Nothing is more important than a first impression, and Brand Ambassadors are the first point of contact between most consumers and your brand, so their roles are absolutely vital. Be sure to keep these best practices in mind next time you’re planning your experiential programs.

Clearly defined goals

Now that you’ve finished planning your experiential campaign, you know what your program’s goals are, but does your onsite staff? Are your goals related to experiential statistics like the number of consumers engaged or leads collected? Or are you goals related to downstream revenue? For example, if your goals revolve around Quality Leads instead of Volume of Leads, that will change how your staff interacts with consumers. If you are only after the highest quality leads then you will likely want your BA’s to have a strategy to quickly qualify each consumer they interact with, so they aren’t spending too much time with lower quality leads. Whatever your goals are you need to communicate them clearly so that your staff interacts with consumers in the most effective method possible.

Train, train, train

In order to be effective, your brand ambassadors need to know your products or services like the back of their hand. These BA’s are the public face of your experiential organization and they should know the products just as well as your sales team should know them. Training isn’t just about product knowledge though. They should also understand your corporate culture and the “vibe” you want to come from your brand. If you’re a personal finance or banking brand, you might want a more buttoned-up, reserved culture around your activation. But if you’re a cutting-edge technology brand, you likely want young, energetic, outspoken BA’s. Be sure to talk to your teams about how you want them to interact with the public, not just product details.

Incentivize them

Everyone in experiential knows that there can be long days where your motivation to engage an endless stream of consumers just may not be there. There are also other types of people that thrive when there is something on the line. For these reasons, and many others, it’s a great idea to incentivize your Brand Ambassadors. This can help ensure that your entire team is focused and not losing momentum during critical rush periods. Incentives can be anything from cash bonuses to prizes or trips. Being a BA can be a grueling thing over the course of a week, so rewarding consistent, successful behavior can be a make-or-break tactic for your program’s success.

Learn from them

This is one of the single-biggest areas where brands fail, listening to their onsite teams. All brands taking part in multi-day activations must always be listening to their onsite teams to determine if on-the-fly adjustments need to be made. All the planning in the world can’t predict 100% of situations that you’ll encounter. But when you take the time to connect with your BA’s on a daily basis, you will get semi-realtime updates on the traffic flows, crowd size, busy hours and more. Maybe part of your consumer engagement technology isn’t having the effect you thought it would but another area is busier than expected. By listening to your team, you can shift staff around on-the-fly and make sure your booth is staffed appropriately. Aside from that, there are a lot of veteran BA’s in the industry that can provide really insightful feedback that can be useful when planning future events. Taking the time to accurately collect feedback from your BA team leaders should be a part of every experiential activation.