You’re all car enthusiasts here, is one way or another, that’s why you’re reading this right now. Many enthusiasts are followers of all things with four wheels, never really settling on one brand. However, there are also many who diligently follow one specific brand of car. It’s pretty obvious which car brand the folks around these parts are fans of. But it isn’t an uncommon brand. BMW has a very large and loyal following, one of the biggest in the auto industry, with maybe on Volkswagen or Honda having a larger one. These enthusiast followings are very important, much more so than you may think.
Enthusiast followings, whether they be for cars or electronics or hipster mustache waxes, have a large effect on the marketing and eventual success of certain products and brands. The reason being is that enthusiasts of all kinds will go through great lengths to learn about certain products or fields and relay that information to the people that they know. And often times, those newly informed people will go to their enthusiast friends for advice whenever buying a related product. If one Apple enthusiast tells ten friends about all of the advantages of buying an Apple product, and they all go out and buy an iPhone, that one enthusiast just helped Apple sell eleven products, including his/her own. So marketing must be geared towards those enthusiasts, as they are the ones who are truly going to make a difference in the market.
This is even more true when it comes to large, expensive purchases, like a car. While there are millions of car enthusiasts around the world, we are a small percentage of the car buying population. Because of this, the majority of car buyers are largely uninformed about brands, models, segments and so on. So when many uninformed people go to buy a car, they often will look to a more knowledgeable friend for help. So if a enthusiast friend can help sway his/her close knit group of friends to buy into a specific brand, that helps drive sales. Those enthusiasts are who marketing people are targeting because of their influence on friends and family.
This is a website aimed at BMW enthusiasts, because we’re passionate about the Bavarian brand. We like to talk about BMW’s latest models and how they stack up against competition. There’s no doubt that the things we say can influence passionate readers to spread the word about BMW and all the things the brand offers. And when we go home to our friends and family, if someone were to ask for advice about car buying, it’s a good possibility we’re going to point them in the direction of a Roundel.
These ideas ring even more true in younger people, Millennials. Millennials are more likely to scour the internet for information on their favorite brands or follow them on social media and report the information back to friends, via their own social media accounts. Social media is such a large factor in Millennials and other young people, because the sharing of information and interests has become so common that it isn’t odd for people to make posts about their favorite brand. This makes social media hugely important to marketers and advertisers, as giving enthusiasts pages or accounts to follow and read lets brands reach out to more potential customers. It isn’t about how many likes or followers a brand has, but the type of follower. Even a small enthusiast following is more important to a brand than almost any other form of marketing.
So car enthusiasts are very important to the auto industry. You’re the folks who really spread the word. We here at BMWBLOG are fans of BMW, so we’ll read, learn and discuss with you enthusiastic readers. But it’s you, the readers, who really spread the word, because the non-enthusiast isn’t coming to this site, or any car website for that matter. But that doesn’t make our job any less important. In fact, it makes us very important, because we talk to you, and as an enthusiast you’re the most important of all.
Here is the article by AdWeek that inspired this post.
