For many people trying to grow their customer base, the question of how to address social influences on the consumer can be daunting.
It is true that it is not easy: it requires dedication, serious thought and considerable research. Figuring out what factors and people are at play when it comes to social influences on the consumer will get easier the more you do it, but it’s always a challenging part of marketing.
Conventional marketing focuses primarily on reaching the consumer directly, but more sophisticated marketing methods focus less on the consumer themselves and more on the events or people that influence a buyer.
It’s called influencer marketing, a very important marketing medium that takes into account social influences or “consumer culture.” Knowing who influences a buyer is an important step in knowing what the right message is and how to do it.
For example, a car salesman who wants to sell a minivan to a father of four could take his wife to the side of the room and highlight its safety features and cargo capacity. That same salesperson can tell the friend of the young man kicking the tires of a sports car how impressive he will be with the ladies at the wheel of that car. The assumption here is that the husband in this scenario trusts his wife’s opinion; And the friend, the young man he brought, is with him to contribute his two cents too!
The difference between making a sale and letting the consumer walk out the door often comes down not to convincing the potential buyer, but to convincing the influencer. And sometimes ‘the influencer’ is not a person, but a trend or a matter of perspective.
In this case, determining the social influences that guide a particular consumer should be the top priority for those in the marketing world. So do your research!
