92 percent of people trust recommendations from individuals—even if they don’t know them—over brands.
Word-of-mouth marketing has been around as long as humans have, and studies have shown its effectiveness since the early 1970s when psychologist George
Silverman documented that the opinions of skeptics could be swayed simply by the positive endorsement from one or two of their peers. The rapid rise of social media created new ways for consumers to have these conversations at unprecedented speed and scale, giving birth to influencer marketing.