In business, you don't get what you deserve... you get what you negotiate. How many times do we go to the movie theater or a restaurant or even buy a book without hearing about it from anyone – known, unknown? Probably once in ten times – which is far lower a percentage when it comes to going for a Shahrukh Khan or Angelina Jolie Movie or Harry Potter or Twilight Series. Similarly, sales hike can be noticed when endorser changes from June Lindsay to Brad Pitt (btw, who is June Lindsay? And are they even worth comparing??). This could be attributed to the fact that consumers normally trust a person they know, are fond of or someone who is not related to that particular product’s manufacturing, rather than believing you or me!
We are constantly inundated by the promotional marketing messages on cell phones, e-mails, and anywhere and everywhere possible. I have christened these messages as ‘Irritatingly Interruptive Messages’ (IIMs) because they irritate me (and every common man, I believe) by interrupting at busy and wee hours of the day. And to top it all, I am denied the access to the important article I want to read on-line, unless I click the ‘accept’ button to read some arbitrary endorsement. People no more entertain such promotional messages any more – thanks to IIMs! So, to emphasis on marketing today, the message needs to be endorsed authentically and by REAL people, preferably, the customers or the trusted third party experts. Something like Dove (Soap) started practicing quite some time back and so followed Harpic and Vanish.
The most decisive task here, in endorsement marketing is to get people to talk about the product. Half of the task becomes easy if the product speaks for itself. It needs to be made sure that the people talk about the product – no matter good or bad, because as they say “Bad publicity is also a Good publicity”. So to facilitate and fuel the talks about the product, initiative can be taken to loop in the best of the existing customers by taking their opinion, suggestions and making them feel as the part of the company. Something like Apple do by making it s customers a part of MacWorld, San Francisco in January.
The four A-zones of the Endorsement Marketing funnel are:
Awareness – Endorsement is the best paraphernalia for creating awareness.
Acquisition – Endorsements increase the share or percentage of acquisition by converting customer’s other acquisition efforts more effective.
Activation – Endorsements inspire people for activation of their products.
Activity – Endorsements inspire existing users.
Endorsements high-speed the sales and give credibility to the product. And the bona fide success is the resultant of exponential growth which in turn is the consequence of endorsement marketing, which is the viral marketing with just some nuances. While viral marketing is simply a conception of something growing on its own and growing exponentially, it is imperative to discern the derivative responsible for this virus. And this, friends, is ENDORSEMENT MARKETING!
