Influencer marketing has been a buzz word for the last few years. It is a highly attractive marketing tactic, leveraging the social influence of high-visibility opinion leaders to spread words about products and persuade consumers. This is similar to the long tradition of celebrity endorsement, but with the added intimacy of social interactions and the approachability of “I could be her too”. Major brands such as Motorola and American Express have successfully engaged in influencer marketing. In this article, I would like to discuss recent shifts in the influencer marketing landscape and where I see influencer marketing to be heading.
Recent News about Influencer Marketing
Two pieces of news broke recently that may have long-term impact on influencer marketing. In one, several brands’ CMOs spoke against influencers at Cannes this year. The criticisms raised included inflated follower numbers and lack of brand authenticity in some cases.
Separately, Girl Up, a United Nations Foundation organization, surveyed Gen Z women aged 14 to 19 in seven countries. The survey found that Gen Z women are less affected by influencers. They are aware of the financial incentives offered to influencers and as a result some of them may not trust these influencers. Instead, Gen Z women are more driven by brands’ stance on socially important issues and by brand authenticity.
Do these developments indicate the end of an influencer marketing golden era? Will influencer marketing become passé? In my opinion, influencer marketing will continue to be part of the marketing toolbox. However, I believe there will be several significant changes in the influencer marketing landscape.
Prediction #1: The Rising Power of the Average Joe/Jane
As newer generations of consumers become wary of mass influencers, brands will need to rely more on the average Joes and Janes among their customers. These customers have actually experienced the brand and will bring more authenticity to their word-of-mouth. Supporting this idea, both Samsung and eBay CMOs mentioned at Cannes the desire to shift their focus to the business’s actual customers.
One concern with relying on average customers is whether they can generate the same reach as mass influencers. Fortunately, even without superpowers, average Janes and Joes can still get the message pretty far and wide. Although the message from these customers may only get to a smaller number of people at first, the amplification effect through social networks can still lead to a large mass. If one person tells ten people, and each of those ten people tell ten new people, the total reach after 10 rounds will be an astounding 1 billion. Of course the number in reality is generally much lower because you and I may share some common people between our respective networks. My own research shows that a moderately diverse group of people are best for maximum message reach.
The implication from the rising power of average customers is that brands need to see each consumer as more than a single consumer. It is no longer simply a brand-customer dyad. Instead, brands need to be conscientious of the consumer’s network of social connections. To use an analogy, when you marry someone, you are also marrying his or her entire family. I suspect this ability to deal with circles of customers will be crucial to competitive advantage once the current efforts at improving individual customer experience maxes out in its potential. The best brand loyalty will be brand loyalty shared with friends.
Prediction #2: A Customized Influencer for You
Information propagation and influence in a social network is a complex science. When our understanding of social networks is more limited, it is natural to select people with lots of connections in a social network to help spread information. But thanks to increased computing power and advancements in big data and artificial intelligence, our ability to analyze social networks is improving in leaps and bounds. With this improved ability, the ideal path of social influence will become more sophisticated.
Into the future, influencer marketing will no longer rely on a few key opinion leaders to influence the marketplace. Instead, you and I will have our own best influencers, much like how mass marketing transitioned into personalized marketing at the advent of the Internet. Sophisticated analyses will reveal the path to reach you, which may be quite different from the path to reach me, for even the exact same product.
Obviously this will raise new privacy concerns. I don’t see a clear answer to this. But I suspect the generations born and raised with Facebook and iPhones will be much more comfortable with sharing than earlier generations. The key will be to provide sufficient benefits for them to be willing to share.
Prediction #3: Combining accessibility with social influence
In the future, mass influencers (and traditional advertising) will mainly be used to increase brand accessibility in people’s mind. What does brand accessibility mean? Think to yourself the times when others have asked you product advice, such as what brand washer to buy or what roofer to use. Most of the time, your answers are dictated simply by what you know instead of by who is truly the best. Unless you are an expert, most of the time you may only have one or two brands or service providers salient in your mind. You may have used them before, and they performed reasonably well. So when asked, those brands naturally come to mind and become the brands you recommend. Those brands are the more accessible brands in our mind.
Indeed, academic research shows that ongoing, sustained word-of-mouth about brands is mainly driven by accessibility of the brand, not because of how interesting something is. When we are frequently reminded of a brand because of frequent exposure through usage, advertising or influencers, the brand’s accessibility increases, and it becomes much more likely to be mentioned by us when making recommendations.
This is where the mass reach of opinion leaders and traditional advertising will likely play a role in the future. They will not persuade us what to buy. But they will remind us of the brand and increase the accessibility of the brand in our mind. This is then amplified by our voice to our friends, where the final step of persuasion happens.
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In this article, I shared with you what I see through the crystal ball of influencer marketing. What do you think will happen? Do you agree with these predictions? I would love to hear from you. Please leave your comments or contact me directly with questions or thoughts.