{"id":2984,"date":"2011-05-21T01:57:43","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T01:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=2984"},"modified":"2011-05-21T01:57:43","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T01:57:43","slug":"recommendations-are-the-new-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/recommendations-are-the-new-advertising\/","title":{"rendered":"Recommendations Are the New Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Visa gets it \u2013 that the marketing world has changed significantly, and even the big players need to change along with it.\u00a0 In fact, Visa\u2019s head of marketing, Antonio Lucia,\u00a0reported that Visa has increased their digital media investment<\/a> from about 11% to at least 36%.<\/p>\n

But Visa not just putting their\u00a0money<\/em> into digital media, they are also\u00a0changing their approach<\/em> to marketing<\/em>.\u00a0 Lucia said last month in his keynote at ad:tech San Francisco that Visa is now guided by three principles of social media, with one of them being \u201crecommendations are the new advertising.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t agree more!\u00a0 Consumers are overwhelmed by ads, and even if a brand does manage to get consumers\u2019 attention by traditional advertising, they have a huge trust hurdle to jump.\u00a0 So consumers are turning now to recommendations (Earned Media<\/a>) as their trusted information source.<\/p>\n

When someone wants to know what service provider to use, or which brand provides the most consistently-performing product at a price that meets their budget, where do they turn?\u00a0 Social media.\u00a0They ask their friends, relatives, and colleagues<\/a>\u2026 and even people they don\u2019t know, but still trust simply because they are part of their extended social network.\u00a0 The key being that another individual \u2013 not a brand promising perfection via one of its ads \u2014 recommended a service or product.<\/p>\n

Some marketers might see this shift away from traditional advertising as a negative shift, but I see it as a huge opportunity for marketers.\u00a0\u00a0 Recommendations are more likely to lead to action (a purchase or passing on the recommendation, for example) due to their interpersonal nature, and also because recommendations are often\u00a0requested with the intent to purchase<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Our job as marketers then needs to shift from creating the most eye-catching advertisement ever to facilitating and nurturing relationships that lead to these powerful recommendations. It\u2019s these relationships that create Brand Advocates \u2013 those people who are so delighted by our product\/service\/brand that they can\u2019t wait to tell their friends and their whole social networks about their experience.<\/p>\n

We need to make it EASY for Brand Advocates to make these brand-reinforcing recommendations. Give them the tools to interact with your brand so they can hear your consistent message, ask their questions, give you feedback, and then\u00a0pass your message on to their network<\/em>.\u00a0 Those recommendations will catch fire in ways that traditional advertising simply will not.<\/p>\n

Take a look at your marketing strategy \u2013 how many times does the word \u201crecommendations\u201d or \u201cBrand Advocates\u201d show up?\u00a0 I bet there is room for more!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ted Rubin<\/p>\n

Originally posted at <\/em><\/strong>ZuberRants<\/em><\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visa gets it \u2013 that the marketing world has changed significantly, and even the big players need to change along with it.\u00a0 In fact, Visa\u2019s head of marketing, Antonio Lucia,\u00a0reported that Visa has increased their digital media investment from about 11% to at least 36%. But Visa not just putting their\u00a0money into digital media, they … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[928,32,30,1239,1029,897,3,1240,1078],"class_list":["post-2984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-tedrubin","tag-brand-advocate","tag-marketing","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-budget","tag-social-media-marketing","tag-social-media-strategy","tag-ted-rubin","tag-traditional-vs-social-media-marketing","tag-zuberance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2984"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2989,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions\/2989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}