Word of Mouth Marketing. Brand Evangelism. Buzz. These are not just words and phrases. These are tactics that might make the difference in your business growing or dying. Each depends on the same link for success: people. We sometimes call them influencers.
Like customers, we need to know what those influencers look like. What motivates and inspires them? How do we connect with them?
A May 3 article in eMarketer called “Is the Current Definition of ‘Influencer’ Too Narrow?” is a must-read for anyone in business. It begins to answer these questions. The article is based on a CNET study called “Understanding Influence, and Making It Work For You: A CNet Networks Study.”
The study tells us that the highly-connected influencers use e-mail (84%) and in-person discussion (88%) for their most frequent interactions. Phone (46%), instant messaging (16%), and text messaging (15%) happen much less often.
For us to reach out to these influencers, we need to use basic marketing strategies, including understanding their emotional and informational needs, communicating with them in a way that is easy to forward and share, building trust, and sending the right messages, at the right time, to the right place.
It should come as no surprise but is worth remembering that the message, not the vehicle, is the most important element to get influencers to spread the word. If you don’t have something provocative, incredibly interesting, or newsworthy to share, no one will listen. Your best influencers are happy customers who love your great products, services, and experiences.
Here are the results of a study by Osterman Research that ranks the most important things we need to spread word of mouth: satisfied customers (53%), great products or services (27.5%), an exciting brand (13.3%), have an advertising or PR firm (1.7%), and low prices (0%). These numbers tell us much about where we need to focus our business-growth strategies.
I wonder. Word of mouth is how I get most of my business. It is also a strategy that I recommend to my clients. What are your experiences? Do these numbers suggest ways we can get better at what we do?
Tags: Advertising, buzz, email, Lewis_Green, Marketing, messages, Osterman_Research, PR, public_relations, research, word_of_mouth_marketing
Lewis, 2 years ago we conducted a survey of a younger (21-35) group and a couple questions were about viral communications. Here are the results of those two questions:
About The Viral Affect
When an interesting new product is discovered
43% will try it with no recommendation
37% wait for a friend to endorse it
16% wait until it is on the market for a while
When a product or services impresses them:
55% percent will tell close friends and family
38% will tell anyone who will listen
2% keep it to them selves
Clearly with this group of trendsetters word of mouth is important.
I also wrote a couple of white papers on Buzz Marketing. If you like you can get copies on my website under white papers.
This is such an important topic for all marketers and especially we who sell professional services.
Thanks for bringing it up.
Harry Hallman
Harry,
Thanks for the stats and for sharing your white papers. What can be more important than understand your customers and using that information to cater to their wants and needs.
I struggle with the whole “influencer” concept. I think everyone is an influencer to some extent. It just depends on the subject. If I’m going to buy a CD from a new artist, I go to one guy in my office. If I’m looking for a computer, I go to another. A car, another.
Also, in response to “If you don’t have something provocative, incredibly interesting, or newsworthy to share, no one will listen,” I don’t necessarily buy it. You would be surprised who can get excited about products and services that you and I think are not interesting, provocative or newsworthy. Have you read the independent blog dedicated to Metamucil? The guy is a fanatic about it. Or the Fiskateers community that gets excited about paper. And scissors. Remarkable products? Not to you and me, but to them, yes.
Above all, if you’re going to try word of mouth marketing, it can’t look or even smell like traditional marketing. In other words – don’t intrude. The biggest part of a successful WOM movement is giving up control and handing the reigns to your customers. That is what will start a conversation. Sure, you can send out “forward to a friend” emails, but these days, that’s the price of admission.
Metamucil? Seriously?
Spike — what’s the URL?
Spike,
That’s the point: You have to know your audience and what they find exciting, and then meet their wants and needs. But if you do it in an uninteresting way, forget about word of mouth or any other kind of marketing. I bet the Metamucil guy is anything but boring to people interested in Metamucil, and to those who find his story-telling provocative, newsworthy or just plain fun to read.
A boring story will not get a conversation started, never has and never will. But to get that conversation started the story needs to be told to the right audience, at the right time, in the right place.
Finally, if we can’t do anything to spread WOM, why is there a Word of Mouth Marketing Association and why does it hold seminars and conferences? It sounds as if you think WOMMA is an episode of Seinfeld where nothing ever happens.
Ann: http://jer979.blogspot.com/2007/02/metamucil-and-blogpower.html
Lewis,
I agree about knowing your audience. But I don’t think they need to be “told” anything or think that we, as marketers should do the “telling.” That’s the old school mentality. Listen. And your customers will do the telling – if you give them the right tools and opportunities….on their terms.
Where did I say that we can’t do anything to spread WOM? WOM, by its very definition, spreads itself. It’s up to us to give people the opportunity and tools to help it along, though. That’s WOM Marketing.
I’m a big WOMMA fan (and Brains on Fire sits on the Board of Directors) and we’ve been to every event they’ve held. There are some amazing things going on in that realm. I encourage anyone who hasn’t attended an event to check one out. I guarantee that you’ll learn something.
Spike,
I think you just called me an old fart. That’s okay. I am. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand word of mouth marketing and here’s the bottom line: If we don’t tell anyone about who we are and what we do and why we do it, and make it interesting, how will they know we exist?
To answer your question, you wrote: “The biggest part of a successful WOM movement is giving up control and handing the reigns to your customers. That is what will start a conversation”. Maybe but I doubt it. The reason you are involved in this conversation is because this old marketer started it. I don’t post here to waste your time or mine. I post here to share a point of view, and those who are provoked by that point of view engage in conversation with me and others.
Someone has to start the conversation and businesses are best-suited to do so by giving their customers a voice and by giving them something to talk about. Most of the posts about Web 2.0 call of businesses to blog. They don’t do so to stop conversation but because they believe it will start conversations.
Just because I’m a marketer doesn’t mean I can’t participate in a conversation with my audience. In fact, those businesses whose executives don’t engage in conversation with their audiences are often criticized, and rightly so, for not doing so.
If businesses don’t tell an engaging story, no one engages and there is no conversation. But once that conversation is started by us, we don’t just fade away. We continue the conversation by listening to our audience and then talking back to them, which shows our respect for their points of view and tells them they are being listened to.
WOMM Tools are among those to be used but they have to be used correctly or no word of mouth occurs. And to use them correctly, someone, usually a marketer, starts the conversation with a good story that reaches the right audience.
This is not an either/or. Traditional marketing and Web 2.0 work together to create great stories that inspire and motivate. Without traditional marketing, there is no business for WOM to happen.
Here’s my advice to all my readers: Silos don’t advance conversations and neither do tools. People do and to exclude anyone from a conversation is to lessen the value of what is said. To assume traditional marketers are incapable of melding Web 2.0 with their traditional tool kit is silly. We have been adding tools since the first days of our profession, and Web 2.0 isn’t the end of doing so.
Spike,
I should have added thank you for firing up this conversation with your points of view. Now that’s what I’m talking about. The last voice of this thread between you and me belongs to you. Go for it, my friend.
What do others think. Great chance for us to improve the ways we do business. Add your voice.
I think we’re saying the same things, just differently.
Yes, we can use traditional marketing along with WOMM tools and techniques, but not in the same intruding manner that traditional advertising was built on. That’s where I was going.
We’ve seen first-hand on a national level what giving up control leads to – things we as marketers could’ve never, ever thought of. And that’s in places where there was no conversation. Or if there was, it was a monologue… and a poorly constructed one at that.
Marketers need to participate. But they need to be cautious in how they do so. Listening and acting are a big part of and always being transparent is not an option.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Guys: That blog isn’t “dedicated” to Metamucil. It’s a blog that covers a lot…Metamucil was just a few posts. Important to note since the important stuff happened from just a couple posts rather than a blog that’s only about one product day-in/day-out.
My bad, CK. I guess I should say that it’s a blog from a guy who writes about different things, but also loves Metamucil, enough so that he wrote an ode to it, engaged with the company and posts his dealings with them (or non-dealings in this case).
Spike: I actually think that, being he’s not a dedicated blog, it speaks to your point. He just issued a couple of really authentic posts..not an entire blog…which has gotten people talking. About fiber.
I think that’s why I love this particular WOM example. Yeah, the ode-to-Starbucks blog is good and well but the out-of-the-blue posts delight the marketer in me.
And yeah, the co. dropped the ball on their dealings with him (sigh). But that’s another post.
I still miss an efficient metric/tracking for WOMM. It’s though to convince advertisers to join the global conversation because they have no clue of how they can measure succes.
Philippe,
That’s a valid concern and one we run into quite a bit. But if you build those measurable tools into your WOMM movement from the very beginning, it’s a lit easier than to track ROI after-the-fact. There are also great companies like Umbria (umbrialistens.com) that track online conversations in a very deep, analytical way. Also, check out the resources WOMMA provides on this subject (www.womma.org).
Hi Lewis,
Great article! Congratulations and thanks for raising the issue, as Harry points out.
I do agree with the Osterman research, however I think the most important WOM trigger is surprise. When you surprise your clients exeeding their expectations you can be sure they will speak about you for a very long time. Maybe untill they get old. But, think about it and you´ll be with me that even an unpleasant surprise will trigger WOM. I had worked on crisis management for a long time and can tell you that there are “self provoqued” crisis that if rightly controlled can have a very positive effect.
Client satisfaction, great product or service, an exciting brand and an advertising/pr campaign nowadays are just the basic stuff. We need to move forward on marketing, and I think the new two clear trends are Surprise and Emotion.
Congratulations again and if you read Spanish you can check my blog out http://lapvc.blogspot.com about how to succeed in your career bearing in mind you´ll find lots of non-talented people that will stand on your way.
Spike,
Thanks for responding to Phillipe.
Mariana,
Great comments. Lots of businesses spend millions to prevent those unpleasant surprises you mention because you are exactly right–they will trigger WOM. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind if WOM most businesses seek. I do read Spanish but ever so slowly.
Lewis,
Good article. It’s certainly time that people beginning focusing on WOM. To me, there are 2 parts to WOM and both have to be intentional and pre-planned. Since customers and influeners both will talk about their experiences with a company or its product without being told to – whether those are real experiences or their perception of reality (which still makes it real to them)- it’s imperative that those experiences be as contolled as possible toward a positive outcome.
The key then is to plan branding, signage, print ads, sales presentations, showrooms, websites, customer service appointments, repair calls, phone and email intake and responses, and everything else involving a direct customer experience so that a positive result is achieved most of the time. The ideal would be for it to be achieved 100% of the time, but there are those people who will not be impressed no matter what is done.
The second part of this is for the employees and representatives of a company to be ready to deliver WOM at any opportunity. I suggest that salespeople have a 5-10 planned and rehearsed commercial that they can deliver instantly when they meet someone at the gas pump or and old friend or acquaintance. How many times does the scenario go something like this on that initial chance introduction or upon seeing someone again after a long period of time: “What do you do?” or “Where do you work?” “Oh, I work for Johnson Brothers” or “I sell siding for Smith & Company.” How much better would it be if the response was something rehearsed like: “I am the southeast representative for Smith & Company and we are the nation’s number one supplier of wall coverings for residences and businesses.”
Steve