Word of Mouth Marketing Turning customers into fans, the dream of every marketer and entrepreneur. Imagine your customers to be so enthusiastic they start voluntarily word of mouth advertising for you. How can you stimulate this word of mouth advertising? Instinctively we all know that the strongest marketing tool is a recommendation from someone we know and trust. Social networking sites and blogs combined with intelligent e-database marketing is an ideal method to facilitate and showcase this word of mouth advertising. Especially a usergenerated content – like photos, videos and stories of users – is perfectly suitable. Most people in business know that a positive Word of Mouth is ‘important’, but it is rarely classified as an active marketing instrument. Why? Perhaps we don’t know how to use it to our benefit. Or because the real advantage of a Word of Mouth marketing strategy may not be felt immediately. Many companies use Word of Mouth marketing as a passive marketing instrument in measuring their Net Promoter Scores (NPS). The NPS determines the extent to which people recommend products or brands to their friends. * Where the NPS focuses mainly on the unhappy customers trapped in a bad relationship, the Word of Mouth marketing strategy focus is on the promoters and turning them into real ambassadors. Word of Mouth marketing strategy can only be successful if your product and service are outstanding. People need stories or successes to talk about. The ingredients of such a story can have different flavors, like a personal experience, a contest, a personalized shoe, a game to play, humor or fun to share.
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Via NPS customers can be categorized into three categories: "Promoters" are loyal enthusiasts who keep buying from a company and urge their friends to do the same. "Passives" are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who can be easily wooed by the competition. And "detractors" are unhappy customers trapped in a bad relationship.
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Alex Bank is a nice example of Word of Mouth marketing Alex Bank, a digital investment bank, provides digital investment consultancy on European and Dutch shares. It offers its investors a wide range of support and educational services, including professional analyses, news reports, investment specialists, seminars, and the Alex Academy training institution. Alex is a rule and game changer in the institutionalized banking world. Through a mailing Alex asked its customers to make a video of their personal experience. A number of customers share their investment experiences in an on line diary. During two months they recorded their personal experiences on-line.
This shows how to bring your customers into action as ambassadors. Testimonials work well as the small bank is a challenger in the field. Here using satisfied customers as ambassadors is an efficient and cheap marketing tool.
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Happy customers are your best promoters Happy customers like what you do and they are willing to promote you Provide these promoters with tools to share their enthusiasm Follow these promoters Turn your promoters into ambassadors
Since you expect your promoters to communicate: let them do the talking! You expect your promoters have a great influence on the target group. If a marketing person recommends me his product or service, I will be doubtful. However, if a relative or friend tells me about it, the impact will be much greater and trustworthy.
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The brand ambassador marketing model In brand ambassador marketing you facilitate and reward a number of trusted, credible and enthusiastic persons to promote your brand. This differs from traditional television advertising where famous people or sports stars are role models to promote your brand. Today the idea of using a new kind of brand ambassadors still has to be embedded in the marketing strategies of successful organizations. It demands a new way of thinking and organizing your marketing.
A story, marketing in the old days
In the old days you went to a family owned corner shop to buy something. The owner would greet you, show sincere interest and recommend you some of his products. Since you trusted him, he understood you wouldn’t come back if he cheated on you. So he wouldn’t disappoint you. This behavior was his customer relationship management (=CRM) tool. The next time you come in he would remember what you bought e.g. a blue suit. He would ask you how you liked it. And he would have an extra shirt and a pair of shoes ready for you to go perfectly with the one you bought first. If you accept his offer he would give you a discount.
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Feeling good about his conduct will make this experience into a story to tell your friends. As a consequence the shop would expand and the owner would need to hire staff. However this obstructs his kind of marketing. The new employees will not have the owner’s engagement to the customer. Training can sometimes help since some employees have great customer relationship management skills, others don’t. As business increases he will open a couple of stores, some of which are family run, some not. Instead of word of mouth marketing, he now starts advertising. There is no longer a personal impact since the shop owners and his staff don’t know you or can even remember you. At a certain point we want business to be personal again and will not be treated like an anonymous customer or prospect. Is this possible? The original shop owner had his own CRM system. By the end of the day we all want personal attention. Nowadays we find mass marketing is becoming individualized again. The subject still is the culture you create and support in your organization. It has to be sincere and authentic and you need to treat each other, co-workers and employees, alike. Social media tools and edatabase marketing are great tools to help implementing this.
The definition Word of Mouth Marketing will give people a reason to talk about you. As a marketer you will facilitate this conversation. People love to talk. People talk about brands, cars, computers, shampoo. Off-line this world is limited to a small group of people around you and it may take quite some time to travel across the country or the globe. On-line it might be a real attack. A posting in a blog where millions of people might read about you even before deciding to buy your product. Or it might be an advantage: people start talking how much they love what you do. Now this is of course what you would like to happen and it can be achieved quite easily. Word of Mouth marketing is about earning a positive conversation. But the first thing you need for this is to be honest and authentic. You should help your whole organization to build responsibility and show responsible behavior. It‘s necessary to create and nurture transparency in all levels of operation. This may prevent self damage through scandals. The power is almost completely in the hands of your consumers or customers. As a marketer your task is to give people a reason to talk positively about you and enable such a conversation. So first earn the respect and recommendation. If you treat your consumers well they will help you.
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Word of Mouth marketing how does it work? On line and off line principles Two simple questions address this issue: What is the story behind your brand? And how are you going to tell it? For on-line marketing the third question is: How to enable your story to travel around? First encourage people to share their experience and start talking and recommending you. This asks for a strong sense of identity translated into a brand image and a good story. Provide people with a story they like to tell! Word of mouth marketing can be simple and obvious. On line you don’t need large budgets, top website, cool technology or sexy product. You can even make it work for a single story with no budget at all. Blogs are a big help because they empower people to share ideas. So take care to be found in Google, to be part of discussion in social networks. The Word of Mouth you find here is very visible, it’s written down publicly for everyone to see. Real Word of Mouth appears and disappears in different spaces. You get an email from your mother-in-law who strongly recommends a restaurant. You mention this unexpected email to a colleague at your office and next he gives a recommendation or a review on www.diningcity.com.
Mind you Word of mouth marketing only works out if you have good products or services. A good story helps but is not enough. It only succeeds if people like and trust you. Think about it. We have a new social force that rewards with free marketing, sales and profit. And this same force stops companies from treating bad or underperforming. That’s why Word of Mouth marketing is such an exciting tool.
Criteria for all on line communication On line and off line communication use the same basic principles. However the way you communicate is completely different. A common mistake is to copy off line communication to on line with only some small adjustments. The skills for on line communication are different. Therefore it would be not very clever just to translate it.
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Off line versus on line communication The digital online world is a vast place of knowledge, connections, and media. To communicate in this digital world, keep a few things in mind.
Element
Off line communication
On line communication
1.
Superficial
People tend to take more time to read and digest your message
2.
Accessibility
Limited to the receiver or addressee
3.
Measurable
More difficult to measure
4.
Control of communication
The sender controls when and what
5.
Communication style
More elaborate
6.
Interactive
Limited
7.
Authentic and yet striking
Your exposure is mostly related to your budget, your message might be overpromising?
Make sure that your most important points appear toward the beginning of the message. In this rushed world, people do not have the time to wade through several paragraphs to get to your actual message. Keep in mind that the reach might be global, 24/7. Who do really you want to address? Communication on the internet can be tracked and traced either by Google Analytics or e.g. in newsletters based on click behavior The customer controls the outcome of your conversation. People might comment, send through etc. Short abbreviated: your communication should be short and to the point. Make your sentences no more than 25 words in length and your paragraphs no more than 5 sentences long. Leave out extraneous information and words It’s quite easy to interact and almost effortless. You don’t need to write a letter or call a number. Consumers like to respond, share feelings and act immediately Be authentic, don’t exaggerate, don’t tell fairy tales.
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Negative word of mouth: how to react? The internet is probably the most democratic communication vehicle ever. Therefore it is not possible to control completely negative word of mouth. Three ways to deal with negative word of mouth: 1. Offer opportunities for feedback 2. Involve your ambassadors and promoters 3. Develop a contingency plan to apologize
1. Opportunities for feedback Always enable yourself to lance direct feedback. Customers tend to overreact when disappointed. So take them seriously and let them to blow off steam. A simple comment box or an online forum for customers to share ideas and suggestions can be enough. Preventing feedback will drive your customers into the open arms of public forums. Personally I think the standardized customer satisfaction researches used by many telecom companies nowadays are completely counterproductive. Imagine a problem with your handy. You call a 0900 like number, and find yourself struggling through a time consuming menu (press 8 if etc.). After that you’ll be at the end of a long queue. At that moment you are bothered by an automatic voice to see if you like to participate in an automatic customer research? You don’t have to be a market researcher or specialist of human conduct to figure out that people only want direct access to an employee who listens and solves the problem.
2. Involvement of ambassadors and promoters Organize opportunities for your ambassadors and promoters to get involved. Let them test, point out problems and offer suggestions to other customers. This might result in great new ideas and may lead to ownership in what you are building.
3. Plan to apologize Time will come when something will go wrong or gets mixed up. It just happens. Plan ahead and develop a worst case scenario.
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Existing word of mouth: how to keep and support it? You are lucky when people are talking about your brand in a positive way. This Word of mouth advertising is doing a nice job for you. So why step in and probably “messing it up”? Three ways to facilitate and further boost this Word Of Mouth advertising: Help people to get in touch either on-line or off-line Join existing groups Embrace the "crazy" fans
1. Help people to get in touch on-line or off-line Most die-hard fans are simply looking for people who share their interests. Help them get in touch trough events, online groups, email lists -- anything that makes it easy for them to meet one another. Once you've made the encounter possible (on -line or offline), you can withdraw and let them do the talking. 2. Join existing groups Locate your fans by looking for groups that have developed in on line forums or as Twitter groups. Try approaching and building relationships with community leaders by offering support for what they're already doing so well.
3. Embrace the "crazy" fans Look for opportunities to involve all fans -- even the crazy, "weird," or fanatical ones. Experienced marketers find opportunities to channel their enthusiasm into ongoing fan feedback, new fan groups.
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The Five steps of Word of Mouth marketing Ambassadors need a story to tell and tools to spread this story, marketers join in the conversation in order to learn, track, understand and measure. Step 1. Ambassadors
2. Story
3. Spread
What to do Find people who will talk about you Give people a reason/ story to talk about you Help the message spread fast and far
4. Join in
Join the conversation
5. Track
Measure, learn and understand
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Examples Your Plan Fans, customers, influencers, bloggers Humor, viral, great service, special offer, cool product Blog, tell a friend, edatabase marketing, white paper, online community, viral email, personalized item Reply to comments, post on blogs, offer personal service, a concept diary Read message boards, search blogs, listen to feedback and learn
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Word of Mouth marketing: seven rules to make it tick Crucial rules can’t be ignored. So check your communication along these 7 points of success:
1.
Clarity
You have one important message so it should be authentic, original and credible. People pierce through hot air. Make sure the subject of your message evokes curiosity. Include the core of your message in its first three lines, use the rest for explanation.
2.
Relevance
Your message must be relevant. It may sound logic, but just ask yourself what’s in it for my customer. Why should he or she be interested? Personalize your message if possible.
3.
Surprise
If a message is different as well as and unexpected, You’ll get attention.
4.
Innovate and create
See what works and improve it. Creativity is the greatest skill people have and often unused. In a world where marketers are more interested in best than different practice, it is hardly surprising that all communication approaches are beginning to look alike.
5.
Story
People remember a story. Bring it to life. Make up your story and use persona.
6.
Emotion
Make sure people can empathize and feel involved. Facts and figures work to make it trustworthy, emotions make it tangible!
7.
Measure
What is the investment and what are possible revenues and benefits?
John Jehae Innovianto Online marketing / e-database marketing www.innovianto.nl john@innovianto.nl
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