Report: Employee advocacy trumps influencer marketing

When it comes to learning about a brand and purchasing its offerings, relationships matter.

When you apply this truth to social media marketing efforts, your employees—not online influencers with massive followings—make the difference.

The 2018 Sprout Social Index revealed that 71 percent of digital marketers either currently use employee ambassadors or want to for future campaigns. In comparison, only 19 percent said they had an influencer marketing budget.

Employees are more effective at persuading and converting consumers because of the more intimate relationships they have with their followers.

More than half of consumers (61 percent) said they would research a product or service that a friend of theirs recommends on social media, but only 36 percent feel the same way when celebrities or social media users with huge followings recommend it.

Though employee advocacy increases engagement, content shared by organizations’ staff doesn’t necessary increase online sharing.

Sprout Social reported that consumers are 150 percent more likely to engage with employee advocacy posts than share them—and 90 percent more likely to engage, rather than share, with posts that display an organization’s culture.