What is a brand champion?

A ‘brand champion’ is essentially someone who is responsible for promoting a brand. A brand champion doesn’t just have to be one person.

Types of brand champions

• Business owner,
• Marketing manager,
• PR officer, or
• Social media influencer.

In this article, we’ll look at how these different people can become brand champions.

The brand champion business owner

More than anything, a business owner – especially a small business owner – fits the description of a brand champion. He or she – nine times out of ten – will have started the business in question. Thus, they will do anything that they possibly can to make the business succeed. As such, they will use all their connections to make sure that the brand is promoted as far as their networks allow them to.

The marketing manager

The marketing manager is someone who is hired by the business in order to help promote the brand.  First of all, they will devise a brand and marketing strategy. This is a roadmap of how they feel that it will be best for the brand to be promoted.

This strategy will look at, for example:

• What are the business objectives?
• What are the brand values?
• Who is the business’ target market?
• What is the buyer persona?
• What channels are to be used for marketing the business?

The PR officer as brand champion

The PR officer is someone in the business who is responsible for developing and promoting the company’s reputation out in  the media. His or her job will be two-fold:

• They will be responsible for developing relationships with the media and maintaining these so that these media houses will be more likely to publish the press and media releases that the company distributes.
• Secondly, the PR officer is responsible for putting together the articles that will be distributed in the media. If this employee doesn’t have capacity to do this, he or she will most likely outsource this function to a freelance writer.

Social Media Influencer

Social media influencers, as a profession, are quite new to the digital marketing scene. As such, they are struggling to gain recognition as professionals and not just hobbyists who like to play around with social media.

However, a professional social media influencer is exceptional at their job. Their mandate is to get as much engagement as they can for a particular brand or event on social media. As such, before the event, they will meet with the marketing manager and entire brand team to find out:

• What the brand is promoting
• What the value of this event/product is
• Why people would benefit from this product

They will then use their particular networks and promote the brand.

What marketing managers need to know, when selecting social media influencers, is that they need to be very careful about choosing an influencer who is in keeping with their particular brand. For example, if you’re a make-up brand – and are trying to promote a new shade of lipstick – don’t choose an influencer who is particular influential on the food scene. Because no matter how much they promote your lipstick, you won’t get any traction.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

For your brand to fly, you need brand champions. As can be seen from this article, these can be all sorts of people so if one doesn’t work for you, you can choose another. It’s a brand manager’s responsibility to make sure that a business has the right fit of brand champion. However, only qualified, and highly skilled brand manager – with an accredited brand management qualification – will be able to do this. The Digital School of Marketing’s Brand Management Course is just such a qualification. For more information, visit our website.