Social Influence Marketing is the New Frontier of Social Media

Social media platforms derive their revenues primarily from advertising. Savvy consumers and marketers have come to realize that those platforms present revenue opportunities not just for those platforms, but also for the vendors, consumers, and most importantly, for the people who influence purchase decisions. Rather than accept advertising and marketing at its face value, consumers now look to celebrities and other individuals who have gained substantial followings on social media, and they follow the recommendations and decisions made by those people. This new field of Social Influence Marketing is transforming social media as it becomes the new marketing frontier on every social media platform. At least six factors are pushing this transformation:

1. Social influence marketing is more powerful than traditional advertising. Consumers are more likely to pay attention to a trusted individual’s recommendations than they are to listen to a generic corporate advertising campaign. Social media allows consumers to develop direct connections with the people who make those recommendations. The entire marketing process is more direct and more personal with social influence marketing.

2. Social influence marketing is the hottest marketing trend. Google analytics has identified the phrase “influencer marketing” as a breakout keyword. Since 2013, searches for this phrase have increased by more than 5,000%.

3. Social influence marketing gives early adopters an arbitrage opportunity. “Arbitrage” is loosely defined as anything that creates value from price disparities for between two markets. Currently, social media and businesses in key industries (e.g. adult entertainment) have created thousands of potential influencers, but few marketers that are willing to jump into the social influence marketing arena. Smart marketers can get influencers under contract now and can reap the benefits of their early entree into the social influence arena as influencer value increases over the next several years.

4. Consumers ignore traditional marketing and advertising. The data warehouses at the large search engine and social media firms have developed sophisticated algorithms that allow vendors to target their marketing as a function of internet searches and social media posts, but a large majority of targeted ads are consistently ignored. Many pay-per-click applications complain that consumers spend ten seconds or less after clicking on their web ads. By contrast, a social influencer’s recommendations can generate real attention by consumers, who spend substantially more time on webs sites and products that are endorsed, either directly or indirectly, by social influencers.

5. Social Influence marketing is SEO friendly. Marketers devote inordinate amounts of resources to get their products and web sites to the top of search engine results. A social influence marketer who recommends or endorses a product creates a natural SEO opportunity with the product’s name and trademark. Many social media posts by followers of an influencer include product references. In the SEO world, natural posts by followers have greater value for SEO purposes.

6. Social influence marketing is easily tracked. Marketers and advertisers are typically left guessing about the value and return on their investments in marketing strategies. Social influence marketing and its results are easily stored and analyzed, which gives marketers reams of data that can be analyzed in real time to test the effectiveness of a social influence campaign.

Social influence marketing has gained traction with countless small companies that have adopted social influence strategies to transform their products into the signal that stands out from the noise in the crowded marketing world. Dapper Goat’s social media and marketing services can help every company, regardless of size or industry, to establish a social influence marketing presence now, while the opportunities are at their greatest. Please contact us for more information on how we can help your company and its products to stand out from the crowd with social influence marketing.