With this in the armoury, most marketers feel they know exactly who they are targeting and that they get to deliver their individual brand messages to the exact audience they intend to.

Does the medium or platform used by marketers actually deliver the brand message?

It probably does, but as you can ask the local kindergarten teacher if you don’t have the attention of the kids in the classroom, story hour becomes quite a frustrating time of the day and just doesn’t work.

The opposite is also true. if you can capture their undivided attention, you have the ability to take them on the most amazing journey filled with adventure where dragons exist, the prince still saves the princess, and the impossible is still possible.

Brands, services, and businesses all have fantastic stories to tell, great heritage, and unbelievable USP’s to share, but in today’s incredibly cluttered and fragmented media world, it’s become increasingly more difficult to deliver these beautifully crafted messages.

How do you grab their attention?

The world of influencers and the positive impact they have on brands is evolving fast. Yet, in today’s day and age, many marketers still believe an influencer strategy is someone like Rihanna calling out your brand in her latest single. Yes, that could most definitely be a solid part of an influencer strategy – if that fits into your brand’s adventure. The amazing thing about influencer media and the evolution of this communications format is the fact that it’s taken us back to the simplest form of communication; the one-on-one conversation – the personal connection.

Just think about it, how many times you have been made aware of a brand, or even considered buying a brand, that you would never have considered if it wasn’t for a close friend recommending it? Why is this? It’s simple, you trusted the person. The fact that he or she personally recommended the brand, gave it the necessary credibility for you to be willing to go out and purchase it.

How do you take them along your adventure?

Mark Zuckerberg refers to the trusted referral as the 'Holy Grail' of advertising, and to be honest I am converted. To test this theory, I asked a bunch of friends about their purchase decision related to their golf clubs while spending some time at the 19th hole during a round of golf.

Not even one of the eight of us claimed that any advertising message or professional golfer playing with the set or brand they bought as the reason why they invested in their chosen clubs. It was absolutely amazing when each of them rattled off a story involving a close friend (including one of us at our 19th hole table) having shared some fantastic facts about the specific clubs, which was the main reason why they decided to buy the clubs they had in their bag. All of them could recall who they had the conversation with and what the specific USP’s were that appealed to them, and why this clinched the deal for them.

This conversation had an immense impact on me as this was a bunch of guys who all have access to the best bouquet of television, who all buy magazines, read the news, drive major roads to work, and listen to their favourite radio shows. Yet, all of them still claimed that a one-on-one conversation with a friend was the deal closer for an investment of at least R20 000. With eight of us at our table, this equated nearly R200 000 in golf clubs, which were acquired due to the advice of a friend or in other terms, due to the impact of a micro-influencer.

How do you get the message across?

In each instance, the individual golfer had given the person the time to take them on a brand journey where they played better, more enjoyable, golf, and, in some way, it made the impossible possible. No other form of branded communication had this impact on this consumer. No form of highly scientific targeting made a difference in effectively delivering the well-crafted messages; it was a simple conversation.

This made me realise that the one-on-one conversation between micro-influencers is by far the most powerful way for any brand to get a message across. These are messages delivered by true brand advocates with a level of passion that’s not easily matched.

The day of the micro-influencer has dawned and I can only imagine that increasingly more brands will start to use (or won’t have a choice to start making use of) these individuals to take people on their brand journey.

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