Evolving From Influencer Marketing to Word-of-Mouth Commerce

As pressures mount for consumer brands to grow efficiently in 2024, marketing leaders are shifting their channel mix toward a source of unmatched returns: letting consumers themselves (and people they trust) do the selling. While influencer strategies hinged largely on celebrity spokespeople and social media stars in recent years, today’s leading retail and ecommerce brands are leaning more heavily on niche creators and social proof influencers: users your customers know, see themselves in, and trust with their dollars. To that end, influencer marketing has evolved to include “word-of-mouth commerce” — a social-proof content category coined by Aspire, reflecting the expansion of UGC, affiliate, and ambassador marketing.

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With an average return of $5.78 for every dollar spent, influencer marketing has risen to a top 3 strategy and a possible antidote to the phaseout of third-party cookies, rising content costs, and dwindling returns of conventional advertising tactics. In 2024, nearly 9 in 10 marketing leaders plan to spend on influencer campaigns, with some devoting nearly half of their entire marketing budget to influencer marketing. In this webinar, you’ll learn why and how marketing executives at Tula Beauty, Amazon Prime Video and more prioritize influencer marketing over other strategies — and how your own brand can fuel word-of-mouth at scale.