Wimbledon final, July 2012. Federer is battling it out with Murray in four grueling sets of tennis. Hundreds of millions of spectators are watching all around the world, glued to their screens. 5:4, fourth set, commercial time. Sunlit lawns of Wimbledon, a few amazing shots, and a man hoisting the trophy in his hands, wearing Rolex watch. At such a moment all brand-building efforts of smaller watch makers are shattered… A few minutes later Roger Federer, brand ambassador of Rolex, wins his 17th major. He walks to his chair, and takes golden watch out of his bag, wearing it on his left wrist. Its’ not only his victory. Rolex has also won that match…
Many things has changed since Federer signed his deal with Rolex, back in 2006. The growth of social networks has been unprecedented, especially since 2015. Positions that hadn’t existed before, except of the ranks of professional athletes and movie stars, such as “an Influencer“, or a Brand Ambassador, found their way to all major job boards.
And now you can become another one, benefiting from your online presence, helping a brand to grow, and earn decent money for your activities. Or get a full time job, and representing their brands on events and across a variety of social media channels. Let’s have a look at some questions you may face while interviewing for this intriguing job.
Table of Contents
How would you define your online presence, your personal brand?
It is very important that the values you try to promote online resonate with the values of their brand. They probably did their research, and find you a decent match, otherwise they would not even bother inviting you for the interviews. Still, they want to hear a confirmation from your mouth.
Think a bit about their brand, and what sort of audience they try to address, and gain for their products. An example: a brand of sports drinks. Logically they are looking for active people who enjoy exercising, and may treat themselves with expensive and tasty sports drink during, or after exercise.
If you are a fitness model, or a semi-pro runner, and have a decent numbers of followers on social media, you definitely present the values they try to present with their brand: active lifestyle, focus on looking good and staying healthy, enjoying life… Think about it for a while, and explain how your personal online brand matches with their corporate brand.
In your opinion, what are the most fitting online channels to connect with our target audience?
You have two good options at this point. First one is doing research before your interview, identifying their target audience, and then matching it with two or three social media channels, places where their audience kills time.
As you for sure know, Pinterest is ideal for female audience, Medium for senior corporate audience, Tik-Tok for teens who enjoy wasting their time (and sometimes also their money), and so on. You just have to find out who they try to address, and match it with the most fitting channels.
Another option is saying that you do not like to limit yourself in your work of a brand ambassador. You want to try all channels, build the presence across a variety of social media, ensuring that you won’t miss on any potential customers.
It doesn’t mean that you will waste the entire budget on ineffective campaigns. On the contrary, you will run smaller-scale tests on various channels, analyze the result, and just then decide which strategy is the most effective one, and where you should promote their brand, pouring in a ,lot of money and generating even more in the process…
* May also interest you: What is your favorite brand? 7 sample answers.
What is your availability to travel and represent our brand on various events?
When they ask about it, they want you to do it. As simple as that. Ensure them that you love traveling, meeting interesting people, and that you also understand the important role promotion on events play in each brand building campaign.
You should also show some flexibility. Maybe you still study, or have other commitments, or a young family. Still, you are sure you find time to travel, and to organize your schedule (because they won’t change the date of an event just because you cannot attend), and that’s exactly what you are ready to do for your new role. You are willing to make some sacrifices.
Tell us about a time you convinced someone to buy something, someone who was hesitant or even didn’t want to buy the product before talking to you.
You have a lot of options here. Situation from your personal life–convincing a friend, or a family member, situation from work, or even from one of your former promotional campaigns you ran on social media–all of them will do.
Show the interviewers that you can easily demonstrate the benefits of the product for the customer–perhaps narrating your personal experience with it (or what your benefactor told you to narrate). Showing them the positive difference it made in your life, and promptly reacting to their questions or objections, you succeeded in convincing them.
Do not forget to add some numbers, especially when you talk about some promotion you did professionally. For example, how many sales the company made in the first 24 hours after your promotion, how many customers you managed to convince with your campaign, and so on. This gives your answer more credibility, and also shows the interviewers that you actually care about the results of your work.
How do you plan to monitor and evaluate the results of your work as a Brand Ambassador?
First of all, you can emphasize the importance of tracking conversions (clicks, or other metrics). You do not want your employer to throw out money, not knowing whether the campaigns actually bring any real results.
Then you can talk about different tools you use, be it free but powerful analytical tools from Google, such as GA, or Search Console (setting up goals properly you can track almost anything within the interface of Google Analytics), or paid professional conversion trackers such as Voluum, or tools specific for social media, for example BuzzSumo.
You can also add that you are tech savvy, and do not struggle learning to work with different tools. If they use a specific software (perhaps custom-made) to track and analyze the effectiveness of various promotional and brand building campaigns, you are eager to learn to work with it.
At the end you can also add that brand building is a long term and continuous process, and that sometimes the cumulative result of your brand building efforts outweighs the measurable results of individual campaigns. That’s the reason why it makes sense to go on with certain campaigns, though they may not seem to yield any immediate results–especially if they do not cost much, or anything…
How do you deal with negative comments on your social media profiles, or profiles you manage?
Ensure the hiring managers that any feedback matters to you–even negative feedback. You will try your best to respond to each negative comment, without emotions, simply trying to explain things to other people who may read the same comment, or reply to the poster.
In any case, you won’t ignore these comments. It is also important to show some mental resilience. People may say bad things about you, or the products you promote, but that’s just the part of the online world, and you won’t take it personally. It won’t impact you emotionally or in any other way.
You will simply try your best to answer the negative comment in a courteous way, learn your lesson from the feedback you got, and move on with your activities…
Other questions you may face in your Brand Ambassador interview
- What would you do to attract potential customers during a promotional event where also other brands and their ambassadors are present?
- How would you define our USP? In which way do we stand out from our competitors?
- Tell us about the most successful and least successful promotional campaign you’ve ever run on social media.
- Where do you see the social media marketing heading in the future? What will be the no. 1 platform in five years from now?
- Tell me about a time when you showed initiative at work.
- Do you prefer to work independently, or on a team?
- What are your salary expectations? What payment model do you prefer?
* You can also download the list of questions in a one page long PDF, and practice your interview answers anytime later:
Conclusion, next steps
Interview for a job of a Brand Ambassador belongs to tricky interviews. It is not easy to predict the questions they will ask you, since it depends a lot on the type of contract you will sign with them, and also on your online status and fame.
If you are a personality for their target audience, or have half a million followers on your Instagram, the interview won’t be too difficult… They will pray to get your onboard, for a reasonable price.
On the contrary, applying for a more traditional brand ambassador format, when you will work with corporate social media accounts, and travel to events to promote their brand, you may face some tricky behavioral interview questions, just as I described in the article.
Try to prepare for both scenarios, and spend enough time analyzing the existing brand building efforts of your prospective employer. See where they are active, what they are doing, and try to find areas for improvement. You can only benefit from this knowledge in your upcoming job interview…
May also interest you:
- Social media manager interview questions – Not exactly the same job, but many areas overlap with brand ambassador, and so do the questions of the hiring managers. Check them out and avoid negative surprises.
- 15 most common interview questions – What are your goals? How would you describe an ideal boss? What are your major weaknesses? You can face such questions in any interview. Learn how to answer each one of them.
- Brand Manager interview questions.
