This is a great post by Andrew Waber of Salsify detailing how the buyer-journey is increasingly leading to niche brands and away from mass brands. It’s happening because we have more specific product needs and more of our searches start with Amazon and Google versus random TV advertising.

• Waber’s data shows this new buyer journey has consumers committing their dollars to brands that give them what’s important to them during the search process.
• What gets them to buy?  Photos/video (of the product), detailed information in bullet format, and LOTS of reviews by previous buyers to validate their decision.
• Traditional advertising (image and awareness) has been sidelined.

Is this how you shop? It describes me perfectly.

• I am a master decipherer of online reviews. I use them for almost everything – most recently for planning my Nordic trip ($12K for hotels very much influenced by reviews and photos about locations, fellow guests, the overall vibe).
• But I also rely on reviews for almost all products or brands that I’ve never purchased before, be it duct tape or sheets or specific airplane seats.
• In studying reviews, I start with the most favorable comments but get more out of the negative ones. Critical assessments, when intelligently written (as opposed to rants) are a vital part of my buyer journey.

Here are two key takeaways about the future of marketing that I got from Waber’s post:

• Product listings are the new brand marketing. It’s how we find products, and it’s what converts us into buyers.
• For brands, marketing is hand-to-hand combat. Brands are in survival mode particularly against competitors within important search terms.

 

Read on below for more on how Tesla (basically a non-advertised brand) is winning against far bigger and more established competitors using only social media. (Note: If this is of interest, make sure you watch the 11 minute Rappers and Roadsters video at the end of the post from Hyper Change.

 

WHY IS TESLA WINNING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA?

 

 

In 2016, Global Equities estimated that Tesla spent just $6 per car on advertising.

• The second lowest brand in the survey was Toyota at $246 per car, and the highest was Jaguar at over $3,000 per car.
• Tesla spends a fraction of the advertising dollars of its competition, yet it has a 500,000 unit backlog for a car nobody has even test driven.
• Tesla’s social media marketing machine is a huge asset.

 

Elon Musk is a master at getting free exposure.

• SpaceX’s launch of a Tesla Roadster into space drove a huge amount of free press Tesla’s way.
• According to Google Trends, the event generated the most search traffic for Tesla ever … with the exception of the Model 3 unveiling. And Tesla didn’t pay a cent for this.
• Celebrities, rappers, and rockets are just a few examples of pop culture doing the heavy lifting for Elon Musk’s electric vehicle empire.

 

The enthusiasm customers have for Tesla comes from several factors:

• They’re far more technologically advanced than anything else on the market (fancy door handles, app control, massive touchscreen, Autopilot, etc.).
• They look amazing
• They make a statement about sustainability
• Powerful word-of-mouth marketing as owners want to be seen in their Teslas, and want to tell their friends about them.
• These are lots of celebrities who drive Teslas: Morgan Freeman, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz, Matt Damon, Jay Leno, Steven Spielberg, Anthony Bourdain, Stephen Colbert.
• And now even the hip-hop crowd who have been holdouts with their Lamborghinis and Maybachs have moved on to Tesla. So Tesla is cool with all the top car influencers.
• Watch the 11-minute video at the very end of this post for more on this topic.
  

 

BOTTOM LINE: Traditional marketing is increasingly irrelevant now that we have the tools to look for exactly what we want. This is great news for startups and for companies with CEOs who are as social media savvy  as Elon Musk.

Over the next few years we will see a complete shakeout in advertising and we will continue to see big legacy brands outsource their new product development to outside entrepreneurs. Depending on how you look at it, a win-win all around. I anticipate we’ll see fewer “designed-by-committee,” crappy new products coming out of big companies. Startups will instead be tapped to do the heavy lifting on innovation and creativity. In turn, startups and founders will see more exit strategy opportunities which will keep the entrepreneurship engine humming.