I remember when I was a kid and had to write 500-word book reports and how my favorite words became “very” and “really.” I would use those in conjunction with every adjective and adverb to help me reach my goal and allow me to return to watching “The Facts of Life” on TV.
If only the person who invented those words was paying me to use them…
Celebrities hawk products through a variety of channels. There are those who endorse via TV or radio commercials, those who make appearances at events sponsored or produced by a particular brand, and those who are paid to use a product in everyday life.
Then there are those who tweet. And get paid for it.
The explosion of Twitter has fueled a new kind of endorsement: sponsored tweets. A number of “influencers,” such as Kim Kardashian, charge as much as $10,000 per tweet when endorsing a product. With millions of followers, it’s not difficult to see that the money could be a sound investment for some advertisers.
That got me wondering whether auto lenders should offer financial incentives to customers who use their social networking circles to promote the lender’s products and services. The financial incentive could come in the form of cash rebates, discounts on future products, lower interest rates, or even skipped payments. I know people on Facebook who have more than 1,000 friends. I have more than 1,100 contacts on LinkedIn. Those are very wide spheres of influence. If an auto lender offered to let me skip a payment if I tweeted how much I like them, I’d probably do it. Wouldn’t you?
Peer-to-peer, or social, marketing, especially within the social networking framework, can be a powerful tool. And on a net-net basis, letting a borrower skip a $400 payment can be a very sound investment if they are promoting their auto lender to friends and family. According to a recent study, 90% of consumers trust brand recommendations from their friends. That is a very compelling number.
This is not a tool that borrowers should be allowed to use too often, to keep from damaging the brand with a never-ending stream of product endorsements from customers. But with the right frequency and the right kind of customer, it can be a very effective tool. Why else would people pay Kim Kardashian $10,000 for a 140-character tweet. (For those of you keeping score at home, that works out to $71 per character). Even the best writers don’t get paid that much.
Not that I’m really really really asking for a very very very big raise or anything.
