Stealth marketing is not affected by ad blocking apps.
In Russia, people are used to relying on the opinions of other people, not the opinions of professionals. Here, our habit of applying a turnip to a bruise because a neighbor said so, rather than going to a doctor, works. That's why hidden advertising is more trustworthy.
Unlike advertising that ends with the budget, reviews will live forever. And gradually, if you increase this mass monthly, there will be an effect of total presence. For example, wherever a girl who is interested in fitness goes (let's take advertising of sports goods as an example), she will see mentions of the brand and stories of other girls about what a cool product it is. This creates a feeling of a really good product that is worth paying attention to.
Cons
It's hard to count
For marketers, the main disadvantage is the impossibility of calculating the effectiveness of such advertising. If with classic advertising we can put special marks on links and use them to track the work of advertising japan mobile phone numbers database channels (which works better, right down to the ad), then in hidden marketing we can only see the sources from which people come to the site.
Requires a fine-tuned approach
There are exchanges on the Internet where you can order cheap reviews. But in fact, they are all written very crudely and from profiles that barely resemble real people. Competent hidden advertising should be indistinguishable from reality.
And in this case, real stories, details, situations are needed. And the profiles that leave such reviews should be almost real. For example, if we write on behalf of a "mom", then the topics of her discussion should be close to the topic of the review - children, motherhood, etc.
In addition, our "mom " should also simply communicate on the forum, and not just advertise something. We have special people who "herd bots" - they regularly open profiles, communicate on their behalf, and imitate activity.
A separate difficulty is in execution. In addition to minor errors and typos, incorrect spelling of the name, there are still a lot of nuances. We have now decided to approach this completely scientifically and conduct experiments - we put forward hypotheses, test them and then implement them if they are confirmed.
For example, which reviews do people trust more — those with more detail or those that are superficial? To do this, we take real reviews, mix them with ours, and survey people. I'll be writing more about these experiments soon.
In our hypotheses we are guided by personal observations and books by classics of manipulation and lies.
Types of hidden advertising
Reviews and comments
Review "independent" articles and blog posts
Referral Marketing
Gossip
Personal "instructions" for use
I'll describe it briefly.
Reviews and comments are a classic of the genre. What is important here is a fine-tuned approach, competent execution and the right choice of platforms.
Review articles — we come up with a hero from the target audience of the product. For example, we advertise a service for online stores (an example of our real case). We create a portrait of a classic buyer — this is necessary so that he inspires trust in the target audience. He should be the same store owner, with the same “pains” and business problems. And on behalf of such a hero, we create a rating review of services.
What is important here? You can't openly criticize your competitors, it's unethical and unhygienic. That's why we take our main advantages and make a review in such a way as to highlight them - we focus on these advantages. But we do it in a very measured way, so that people can figure it out themselves.
The main effect of this approach is that people should think that they have figured it out and drawn conclusions themselves.
We make the article thoroughly - with tables, comparison charts. It turns out to be useful material that people distribute and recommend. And then, for money, we place this article on a platform where the audience of online store owners is located.
When posting, please write that the article was sent to the editors and they found it very interesting.
We could have saved some money and tried to post it for free. But we decided not to take the risk.
Part of the material with graphs was placed in a slideshare. And since the material inspires confidence, the link to the article and slideshare was also left in the "hidden marketing " dialogues, in the discussion of services and allegedly from the owners of online stores.
People believed.
Referral marketing is very popular on Instagram. When someone recommends someone. For example, "Girls, I found a cool diet cake, here ...".
Nowadays, this type of marketing has discredited itself - it works, but people do not believe in its sincerity and it would be a stretch to call it hidden advertising.
Gossip. Or false information. Disinformation. I heard, I thought, I saw - this is gossip-fake news. Or some scientist's material about how coffee is very harmful. Remember, there was such a video? In the video, a man in a sweater, very similar to a research institute employee. He talks very convincingly about the harm of coffee, provides facts.
At the bottom of the video there is a banner with the name of the site - bioexpert. The name is also the same, it immediately reinforces the authority.
In fact, the man was talking nonsense and selling dietary supplements. But the video went viral and people are still reposting it. Now that's a cool advertising campaign.
Personal instructions. This type of advertising is more related to personal promotion. I write out options for such instructions to my clients who order a personal promotion strategy. The point is that simply maintaining a popular profile is not enough. People need to be told what they can get and how. But writing about it directly would be too rude for a personal Facebook. Here, a competent dosage is needed.
That's why we dilute such "instructions" with stories from life. Better yet, real ones.
This is just a short list of types of hidden advertising and a basis on which other mechanisms for managing people's opinions and decisions can be strung.
Do you think hidden advertising has potential?
