Replacing and recruiting employees is an expensive endeavor. According to statistics, the average recruitment cost for companies is €4,000 and the average recruitment time is 42 days. When it comes to employee replacement costs, these figures are even higher. It has been calculated that the average cost of replacing an employee is equivalent to eight months’ salary, but at minimum, three months’ salary. With this in mind, it is entirely logical that companies would want to reduce these costs wherever possible. So how can this be done?
It’s clear that the lower the employee turnover and the shorter the recruitment time, the more money can be saved. This in turn means companies need to focus on employer branding, which includes activating brand ambassadors. Employees of a company or organization can either build the brand or destroy it. That’s why both external and internal branding efforts must be strategically equally important.
Who is a Brand Ambassador?
In short, a brand ambassador is someone who works in the company or organization and is happy and satisfied in their workplace. They are proactive, share the company’s values, and most importantly: they are willing to voluntarily share their employee experience, work activities, and job-related information with the public. This sharing may happen on social media—but it doesn’t have to. Often, people assume that being a brand ambassador means having to post job ads weekly on Facebook. While that’s certainly allowed, it’s not the main idea behind being a brand ambassador. An excellent brand ambassador could be someone without any social media accounts, who instead gladly introduces their company at schools or fairs, or simply talks about their work life to friends, family, and acquaintances. Spreading positive word-of-mouth takes a bit of effort, so even if friends tell each other how happy someone is to have met a sales goal, attended a great team event, or enjoyed a day working from their cozy home office – that’s already brand ambassadorship!
What Are the Benefits of Brand Ambassadors?
There are many benefits. The two most measurable business benefits are lower recruitment costs and shorter recruitment times. When positive word spreads and the public image of the employer is favorable, it becomes easier to attract new employees. In the best-case scenario, companies don’t even need to actively search for new employees, they come on their own initiative. Brand ambassadors help build a strong, trustworthy brand image and personal connection with clients, giving the brand a human face. No matter how shiny the product or how high the revenue, the real and authentic value comes from brand ambassadors. They help achieve brand loyalty. Since people tend to trust information coming from other people, especially friends and acquaintances, brand ambassadors are crucial here as well. Finally, ambassadors can significantly reduce marketing costs. The organic reach a brand ambassador can achieve would be extremely costly to replicate with paid advertising. People often ignore corporate posts, but they’ll read posts from their friends. Let’s face it: marketing effectiveness often depends on the budget, and companies with limited budgets can easily go unnoticed. That’s why businesses need different solutions to spread their positive messages, and brand ambassadors are a perfect fit.
How to Measure the Impact of Brand Ambassadors?
The impact of brand ambassadors can be measured in several areas. Focusing on recruitment, you can track the number of applicants, recruitment costs, and time spent on hiring. You can also monitor social media metrics (e.g., engagement, increase in followers, number of post interactions) or traffic to your website or career page. These metrics can be tracked manually in an Excel spreadsheet, but the easiest way is to monitor results via various platforms (e.g., Everyone Social, Hootsuite Amplify, or Sociabble). For example, Bolt shared impressive results from their ambassador program: 40 ambassadors generated 5 million LinkedIn impressions, 50,000 reactions, and 3,000 comments in just four months. If you translated that into advertising costs, it would have required around €30,000. It’s clear that using brand ambassadors pays off!
To keep ambassadors active even after the official program ends, it’s important to create a convenient space for them to share their posts, joys, and concerns. Companies often do this by setting up groups or chats in a preferred environment (e.g., Messenger, Teams, Slack). This way, ambassadors can stay connected, coordinate their activities, and share their posts to expand reach.
Several Estonian companies and organizations have participated in Instar’s brand ambassador program. Our tips have been used by Delfi Meedia, Estonian Railways, Fujitsu, Gunvor Services, Ministry of Defence, Lidl, Net Group, Nordea, Playtech, Ministry of the Interior, SMIT, Statistics Estonia, and Südameapteek. We are always happy to add new partners to this list.
Our clients have been satisfied with the ambassador programs. For example, Kadri Hein from Gunvor shared the following feedback: “I really liked this program. Instar gives a great kickstart and preparation so that the company can later continue independently. The more active ambassadors are still posting and sharing their Gunvor experience. I believe they got great inspiration from Instar!” Maris Parik adds: “It was a very pleasant collaboration. It’s great to act on enthusiasm, but even better when someone can tell you how things are done elsewhere – what mistakes or confusion to avoid, what to learn from, what works and what doesn’t. Thank you to the Instar team for all your good advice and support! They helped us gather employee opinions and suggestions, taught us how to involve people in finding solutions, and showed us how dissatisfied employees can become enthusiastic ambassadors.”
For more information about the ambassador program, contact our project manager Birgit at birgit.ruunik@instar.ee.
