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Trust is a valuable commodity — hard to build with customers and all too often easy to lose. Unfortunately, advertisers have lost that trust. According to a recent Edelman study, more than 70% of consumers completely avoid advertising. So what are they doing instead? Consumers want security, so they are making purchasing decisions by seeking out trusted sources of information.
Trust, these days, lives in the referrals from friends, product reviews from influencers or a fellow customer’s opinion on a review site. Today’s purchasing decisions are informed by a community — and advertising is no longer an integral part of the consumer’s community like it was in the Mad Men heyday. So, how do businesses reach consumers in this new community-based ecosystem? By earning their trust through authenticity.
The Key To Reaching The Community
To become a part of the consumer’s community, businesses need to connect with consumers how and where they want to be reached, and create a new experience that engages the target audience authentically. To foster an authentic connection, brands can develop strategic and diverse partnerships with influencers, other businesses and even media networks.
How do you reach these communities? Below are a few partnership strategies that, when executed properly, can provide an authentic experience for your audience and drive new growth opportunities.
Influencers
The most prolific partnerships we’ve seen as of late are influencers. You may only think of influencers as celebrities or those with a big audience, but a successful influencer partnership strategy is much more nuanced than vanity metrics. While you might believe that making a huge splash with a cultural icon can generate massive impressions, it still feels like an advertisement, especially when lined up next to all the other brand deals they’re endorsing. This is why micro-influencers are so valuable.
Who are micro-influencers? They are influencers with a somewhat smaller but highly dedicated set of followers. The relationships that micro-influencers have with their communities are so strong that they are beholden to protecting their audience’s trust. It’s pure gold for them. As a result, you must deliver content that resonates with that audience.
Successful micro-influencers grow organic, trusting audiences by featuring only products that they truly use in their day-to-day lives and that add value to their audiences’ lifestyles.
But even the idea that influencers are just about posts and stories needs to shift. Some of the most exciting and engaging influencer work today happens in podcasts. In the same way that editorial content creators embed brand mentions or recommendations into their work, podcast influencers can natively integrate promotional content into their episodes, imbuing a brand’s message with the same tone, originality and accessibility that drew audiences initially.
Creating an authentic connection with an influencer’s audience means giving influencers creative control. Allowing creative freedom not only creates a better relationship with their audience, but also improves the brand partnership.
Business-To-Business Partnerships
When brands partner, they can engage a shared audience and provide a wider breadth of capabilities and experiences. Take, for example, Ticketmaster and Spotify. Both are industry leaders in their own right, and they’ve entered a partnership to create a seamless experience for users and to drive ticket sales.
In the Spotify app, listeners can discover an upcoming concert in a nearby location. Through an integration with Ticketmaster, it offers an easy tap-to-purchase native experience within the Spotify app. By offering true value to the listener, this partnership provides an opportunity to explore and expand their listening session to a social and cultural experience.
When brands partner, the first thought needs to be: What experience will “our” consumer have? Will it feel like a natural progression in the chain of events that solves a problem, informs or delights the audience? Once again, trust and authenticity need to stay central to the consumer experience.
Referral And Affiliate Programs
Referral and affiliate programs have been around since the dawn of the internet. Affiliate programs have redefined marketing strategies, ushering in the digital marketing era.
Affiliate programs have evolved from the humble days of scattered coupons and cashback promotion. Today’s programs have reached a critical level of both scale and potential for personalization. And this personalization has served to build trust between the affiliate site and its loyal clients.
For example, many loyalty programs provide their members with recommendations of new brands to shop with, based on past consumer purchases. And in return, members consider the loyalty site the first stop to discover new brands with great offers (new products, discounts, points, tiering and VIP programs) in exchange for conversions. Added bonus: Loyal customers love to talk about their positive experiences, and this word-of-mouth “marketing” is third-party validation in its best form.
The Power Of Community, Authenticity And Growth
Authentic content meets customers where they are and is delivered by someone they trust. And the truth is, when you engage consumers in an organic way, you can create new growth opportunities. Prioritize authenticity, and you can reinvigorate consumer relationships and foster a stronger connection.
