Zackary Cantor, director, decision sciences at GlobalWide Media highlights how advertisers will be moving away from celebrity endorsements and focusing on everyday influencers when it comes to promoting their products.
One thing that’s constant in today’s ever-changing marketing landscape is that consumers rely on trusted family and friends to help them make purchase decisions. In fact, word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing drives $6 trillion in annual consumer spending and accounts for an estimated 13 percent of consumer sales, according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.
2018 will be the year of the influencer, but not the high-profile celebrities you might be thinking about. We predict that brand marketers will move away from celebrity endorsements and focus on everyday influencers – the people who influence daily decisions of individual consumers. That means digital advertisers will focus on parents, friends, neighbors and co-workers in the customer acquisition cycle. In order to do this, marketers can use rich data including past purchase behavior, geo-location, shared social connections, and more.
Here are three tactics to get people talking about products and brands in 2018:
1. Include family in the conversation: Include family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues and other everyday influencers. Consumers have a deeper connection with authentic influencers whom they trust; those who have a similar social status and understanding of their needs.
2. Layer on the social data: Marketers need to know who is talking about their brands and how they are connected to key targets.The more data available to analyze, the more precise and intentional marketers can be with their dollars.
3. Build brand advocacy: Along with offering a product that satisfies customers, take it a step further and share relevant content to turn your customers into loyalists.”