We have lightly touched on Brand Reps in the past but we have never dedicated a full blog to it. We know that a lot of Tasmanian businesses who would benefit from using this in their marketing strategy and want to help you do it, so let’s dive right in!
Firstly, you may be wondering what a Brand Rep is? Well, we’re glad you asked! You know how great it is in business when you have raving fans who tell everyone about your wonderful products or service? Brand Reps are like word of mouth for the online world but in a much more organised and purpose-driven fashion.
Businesses all over the world now use Brand Reps as their main marketing strategy. The idea is that when you establish a team of Brand Reps, those people are raving about your business, and here’s the clincher… to an audience that already knows and trusts them! When you think of the word ‘Influencer’ it really explains itself, they are influencing the market to spend their money with a certain business, hopefully, yours!!
So to answer the question. Yes absolutely, Tassie businesses should use Brand Reps to grow their business and marketing reach. But, it’s important that you execute the strategy properly.
So why would your Tassie business benefit from having Brand Reps?

• Connect with more people within your target market
• Provided high-quality content to use on your own social media
• Connected with a broader audience
• Your business will be recommended by a reputable & trusted name in the online world
• Social proof
• Your brand is being recommended to your target audience
• You don’t have to build a trusting relationship with the customer, the brand rep has already established the relationship with their audience
• Quicker conversion rate
• Increased brand exposure
• Extend your reach further than Tasmania
• Tap into your target market in other locations around Australia
• Budget-friendly marketing strategy

We could keep listing the benefits all day… but you get the picture! You’re now probably asking, ‘Well how do I do it? I want to get started but have no idea what I’m supposed to do?’
Lucky for you, we’ve got a step by step guide below on finding brand reps, getting them started, and making sure you have success from your brand rep marketing strategy.
1. Establish Your GoalIf you don’t know why you’re doing it, how are you going to know if it worked or not? Businesses engage with brand reps for a variety of different reasons, but at the end of the day, it’s about getting sales right? But perhaps your main/goal focus is brand exposure, social proof, provided with high-quality content, leads, sales…
2. Know Your Target Market When you know your target market, you’ll be able to find the right Brand Reps for your business. Maybe you have handmade kids’ products? Connect with parent bloggers. Do you have a natural Tasmanian product for females? Connect with women who promote health and wellness. Do you sell Tasmanian Wine? Connect with foodies! When you find the right brand reps who connect with your brand, mission, and values, you know their audience will love your product too!
3. Determine Your Incentive As a business, you must have an incentive for why someone would want to rep for you, promote your product, and provide you with quality content. It may be a free one-off product/service offer, it may be an ongoing free product, it could be a huge discount code for your online store, and it’s always important to include a promo code for their followers for discounts on your products as well!
4. Connect With Brand RepsAs a Tasmanian Small Business just starting out with a Brand Rep Marketing Strategy, we recommend engaging in a relationship with Micro-Influencers/Brand Reps with between 5,000-50,000 followers.
You can go about this in two different ways. You might contact Brand Reps directly who you feel would be a great match for your business and discuss the opportunity to rep for you. These could be people who already engage and connect with you online who know and love your business! Or you might do a ‘brand rep search’! A brand rep search is kind of like a competition you would run on your social media, it might sound something like this:
BRAND REP SEARCH! Are you a lover of good food and wine? Do you especially love our Tasmanian cool climate products? We’re looking to grow our team of enthusiasts so we’re opening a Brand Rep Search! As a Brand Rep, you will receive free/discounted products, and exclusive tasting’s of new products. To enter, reshare this image on your feed and tag it with #<businessname>repsearch
The search will close on <date> and we will be searching the hashtag #<businessname>repsearchto find our team of wine lovers, so don’t forget to add it!!
5. Determine The ExpectationsIt’s important to have a clear idea of what your expectations are from the Brand Reps as well as what your obligations are to them. This way it can be communicated before the contract begins and everyone is absolutely clear on what the expectations are before they agree to come on board as a brand rep.
6. Compile A Contract & Have Each Brand Rep SignTo save any confusion or issues down the track with miscommunication, it’s important to have a contract in place. This is for both parties; to make sure your expectations are made clear, to ensure Brand Reps are aware of how you will use their content in the future, and to give your Brand Reps an opportunity to add any of their own terms. Things that are important to include in a contract are:

• When does the contract begin?
• How long is the contract?
• How often and how many times are they expected to post about your business during the contract?
• What sort of content are you wanting them to provide?
• What areas of your business would you like them to highlight?
• How will you use their images/content? Social media, website?
• Will you be making edits to their images such as filters, cropping or adding elements.
• Will you be using their images in paid advertising campaigns?
• Do you want the rights to continue using their images after the contract period?
• If the Brand Rep doesn’t follow through on their agreed obligations, will they be invoiced for the expense of your product?

A simple way of setting up a brand rep contract is to put together an online form. Have all the details of the contract included in there with an ‘agree or disagree’ button on each, as well as a section for the brand rep to ask any questions or add their own terms. This way you have physical evidence that they agreed to your terms. By setting up an online form, it’s easy to track who has filled it in and keep the data saved forever. If you need a hand setting up an online form, get in touch with us to find out how!
At What Point In My Business Do I Work With Brand Reps? A common question people often ask when we discuss a brand rep marketing strategy is ‘Is my business big enough to do that yet?’, ‘When should I start a Brand Rep Search?’ There’s no right or wrong time to begin your brand rep marketing strategy, as long as it’s tied in with your overall marketing strategy.

• You might have just launched your business and you want to grow your exposure quickly,
• You might be a well-established business and you feel like it’s the next step to grow your business,
• You might have a new service or product that you want heavily promoted online, or
• You might be thinking you want to start taking your marketing and content creation more seriously and want high-quality content to do so.

Why Might You Want to Use This Strategy For Your Business?If you’re a Tassie business who wants to sell more of their products to the mainland audience, you’re struggling to compile high-quality content for your marketing activities, you’ve just narrowed down on your target audience and now you want to engage with them, or you’re ready to take your business to the next level and grow your online sales, using a Brand Rep Marketing Strategy can be a great tool to do all of these things!
Running a business while keeping up with the digital/online world can be overwhelming, we get it! We do this stuff as a full-time job so we’re incredibly impressed when we see business owners running their business but also nailing their marketing strategy!
If you feel like your business is ready to take its next step in the online world but you’re unsure what the right step is, how to do it, or you simply don’t have a spare minute left in your day to take action on it, get in touch with us! We live and breathe this stuff and we love helping our Tassie Businesses excel with their marketing and grow their business more than they could imagine. We are available to chat online any day during the week, so don’t be shy and reach out, you never know how we might be able to help your business grow this year.
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