Recognize and coddle all sources of word of mouth advertising
Talk about taking something for granted! There’s nothing our businesses do that’s more undervalued and under-managed as word of mouth marketing. The reason? We don’t call it what it is. It gets diffused and lost like a vitamin at breakfast. Some companies try to measure it, but most do a poor job of it. I would doubt there’s any one in your industry that’s counting anything other than direct “tweets.” The adoption of “word of mouth” as a formal term in marketing is relatively new. It has gained a lot of traction and the discipline has become surprisingly sophisticated. It’s time you awaken your senses; get people talking about your services; and sharpen the measurement tools. The awesome powers of word of mouth (WOM) are real.
Shout it out: word of mouth!
The charts below illustrate various sources of new customers. Each source in the example has been given equal weight to help make my point clear. The second chart shows some of the same data aggregated and renamed “Word of Mouth.” The number of customers derived from Word of Mouth, in this example, provides a very compelling, very different picture indeed:
Get people talking about your product
Your bizdev team is in charge of starting things. Given the potential of WOM, your team should be jonesing for a lot more conversations about your products and services. Case in point: A few years back, Henkel Consumer Adhesives made Duck Tape. To promote it, at relatively low cost, Henkel created a competition for college scholarships and called it “Stuck at Prom.” It became a wildly fun, annual promotion that enlists, what is, the next generation of domestic consumers who will tell stories and share pictures of Duct Tape tuxedos for years to come. It was such a sticky idea that the new owners of the Duck Tape brand have continued with the promotion!
“Word of mouth marketing does more than make money on new sales.
It makes all of your sales and marketing more effective.” — Andy Sernovitz
The Word of Mouth Marketing Manifesto
- Happy customers are your best advertising. Make people happy.
- Marketing is easy: Earn the respect and recommendation of your customers. They will do your marketing for you, for free.
- Ethics and good service come first.
- UR the UE: You are the user experience (not what your ads say you are).
- Negative word of mouth is an opportunity. Listen and learn.
- People are already talking. Your only option is to join the conversation.
- Be interesting or be invisible.
- If it’s not worth talking about, it’s not worth doing.
- Make the story of your company a good one.
- It is more fun to work at a company that people want to talk about.
- Use the power of word of mouth to make business treat people better.
- Honest marketing makes more money.
Adapted from Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, by Andy Sernovitz
HIT Solutions believes the more your business keeps up with important trends, the more you will improve your product, and improve your bottom line.
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