Ambassador marketing for children's activity businesses

Many millennial parents look to their peers for recommendations before making buying decisions. In fact, Adweek found that 47% of millennials say that they trust user-generated content (UGC) in comparison to 25% who say they trust brand-created content.

Ambassador marketing is a great way to increase brand awareness with UGC that will get you more bookings. In this guide, we will outline everything you need to know about ambassador marketing including how to find ambassadors and a marketing strategy you can use.

What is ambassador marketing?

Ambassador marketing is when a brand hires their customers to create marketing assets and other materials. It is a great tactic for companies to showcase their existing customers’ passion for their brand. Anyone can be an ambassador, but the best ambassadors are customers who know the brand well and can articulate why and what they love about it.

When brands connect with ambassadors, they typically work out an agreement where the ambassador creates content and the brand either releases it themselves or shares from the ambassador’s account. Brands can choose to pay ambassadors based on views, engagement, bookings, or a different metric: Whatever works best for the two parties.

Why is ambassador marketing beneficial for children’s activity businesses?

The goal of ambassador marketing is to help your biggest supporters share their love of your brand with prospective customers. Since millennial parents rely heavily on peer reviews before they make purchases, ambassador marketing is a perfect tool for children’s activity businesses.

Social media is the perfect place for ambassadors, which is great because parents love it. In 2023, the University of Michigan surveyed parents to learn more about their social media use. They found that 80% of parents use social media to discuss parenting topics and get advice, suggestions, and tips from other parents. Drilling down more deeply, Pew Research found that 79% of parents surveyed said that they get useful information from social media. They also discovered that Facebook is the most popular social media platform for parents (74% of the 91% of parents who use social media are on it) and 33% of parents under 40 use Instagram.

How to find ambassadors

Building up your community on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is the first step towards creating a successful ambassador marketing program. We recommend posting at least a few times a week and interacting with your followers as frequently as you can to increase engagement.

Once your social media is in a good place, you can start to see which customers engage with your content the most. This is the first step towards finding possible ambassadors. Do you have customers who frequently post about your classes and tag you? Do you have customers who respond to your posts, stories, contests, and more? If so, these should be your first ambassadors!

Before you reach out to these first ambassadors, make sure you decide on how your ambassador program will work. We even recommend creating a one-pager with all of the relevant information, such as expectations for your ambassadors, specifics about the program including payment structure, and anything else you deem important.

Your initial outreach should be friendly, informative, and exciting. Ideally, this relationship is a win-win for both you and your ambassador! The best way to ask potential ambassadors to be part of the program is in person when they come to your activities. But, we know that is not always possible. If you are looking to ask via email or even direct message, adapt our outreach template below.

Ambassador outreach template

Hi [name],

My name is [your name] and I am the [your role] at [your company]. I am reaching out we are starting an ambassador marketing program and I thought you would be perfect to join!

I love seeing your posts about our activities on your social media and it’s clear that you are a fan of ours (and we’re a fan of yours)! We’d love to share that passion far and wide so more families like yours can join the fun.

If this sounds like something you are interested in, we’ve written up a brief one page document that outlines the structure of the ambassador program, expectations for our ambassadors, and more. Take a look and let me know if this seems like something that would work for you!

Please let me know if you have any questions about the program. I’d love to chat more about working together!

Best,

[Your name]

Ambassador marketing strategy

Once you have a few ambassadors signed onto your program, it is time to start ambassador marketing! There are a lot of ways to utilize ambassadors as part of your marketing, but here are some of our favorite ambassador marketing strategies.

Showcase user-generated content on social media

Social media and user-generated content (UGC) go hand-in-hand. You likely found your ambassadors on social media, so this is a great use case for ambassador marketing. We recommend sharing their organic reviews of your activities, if they have them. Then, ask your ambassadors to record reviews as well as videos of your activities and other pieces of content.

Some of the videos should be posted on your ambassadors’ accounts and then you can reshare them on your company’s account. Others should be posted on your account and used as ads. On Instagram, you can also pin and promote posts so they are seen more frequently. You have wonderful UGC, it’s time to make sure it is seen!

Ask ambassadors to spread the word via word-of-mouth

Your ambassadors will likely be parents and caregivers in your community. As part of the program, ask them to share their love of your programs with the families of their children’s friends and within the school district as much as they can. Make sure you have a referral side of the program set up so they are still compensated for these word-of-mouth sales as well.

Bring ambassadors to events

Event marketing is a great tactic for children’s activity businesses because you can meet new families in your community as well as nurture relationships with your current customers. Some common events that work well for children’s activity providers are school fairs, community events, farmer’s markets, street fairs, and more.

You can take your event marketing strategy to the next level by bringing some of your ambassadors to the events. When prospective customers see parents and caregivers at your booth or in your space, they will feel comfortable and interested in your activities. In fact, 82% of consumers look for referrals from peers before making a purchase, according to a Nielson study. Ambassadors can be a powerful addition to your events.

Ambassador marketing is a great way to amplify the voice of your most passionate customers and get new customers excited about your business. It is also extremely useful to increase brand awareness, trust, engagement, and bookings.

If you are looking for more guidance on marketing and running your children’s education and activity business, the team at Sawyer is here to help.

With our suite of tools, like custom forms to record allergies and t-shirt sizes, flexible payment options like gift cards and installment plans, and seamless scheduling and registration on any device, Sawyer saves business owners 28 hours per month. If you are ready to spend less time on admin and more time doing more of what you love, start a free trial or schedule a demo.