A few days back, I decided to check out this newly-opened restaurant in Bangalore that I’d been hearing about from friends. As I sat there, enjoying my breakfast, the restaurant owner walked up to me and started telling me about the restaurant.
He showed me around the whole restaurant, told me about a few of their special dishes, and also gave me a 25% discount coupon for my next visit.It was a great experience!
I instantly made a Facebook check-in into the restaurant, posted a picture, and mentioned my experience. Friends liked, commented and asked for more details.
I shared the experience with my roommates, colleagues and a few other friends. A lot of them made plans to visit the place the following weekend itself.
Suddenly, the ‘fairly new to town’ restaurant was on the visiting list of at least 100 more people now. This is my personal experience, how this influencer marketing works.
Did You Realize the Incredible Power of Peer-To-Peer Influence at Play Here?
This incident led me to realize the superiority of peer-to-peer influence over advertisements and other forms of promotions. No ad blocker can hamper the kind of impact it makes as it is direct communication between your current and prospective customers.
“Nothing sells like a celebrity” – The New York Times declared in a 2008 article. Almost a decade later, Celebrity endorsements don’t pack the same punch they used to.
As trendsetting as they are, celebrities can’t persuade people that they like the products they endorse. That’s why their ads are being replaced by content created by real-world social influencers commanding niche expertise.
But even influencers can’t foster personal connections with your brand like a friend or family member. A recommendation from a person who can relate to is the ascendancy of personalized, genuine marketing.
That said, forward-thinking brands are embracing Peer-To-Peer Influencer Marketing and the hyperlocal retail sector is not spared from its impact either.
Earlier, influencer marketing used to be considered useful only for global B2C brands but here we give you 4 Reasons which assure the relevance of Peer-To-Peer Influencer marketing for hyperlocal businesses in India.
1. Authenticity
Peer-To-Peer influencer marketing is perceived as one of the most authentic marketing channels by the audience. No one has a script or makes an exaggerated video when they recommend a product to a friend.
It’s just a normal conversation and that’s the beauty of it. Influencers who use the product to augment their everyday lives can add that much sought-after attribute of credibility that no other source can, when compared with other regions influencer marketing plays more authenticity in India.
2. Relatability
Be it an outfit worth Rs. 2000 or an electronic device costing up to Rs. 20,000, we tend to trust the recommendations of the people we can relate to because they know our lives better than any celebrity does.
Also, when a friend recommends a product or shares a referral, they can have a conversation about it more easily than a celebrity.
3. Cost-Effectiveness
Since the cost to convert your happy customer into an influencer is substantially less expensive than a TV advertisement or hiring a celebrity, brands can benefit more by spending less.
You can effectively incorporate your brand loyalists into your marketing strategy. Influencer marketing is cheaper and more cost-effective in India.
4. Highly Targeted
For hyper-local retail, the ultimate aim is to bring footfalls into the stores. Marketing to a broad audience might raise awareness, but if you are using the customers to promote your newly opened boutique in a particular city, nothing works better than Peer-To-Peer Influence.
Targeting your brand loyalists leads to targeting the audience most likely to be interested in your brand.
A wave of such findings of word-of-mouth recommendations and peer influence has given rise to retailers partnering with people who can sway buying decisions and product preferences.
Real Life Instance to Understand Peer to Peer Marketing
Urban Degree, a South African clothing retailer, recognized this booming trend among customers sending dressing room selfies to friends, looking for advice on which outfits to purchase.
Latching onto this existing user behavior, Urban Degree’s two-week #urbanselfie promotion gave $10 and $20 coupons to users who posted their dressing room selfies to the brand’s Facebook page with quirky captions.
The brand has an almost exclusively millennial audience, so with an average of 319 friends each, those users’ #urbanselfies reached more than 34,000 like-minded shoppers.
Read more about; How To pitch Millennials via Influencer Marketing
This is one of the greatest examples of the different strategies retailers can use to make the best possible use of Peer-To-Peer influence. In the next edition, we will tell you different innovative ways to incorporate Peer-To-Peer influence into your marketing strategy and make a wow!
For your Hyper – Local Retail Industry Influencer marketing campaigns, Reach Qoruz – Influencer marketing platform.
Innovative Ways to Incorporate Peer to Peer Marketing Strategy
The rise of peer to peer marketing is one of the most important trends in the business world. It has been widely accepted that this trend will continue to grow and it is a good time to start using this technology.
Peer to peer marketing can have a number of benefits for businesses, such as increased reach and recruitment efforts. However, there are a few key considerations that businesses must take into account when implementing peer to peer marketing.
First and foremost, businesses should make sure that they are aware of the risks associated with peer to peer marketing. Risks include data misuse and cybercrime.
In addition, businesses should ensure that they have appropriate security protocols in place in order to protect their data and users.
Finally, businesses should carefully consider how they will communicate with their users when engaging in peer to peer marketing.
As discussed above, here are a few marketing strategies that you can rely on to gather organic traffic via peer to peer marketing.
1. Build And Nurture Loyalty First
Start early to build trust and nurturing this loyalty at the appropriate time, i.e. after the initial sign-up or after a contract is renewed.
If your client is bringing you regular business, this is the perfect time to provide them with additional benefits for recommending your company to their personal networks of contacts.
Make your marketing more human. Concentrate on the relationship you have with your customer. Engage with emotions and incorporate this in your messages.
You could be making videos or sharing stories of your emotions. Try everything you can to make connections with people on an individual level.
The importance of building relationships is paramount. The new business you start will come via an existing client or through an existing relationship.
Make sure you are honest with your clients and colleagues, focus on being honest and getting the job completed, and you’ll receive the recommendations and develop the relationships you require.
2. Have A Clear, Consistent Message
The most important aspect of peer-to-peer marketing is having a clearly defined message. Let’s be honest here, all the effort of peer to peer marketing strategy is to ensure your target audience uses your product or service and speak about it.
To make this happen you must have a call to action added to your message. Your product users are your walking advertisements and assisting them with the clear and consistent message is vital.
Having a consistent call to action would give your target audience the push in trying your products and also talking about them.
If you’re wondering what’s the connection between clear, consistent message and a call to action, here’s what you need to know:
Your target audience are the ones who would require your product or service. They just visit your site or buy your product then what? It might end up right there.
They might just use the benefit of your product and career on with their lives, afterall that’s what they signed up for, right?
Your call to action, (i.e.) you being specific about what you want them to do is the magic key here.
If you’d like them to drop in a review or go ahead and read more about the services provided by you, be it anything your peer to peer marketing has to ensure that message is conveyed.
3. Balance Your Outreach
Sometimes, offering an article that contains useful information or introducing a resource that can aid the client will benefit you in the longer term. Don’t always anticipate a response. Try balancing your outreach program.
Referral rewards can be a fantastic method of turning satisfied customers into ambassadors for your business. However, you can begin by giving a small reward or discount when a client is referred to you by someone else.
Although consumers do not trust influencer marketing since they know that influencers receive commissions but the same principles don’t have an effect on their peers.
Even if you provide credit to your account or free goods as a reward for the referral of a friend, your client’s status as a peer or friend could be enough to influence the person who was referred to purchase.
It’s true that you don’t simply recommend an item to friends or family members in exchange for a discount, particularly in the event that the product isn’t working for you.
However, by recommending other customers, you are giving you a vote which makes it easier for others to agree to the referral and purchase.
Carrying out such outreach via social media or data-driven sites is the best way to track your ROI.
This will help establish the relationship that is essential to P2P marketing.
4. Make Target Customers Your Evangelists
One of the best types of peer-to-peer marketing is to get your current customers to become advocates for your company.
Ofcourse, with all the above mentioned strategies your target customers turn out to be your evangelists. But, remembering that your peer to peer marketing goal is to drive other customers is essential.
Any strategy you propose or plan to implement needs to have this point as its goal.
Your target customers are aware of your product and are able to influence their circle of friends to purchase.
Utilize customer lists and/or social listening to identify your customer’s advocates. Follow this and results will follow.
This method/goal is an effective way to enhance hyper-local retail businesses. An e-commerce website given the reputation and authority multiple customers would drive in without asking.
But for a hyper-local or small business to thrive, getting a hold of the customers and turning them to be your peer marketing advocates is an effective and promising strategy to try.
5. Prepare Questionnaires to Know The Issue
Knowing how your customers think about your product is crucial in boosting peer-to-peer marketing.
While you could conduct traditional surveys with a variety of questions, it is possible to capture your customers’ opinions through the standard question:
“On the scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends?”
(P.S. This isn’t the only question, think out of box to make your target customers answer.)
Once you have a clear idea of questionnaire results you can begin implementing strategies to improve it and discover what hinders clients from sharing your company or products to friends.
Takeaway
Peer to peer marketing is a great way to increase your business, but it is also very time consuming.
The process of getting customers to come back for more, or even recommending products or services, can be very difficult and time-consuming.
If you are a marketer and want to start earning money from it, then you should try the above mentioned strategies for peer to peer marketing. They will help you in getting customers automatically by letting them know about your products and services, which they may have never heard of before.
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