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Something to Talk About

Word of mouth marketing has been around forever, far before the advent of advertising. When you tell someone about that new restaurant in town or spread the word about a spot remover that “really worked,” you’re engaging in word of mouth marketing.

It’s extremely powerful. If a friend tells you about a certain video game he liked, you’re far more likely to buy it than if you just saw an ad on TV. In fact, analysts from McKinsey & Co. estimate that two-thirds of our economy is influenced by personal recommendation. ¹

In the same way we trust our friends’ opinions, we are also inclined to trust other consumer reviews—from people we don’t know—posted to blogs and sites like Amazon.com, and Epinions.com. According to the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey, online consumer reviews are the third most-trusted form of marketing worldwide with a 61% confidence rating, preceded by 78% confidence in other consumer recommendations, and 63% for newspaper ads. ² Online confidence in the U.S. alone skews even higher.

For marketers then, the challenge is to foster those oh-so-valuable word of mouth recommendations. The goal is to get people talking about your business and, of course, saying good things.

Here’s the rub: At its heart, word of mouth marketing is about more than being a good business. Good is, well—good. It’s the cost of doing business. Word of mouth marketing is about being different, creative, and helping your customers spread the … well, “great” word.

Why it’s important
For a long time, advertising was the biggest influence in consumer decision making. Companies pushed their message out to consumers via TV, billboards, magazines and other traditional media. Advertising was our largest source of information about a company’s products or services.

Today, the dynamic of influence has changed. Thanks to the Internet, we can go online and find out what other people think about handymen, doctors, teachers, restaurants, repair shops, cars, toys, electronics, movies—it’s all online for us to examine and evaluate before we buy.

Companies are no longer the sole source of buying information. Nor should they want to be.

The beauty of word of mouth marketing is that it magnifies consumer interest and confidence in your product. No other form of marketing is as powerful. It’s that simple.

A few caveats
Remember, word of mouth is uncontrollable. You cannot limit what people say about
you—online or offline. One negative story can quickly skyrocket to the top of Google’s^TM page rankings.

You can, however, influence the conversation. You can, and usually should, respond to criticism. You can ask your fans to give you positive reviews. You can generate new, positive stories that will push the negative ones lower in Google rankings.

Part of word of mouth marketing can rightly be considered reputation management.

Getting started
Word of mouth is all about giving people a reason to talk about your company and helping them spread the word. You don’t have to start big. Try lots of easy, low-cost activities and see what you get. If it works, go bigger. If not, try something else. Here’s how to get started, in four basic steps:

Step 1: Be Interesting.

We’d all like to think we’re fascinating creatures and our businesses are really cool, but the fact of the matter is that there are lots and lots of really cool companies out there. So, cool isn’t really enough. You want to be that kid who drove his tractor to school or the girl who wrote backwards. You want to be different.

Take restaurants for example. Remember when you were a kid and someone offered you crayons so you could color on your placemat? It was awesome—for you and your parents! But crayons are no longer a differentiator. Nowadays, everyone has crayons.

What’s new and interesting? Think about Tomato Street in Spokane, Wash., where every child gets a small, fresh batch of homemade play dough and some dried pasta shapes to play with while they wait. Or, American Girl cafés, where dolls get their own chair, tea cups and menus. Isn’t that the kind of thing you’d write home about? Or, at least tell your followers on Twitter about?

At Sandhills Dentistry in Columbia, S.C., doctors Joyce Radeka and Frank Hodges went out of their way to be different than other dentist offices. After asking patients what they least liked about going to the dentist, Sandhills introduced noise-cancellation headphones, aromatherapy, massage pads and high-definition TVs. There’s even a warm towel for you after your treatment.

“We love it when a patient gets up after a procedure and says, ‘I enjoyed it … wait, what did I say?” said Dr. Joyce Radeka.

Andy Sernovitz is the author of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies
Get People Talking. Sernovitz tells companies to put their business decisions through a buzz-worthy filter.

“There is a poster I would put in every single office,” Sernovitz said during a recent
MarketingProfs Webinar. “A big sign on the wall should say, ‘Will anybody tell a friend about this?’” ³

And as Sernovitz points out, being good and being something worth talking about are two entirely different things. Certainly you don’t want people saying negative things, but the whole point is that being good simply isn’t good enough if you want to leverage the power of word of mouth marketing.

Even advertising, Sernovitz says, should be more than just a brand awareness activity. It should be something worth sharing: “When you raise the bar, you want to say, ‘If we pay money to put this ad in the magazine, is anybody going to tear out that ad and show it to a friend?’ And if it’s not worth tearing out and passing along, it’s not worth paying for.” ⁴

Step 2: Join the Conversation.

Remember that you don’t have to start the conversation; you just have to join in. You don’t need to publish your own blog or launch some extensive viral campaign to be a word of mouth marketer. You just need to have two-way dialogue and be timely in your responses to your customers. And, the best way to do that is to go to where your customers are online and offline.

Begin by reviewing and acting upon any internal customer feedback forms. Encourage and train front-line staff to seek customer feedback and empower them to make appropriate customer-driven changes. Search the Web for any mentions of your company name. If people are complaining, jump in, apologize and offer to do something about it. If people are singing your praises, post a thank you.

Next, start following a few of the blogs and forums that relate to your industry. Spend some time getting to know what’s going on out there. If you aren’t already an active blog reader, spend several weeks just lurking around. Once you get a feel for the rules of the road (more on that later on) post a few comments.

At airline company Jet Blue, staff use Twitter (among other tools) to monitor and respond to online chatter. Morgan Johnston, manager of corporate communications, tweets a few times each day, sometimes with travel tips or delay information, but also in response to customer comments.

Here’s a typical Jet Blue Twitter exchange:

Foodmomiac, 10:32 a.m.: The new Jet Blue terminal at JFK is beautiful, but not terribly conducive to business calls. 80s music is blasting!!!

JetBlue, 11:21 a.m. : @foodmomiac head to the North concourse at T5 - it tends to be a bit quieter over there for phone calls

Foodmomiac, 11:55 p.m. Yay @jetblue!! Now I know the best place in the terminal for business calls!!

kakaty, 1:00 p.m.: @foodmomiac wow! That’s some serious service. Way to go jet blue!

Johnston says the company has always spent time tracking online mentions. “We monitor everything we can find about our brand and our industry. Micro-blogging sites like Twitter are great for timely information and feedback, but there’s also so much to be gained by listening across the social media landscape and blogs,” Johnston said.

Step 3: Connect with the Influencers.

Influencers are the people talking about your products or your industry. These are the people whose opinions sway others. Research firm RoperASW calculates that roughly 1 in 10 American adults are “Influentials.” ⁵ These are the people most engaged in their workplaces and communities; the people most likely to share their opinions, and the ones most likely to be heard. You can find and connect with these people both online and offline. Online Influencers. Mommy bloggers (moms who blog about products, life and family) are an obvious example of online influencers. There are literally thousands of blogs devoted to good home-keeping topics and frugal family living. Popular blogs like Coupon Cravings or Money Saving Mom have garnered the respect and attention of mainstream media, and their owners are sometimes called upon to share their expertise in print or on air.

Food and family-product marketers hit upon these bloggers early, as an inexpensive way to reach a targeted consumer group. These bloggers are quick to spread the word about money saving coupons and special promotions and they regularly offer special reader-only giveaways.

Walmart® took this blogger outreach concept even further in 2008 and built itself a community of mommy bloggers called Eleven Moms (although there are 20+ of these marketing moms to date). Walmart has hosted these moms at exclusive corporate events and provides first-to-know information about new products and promotions. A focus group of sorts, the moms provide Walmart with valuable consumer insight. But because these moms are also well-followed bloggers, they also provide invaluable access to parents and consumers all over the country.

Thankfully, you don’t have to be Walmart to get bloggers talking about your company. Search out bloggers in your industry and offer them something valuable they can share with their readers.

In one common giveaway promotion, bloggers offer a free prize, instruct readers to visit the sponsor’s Web site, choose the gift they would most like to win, and then leave a comment with their choice to qualify. A variation on this theme offers a specific item, a free turkey for example, and asks readers to name their favorite turkey recipe to qualify. Voilà—built-in consumer research! To help spread the word and bring more readers to their blog, most bloggers also give readers an additional entry if they write about it on their own blogs. Voilà again—suddenly you’re viral.

Local Influencers. For local businesses, connecting with influencers requires a dual online and offline strategy. On the one hand, you know your customers personally and can probably list at least 10 people you would already consider fans. On the other hand, there may be only a few bloggers—or even none at all—blogging about your community, so you don’t have as many options for online promotion.

If most of your customers live within a limited radius, chances are good that much of the conversation happens offline. That means you have little way of determining who the biggest talkers are. So instead of identifying the most influential bloggers, connect with your best customers and encourage them to spread the word. One common tactic is to give your customers extra business cards and simply ask for their referrals. You can also provide a discount or incentive when a customer sends someone else your way. If you have samples to distribute, give customers several and ask them to share with friends.

To foster positive online reviews, hand out “review us” request cards with a message like this: “Thank you for visiting us today. If you had a good experience, please visit CitySearch.com and rate our [restaurant, repair shop, store, etc.]. If your visit was less than stellar, please let us know so we can correct it.”

Other offline word of mouth tactics include offering insider-tours of your operation and in store events. Or, invite your best customers to host a private event. Home party networks have been using this concept for years. But instead of asking a customer to organize a sales event in their home, invite them to have an exclusive friends-only reception in your business space. Couch it as a thank you event, not a sales pitch. For $100 you can easily buy enough wine (or beer or soda, depending on your demographic) and simple hors d’oeuvres for a small gathering. Offer a special how-to demonstration, coordinate a hands-on project, or simply provide the use of your space. At the end, you should have several new customers and advocates to boot.

Step 4: Make it Easy to Share.

The fourth task for online marketers is to make it easy for customers and influencers to tell others about their product.

Offline, this includes giving your customers extra brochures, discount cards and samples to share with their friends. At Sandhills Dentistry, the same company that provides noise cancellation headphones and warm towels to its patients, patrons are often sent away with more than the usual toothbrush and floss.

“We give products to customers, and they give them to their friends. It’s a great way to increase awareness and spread word-of-mouth buzz,” said Dr. Joyce Radeka.

Online, this can mean providing videos and photos for bloggers and setting up fan forums.

Fabric designer Heather Bailey, for example, includes a link on her Web site that directs visitors to a Flickr® community where customers can post pictures of the projects they’ve made using her designs.

Bear Naked®, a granola company, found another innovative way to generate both on and offline word of mouth with a Halloween promotion. In 2007 and 2008, the company offered gift packs that included multiple sample packs—just right for trick-or-treaters— plus a canvas tote bag to distribute them and a t-shirt. A limited number of treat kits were made available on a first-come, first-served basis. Many were snapped up by plugged-in bloggers who happily posted pictures and reviews online. Meanwhile, Bear Naked got people to hand out their products for free!

Rules of the road

Word of mouth marketing is pretty simple really, and you shouldn’t feel intimidated. That said, there are a few guidelines to follow:

Rule # 1. Listen and respond. The most common mistake is to simply ignore online conversations. For your fans out there, when you acknowledge them and thank them for their comments, it makes them feel validated. For your detractors, the only chance you have of winning them back is by responding to their complaint. And even if you can’t win the customer over, you may be able to diffuse any additional negativity.

As a best practice example, a large automaker recently avoided a potential PR crisis after its legal department threatened a fan site that was selling unlicensed merchandise. Using Twitter and other online tools, the company’s social media manager was on the issue and had it diffused within less than a day.

Here’s what happened:

The automaker’s legal team had sent the site selling the unlicensed merchandise a cease and desist letter. As part of the letter’s outlined legal actions, it demanded the Web site’s owner relinquish control of the URL and pay a $5000 fine.

Shortly after, site’s owner notified his site’s community, which unleashed a fury of criticism against the automaker.

Within hours, the automaker’s social media manager was on Twitter, messaging irate fans to let them know he was looking into the issue. After all was said and done, he was able to negotiate a truce that left the fan site intact at its current URL, minus the trademarked goods. ⁶

Less than 24 hours after the original complaint, the fan site’s owner posted a fair explanation of what happened along with helpful tips so other fan sites could avoid making similar mistakes. ⁷

Rule # 2. Never fake online conversations or hide your identity. Amazon shoppers are now eyeing reviews for a tech company’s products with a wary eye after the company was caught paying reviewers to give its product five stars and downgrade ratings for its competitors. Blogger Arlen Parse of The Daily Background broke the story after stumbling upon an online request for the fake reviews. The technology goods company’s president apologized and claimed it was an isolated incident, but not before it had already been picked up by influential tech news sites Engadget and Slashdot.

While some bloggers and commenters gave the company props for responding “quickly and with sincerity,” a significant number expressed doubt about the company’s sincerity and pledged never to buy its products again.

In another infamous case, a large grocery chain’s CEO was posting on Yahoo’s financial message boards under a pseudonym, praising his company’s performance and often criticizing competitors. His secret identity was revealed during a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation when the grocery chain attempted to buy one of the very companies it had been condemning. The CEO later apologized for his lack of judgment. 8

Rule # 3. Never spam blog comments with irrelevant content. Instead, provide a relevant response to the author’s post and include additional, helpful information when applicable. This is another reason it helps to have your own online tutorials and valuable content so you have a legitimate reason to direct
readers back to your site.

Tracking ROI

A word of mouth marketing campaign can provide clear financial returns in the form of increased sales or decreased customer support expenses. But measuring success isn’t gauged by accounting alone.

Word of mouth marketing is also about building positive brand perceptions that grow
over time, and these activities are an investment in your company’s future. While this latent goodwill may be intangible, marketers are using a variety of metrics to measure reach and engagement.

Before you begin, determine how you will identify word of mouth success. Will you conduct customer surveys to determine how people heard about you? Will you measure it by subscribers to your blog? Or, are you looking for a decrease in calls to your customer service line? Incorporate measurements plans into your goals and activities. In a study of how companies were measuring return on investment for their social media activities (social media being roughly equivalent to online word of mouth marketing), the Online Community Research Network found six most-common metrics that companies used to measure success. These were traffic patterns and statistics, community member engagement, unique number of visitors, new member registrations, member satisfaction, and product feedback / R&D ideation. ⁹

That same study asked practitioners how they made the case for social media activity when evangelizing to management and others. Prominent was the idea that online community forums became an ad-hoc resource for frequently asked questions. Populated with both user- and company-generated answers, these forums saved the company money in traditional support services.

Other common reasons companies participate in online exchanges are
that social media:

• Increases organic site traffic
  
• Helps identify new ideas
  
• Identifies problem product features
  
• Generates leads and aides conversion
  
• Builds customer loyalty

If you do nothing else, keep a log of your word of mouth success stories. Numbers and reports are great, but real-life stories will help management understand the benefit.

When it comes to tracking the numbers, hard-core word of mouth marketers are turning to specially designed intelligence tools that track brand reputation online, identify advocates, and measure influence. These social media monitors crawl the Web searching for mentions of your company and/or product names. They gather information from across the Internet including blogs, video sites, user forums, LinkedIn® and Twitter.

The best, can then segment out positive and negative sentiment through a combination of language algorithms and human evaluation. These tools help you identify which social media tools and users are most influencing your brand.

Once you have that information, you can get the biggest bang for bucks by targeting your efforts to the communities and advocates that have the biggest impact on your brand.

Radian6 and Dialogix are two of the big players in the industry right now, with the former touting powerhouse brands like AAA, UPS and March of Dimes among their client list.

For do-it-yourselfers, on the other hand, daily monitoring and spreadsheets are in order. You can quickly overwhelm yourself by tracking too many metrics, so start with just a few key indicators. Overtime, you will begin to notice which individuals are the most vocal and which have the largest communities of followers.

Here’s a sample online tracking sheet using imaginary data for imaginary coffee chain Java Java Joe:

Jan 1 – Jan 31, 2009 Company: Java Java Joe

Metric	Comments	% Change
Positive Comments	18	Up 3%
NegativeComments	7	Down 2%
Neutral Comments	56	Up 5.5%
Fans	Outlets	Notes
Julie Bean	BeanThereBlog.com	Over 1000 subscribers; says she buys our coffee several times a week; frequently posts short comments about her JJJ addiction; lives somwhere in Minnesota
Hecklers	Outlets	Notes
		Lives near our Portland outlet but isn’t pleased with staff; three negative posts in last 6 months
Industry Experts	Outlets	Notes
		Award-winning barista; writes for print occasionally; lives in Boston; no mentions of us yet

For help monitoring online conversations, try Google™ Alerts and Who’s Talkin. As its name suggests, Google searches the Web, including blogs and social media tools, and alerts you to mentions of your specified search term. Set up daily, weekly, or “as it happens” updates and get notified by e-mail. WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations. Its search and sorting algorithms combine data from over 60 of the Internet’s most popular social media gateways.

A few last words

Whatever you do, join the conversation, but do it in an ethical and honest manner. Don’t pay people to talk you up or put others down. Be respectful and appreciative of people’s opinions—their feedback shows you how to improve.

Remember, if you want word of mouth there has to be a fresh reason to have a conversation. That takes constant innovation, but even small ideas can have an impact. Savvy marketers know that it’s not enough to be worthy of praise. You actually need to get people talking.

Ready? Then go forth and spread the good… no, make that great, word.

---

¹ Dye, Renee. “The Buzz on Buzz.” Harvard Business Review. Nov. & Dec. 2000. 07 Feb. 2009
<http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/1956.html>.
² “Word of Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool.” Press release. Nielsen. 01 Oct. 2007. The Nielsen Company. 24 Feb. 2009
<http://www.nielsen.com/media/2007/pr_071001.html>.
³ Make Word of Mouth Marketing Work for Your Company. Webinar. Narr. Andy Sernovitz. <www.marketingprofs.com>.
19 Dec. 2007.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Keller, Ed, and John Berry. The Influentials. New York: The Free P, 2003.
Blue Papers
⁶ Smith, Kimberly. “How Twitter Helped Save Ford from a PR Disaster.” MarketingProfs. 03 Feb. 2009. 02 Mar. 2009
<http://www.marketingprofs.com/casestudy/125>.
⁷ Oaks, Jim. “Our (my) Agreement With Ford (remedy).” The Ranger Station.
10 Dec. 2008. 02 Mar. 2009 <http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:nV35_m7zKVEJ:
www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D3284+on+my+agreement
+with+ford&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us>.
⁸ Skillman, Brad. “Whole Foods Backs Chief on Web Posting.” International Herald Tribune. 08 Oct. 2007: 15.⁹ Johnston, Bill. “Online Community ROI.” Weblog post. Red Plastic Monkey Blog. 28 Mar. 2008. 24 Feb. 2009
<http://redplasticmonkey.wordpress.com>.

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© 2009 4imprint, Inc. All rights reserved

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About the Author:

New Business Mentor Leah Grant publishes Startup Success, a weekly enewsletter. If you're thinking about starting a new business or are in the early phases of entrepreneurship, get your FREE New Business Startup Kit including the Secrets of Successful Business Owners audio at www.leahgrant.com.

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