What are you customers saying about you online? How does this affect your sales? “Measuring Word of Mouth (WOM) Effectiveness” brought together four experts in the WOM field, including Steve Knox of the Tremor Division of Procter and Gamble.
Discuss Word of Mouth Marketing at WebProWorld.
For some perspective, Procter and Gamble makes 50 billion a year and spends 5 billion a year on marketing alone.
Knox shared his first-hand research-based word of mouth experience with a packed house of marketers today. He said that as their marketing developed they discovered that there were two types of people associated with how trends develop.
First there are trend setters. These are the people whose equity is based on being different. These are the people who, once someone else start wearing their new favorite kind of sunglasses, decides that sunglasses just aren’t cool anymore.
Trend setters do drive sales, but the true drivers of sales are the trend spreaders. These are the types of people who notice what the trends are and then get their friends to go out with them and buy the latest pair of jeans. These are the people that Procter and Gamble discovered have the most value to their brands.
If you connect with just 1% of trend spreaders within a market you can significantly influence your sales.
One other key point to word of mouth marketing that Knox pointed out – and I found this especially intriguing – you can’t explain everything in your ads. If you do then trend spreaders won’t have anything to say.
Knox also made a distinction between advocacy and amplification within word of mouth. His example of a high advocacy low amplification product was the Crest teeth whitening strips.
They’re very popular and people believe in them but they’re not something you discuss at parties really (Hey Joe, nice tie. By the way I think you should try the Crest Whitening Strips. Seriously.).
An example of high amplification, low advocacy was Budweiser’s “Wasssup!!” campaign. This got everyone talking, but not really about the brand.
Knox wrapped up his presentation with his three main ways of getting influential people talking about your brand.
1) Give them the information first. People love to break news. If you give it to the right people they will tell everyone.
2) Give someone the inside scoop. This ties in with getting news first, but it emphasizes a type of information that’s harder to come by.
3) Allow your consumers to influence your decisions openly. This is another key way of creating buzz about products that has a measurable effect on your bottom line.
Provide your connectors with information they find interesting and you’ll see your brand spread far and wide.
Garrett French is the editor of Murdok’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.
