their communities (read: know a lot of people and are probably quite social), many of them yoga or Pilates instructors. While they’re not paid outright, they do receive discounts on apparel. That's because, of course, there is no better person to model Lululemon’s clothing than a fit yoga enthusiast who has 10 to 20 other potential customers looking at her for the full length of a class, at least once a week.

Create programs that are about using your products, not just selling them

Fiskars, the scissors company, provides content on its Fiskateers blog about projects that might require scissors — not so much about how great the scissors are themselves. In fact, there is plenty of information about glitter, glue, and even more complicated crafting projects using gold foil. The site features contests, and its ethos is nicely summed up in its tagline: “The Fiskateers are a group of passionate crafters that take self-expression and creating very seriously.” No mention of scissors -- in fact, the mission statement goes on to say that it’s “more about the journey than the tools.” 

The enthusiasm there is infectious, and the ambassadors do seem to be getting heavy use out of their Fiskars.

Be explicit about what ambassadors get in return

Fiskars turns to the crafting community for its ambassadors, but it doesn’t just appeal to their creative nature or best selves. Rather, the company recruits them, clearly posting its expectations and its compensation on craft blogs. The company expects 20 hours of week of work, provides a salary, and gives ambassadors access to products it wants to promote as well as sneak peeks into new products and campaigns.

Store associates are potentially some of your best ambassadors — or your worst

Satisfaction with customer service in retail has thankfully improved in recent years, but many larger retailers are still being called out for poor service.

Price pressures and stiff competition are squeezing retailers, but customer service may be a terrible place to cut costs. In her book The Good Jobs Strategy, MIT Sloan Business School professor Zeynep Ton says that big-box retailers have essentially miscalculated the value of employees by not taking into account their important and vastly underused role in creating happier customers and larger profits. Other studies by Wharton business professor Marshall Fisher back up her findings. He researched several retailers and found that more than $10 in revenue came in for every dollar of increased wages. For retailers or areas of stores that were understaffed, in fact, the bonus increased from $10 to as high as $28. 

You could call bad customer service reverse-brand ambassadorship. After all, as the saying goes: “A happy customer tells a friend; an unhappy one tells the world.” 

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