Power Retail argues Australian shoppers now trust each other more than paid influencers, with mateship doing the selling. Advocacy is the cheapest growth there is, but you cannot fake it, which puts the pressure back on the product and the experience.
You can rent an influencer's audience. You cannot rent the trust between two people who actually know each other.
Australian shoppers are trusting each other more than the influencers brands keep paying. New commentary from Power Retail argues that mateship, the plain recommendation from someone you actually know, is doing the selling that paid creators used to. The word from a friend beats the post from a stranger with a discount code.
The shift follows a wider cooling on influencer marketing. As audiences grow wise to paid posts, the recommendation that carries weight is the unpaid one from a real person in your circle. Brands that built their plans around renting an influencer's audience are finding that borrowed trust does not convert like the real thing.
Why it matters
For Australian businesses, this reframes where the marketing budget should go. Chasing bigger influencer deals is buying reach with a leaky bottom. Building a product and an experience worth recommending turns your existing customers into the channel, and that channel does not send an invoice.
This is advocacy, and it is the cheapest growth there is. A customer who tells a friend costs you nothing and converts better than almost anything you can buy. The catch is you cannot fake it. Word of mouth only works when the product and the service are genuinely worth talking about, which puts the pressure back on the fundamentals.
Winning a new customer costs roughly 5 to 25 times more than keeping one, and referrals turn the customers you have into the ones who bring more
What to do about it
Make your product and service good enough that people want to recommend it without being paid.
Build a simple referral path so a happy customer can pass you on with no friction.
Measure how many new customers come from word of mouth. If you are not tracking it, you are underrating it.
Spend less on renting reach and more on the experience that earns advocacy.
Trust is the one thing you cannot buy on a rate card. Earn it and your customers become the channel.