I celebrated my 40th birthday earlier this month, and as birthdays will do, it inspired me to take a walk down memory lane. And one thing that was absent on my memory lane were social media influencers.

Sure, back in my day (this is a phrase I get to use now that I’m forty.), we had people we looked up to, but it wasn’t like the barrage of influencing that takes place now.

And before you ask, I don’t have anything against influencers. They can be very effective in marketing, but there’s a new trend happening with them right now that I find very interesting and that I want you to think about using to your advantage.

It’s called de-influencing.

De-influencing means your focus is on saving people the time, trouble, and expense of testing products and then letting everyone know why they don’t recommend them.

Hashtags for de-influencing are trending. As we speak, there are over 160 million (and counting) TikTok videos using #deinfluencing.

We often get questions from people about how they can get customers to understand the value of their product or service. Sometimes to get people to understand the value of your product or service, you have to show them why the alternative isn’t going to fulfill their needs.

We’re not talking about throwing your competition under the bus, but rather what headache, time waster, and money drain can they avoid by using your product or service?

For instance, let’s say you have a rug cleaning business. Showing your potential customers the difference between trying to do it themselves (they have to figure out the equipment, make sure they don’t damage the rug, deal with it drying out, and who has time for that on a Saturday!) versus having you do it for them can de-influence them from going DIY.