If we were to look at some of the most entrusted pioneering brands and crack their recipe for being on the top, our minds would ponder about their extremely satisfied and loyal army of customers. For, in the long run, we as businesses understand, it takes a sound base of customers who happily invest their faith and commitment towards a brand for making it big. Thus, making it essentially crucial for growing brands to invest in their existing customers to develop them into their own brand influencers, who can be the voice of the brand and extend its reach multifold. In this article, we will refer and develop brand influencers as “Organic Influencers”
Curious? Who are these “Organic Influencers”?
Organic Influencers are people like you and me, in other words, consumers who are completely in love with a brand, its offering, its culture and are excited about promoting their products and services to new prospects organically. Such organic influencers started gaining traction with the Millennials kicking in and now with the generation Z, also known as the Zoomers, the organic influencers are increasingly attracting popularity. Well you might be able to understand the reasons for the sudden rise! We consumers today are not convinced by paid user generated content. What lures us the most are authenticity and reliability and hence we pay more heed to experiences & reviews of people who are close and known to us. As a result, we are bound to trust brand advocates over anybody else in the social media realm today.
Though there are numerous reasons for organic influencers to be essential to businesses, the facts creating their vitality are significant changes in the business environment. Gradual changes from generation to generation has caused the entire business ecosystem to evolve. Beginning from Millennials, to Zoomers at the present and upcoming Alpha generation, consumer behaviour has developed and fundamentally impacted the business dynamics and operations. Not to miss, the evolution of the digital landscape has become an additional battle ground wherein every brand is fighting for survival. Not only this, when existing brands are struggling to retain their share of markets, there are equal new players trying to enter the market and gain their share. Thus, with this volume of competition and changed dynamics, the only key aspects that can save any brand from losing are its customer’s loyalty and willingness to adapt to the change. The sooner a brand adapts and wins the trust and confidence of its customer the sooner will it be able to turn them into brand advocates and preserve and grow their market.
That’s because, the behavior of the new generation is unlike the precedent one, they are digital natives, advanced in social networking, mobility and multiple realities, “Communaholic”, dialoguers, ethical, and unique and say the same mckinsey.com . Understanding and adopting the new zoomers attributes, can provide brands with multiple opportunities to rebuild their capabilities. Zoomers have evolved out of the existing customer sets given their strong loyalty, ethics and belief towards a brand. They act as silent brand advocates preaching and promoting a brand’s products in their circle and reachable communities and networks.
In comparison where “organic influencers” are becoming more popular, (example 92% of the online customers trust recommendations from their social circle as per salesforce), paid influencers such as paid influencers (macro, micro, celebrities….) are fading away due to lack of credibility and genuine usage and love for the product or services which is quite expensive and have very small returns.
You might have received a slight idea of how “Organic influencers” act as boosters for businesses. Let us dive deeper and understand the reasons for their emerging importance and how to utilize their potential to the optimum level:
Genuine Reviews and Feedback: Promotions by brand influencers are entirely organic and hence are deemed to way more genuine and honest than any other paid marketing source. Thus, potential customers would have more propensity to try a product out and turn into regular customers.
Low investment Cost: Brand influencers are shaped out of the existing customers since they are fans of a brand and its promising products. A brand ideally invests in them by nurturing their customer relationships and providing superior products and services to turn them into loyal customers. They are rewarded by loyalty rewards such as points, discount coupons, new products, cash back…. There are no additional costs incurred by any business for any publicity caused by brand influencers. Hence, they are real-time assets.
Increases Brand Visibility and Reach: Brand influencers enhance the visibility of a brand and its values naturally. They easily spread out a brand’s message with little effort and great impact.
More and more brands are moving toward building more in-depth engagement programs with communities real-time in the hope that they will be able to tame this new generation and transform them into their loyalist
Studies also shown that investing in resources in building brand influencers promotes retention and enhances profits from 25% to 95% as per a report by Harvard Business School.
The above points must have unlocked the potential of brand influencers to you. These are motivating benefits for businesses to increasingly focus on associating with their existing customers to develop future brand advocates. While businesses brainstorm a great deal on creating brand influencers, it is advisable to collaborate with community expert platforms like Cohora to help businesses manage, run and grow their customers’ communities at ease. Cohora helps businesses to engage & reward their brand advocates to build loyal communities and authentic meaningful content that delivers real ROI and builds strong customer and brand relationships using personalized loyalty and engagement initiatives. Thus, creating a loyal customer base for brands in the long term who shall be Brand influencers of their own in their communities attracting potential customers regularly.