5 Tips from eCRUSH's Amy Gibby
In a world where MySpace, YouTube, and Friendster are king, the brands that are willing to mine social networks for loyal customers are the ones striking the most marketing gold. But winning in social spaces requires more than just playing the social network game, according to Amy Gibby, president of eCRUSH. To succeed, brands must be willing to engage the other players -- namely, the Millennial Generation -- and, ultimately, to play by their rules.
In order to get teens in social spaces to care about your brand, consider Amy's five tips:
Tip #1. Do your homework
Companies that want to engage in social networks should first figure out what they're all about. "Play in the sandbox before you start throwing in toys," Amy says. She recommends learning to navigate the "socnets" before trying to participate in them and points to eMarketer and Ypulse as useful resources.
Tip #2. Be polite
Each social networking site has its own customs and culture to which successful companies must adapt, according to Amy. "What's cool on MySpace is not necessarily copasetic on Facebook," she says. "What flies in MyYearbook might not be the right play on Bebo." Amy recommends listening to Procter & Gamble's AdTech Chicago presentation for tips on balancing intimacy with intrusiveness in social networks.
Tip #3. Test, test, test
According to Amy, word of mouth should be tested within sample spaces before it goes public. She adds that businesses like Bzzagent and CommuniSpace, and sites like eCRUSH's own eSPIN, offer highly targeted and controlled universes for testing the impact of a word of mouth campaign prior to launching it. At eSPIN, she says, "You can set the desired target and budget and walk away with critical learning, not having wasted an impression or a dollar."
Tip #4. Accept failure
When you're new to social spaces, you have to be prepared to fail within them, Amy says -- at least at first. "If you're going to play in the social network," she advises, "you're opening up your brand to criticism (and praise)." She recommends Pete Blackshaw's "Parenting Your Brand" for tips on learning from your own mistakes within social networks.
Tip #5. Partner for success
Nobody knows social networks better than social networks, Amy advises, so companies who want to participate in them would do well to collaborate with them, too. "Maybe you don't have to do all the work," she says. "You might know your brand best, but the socnets know their users best." As masters of their domain, social networks can tell you what will and won't fly with their users.
Amy's final tip: "Keep your mind open and let the teens guide you to the most relevant fit."
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Posted on
10/25/06
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5 Tips from Conkling Fiskum & McCormick's Tom Eiland
Hispanics account for 15% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That translates into a lot of market potential, according to Tom Eiland, partner at Conkling Fiskum & McCormick. After researching the country's Hispanic community, his company concluded that there is a ripe word of mouth infrastructure already in place there that enterprising marketers can tap into.
If you want to spread word of mouth within the Hispanic market, consider Tom's five tips:
Tip #1. Do the research
Before launching its own word of mouth marketing campaign within the Hispanic community -- for Tillamook Cheese -- Eiland's PR team conducted extensive research, including focus groups and surveys, to make sure that it was hitting the right audience with the right message. "Don't make any assumptions," Tom advises.
Tip #2. Acknowledge cultural differences
"Don't assume that all Latino communities are the same. They are different," Tom says. After all, Hispanic-Americans may come from Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South American, or a variety of other cultures -- all of which have their own messages and values. "You may need to be adaptable," he stresses.
Tip #3. Be flexible
Conkling Fiskum & McCormick experimented with word of mouth marketing in a variety of Hispanic markets. "It works well in some, and not well in others," Tom says, adding that word of mouth success in Hispanic communities requires an appreciation for a variety of marketing tools and techniques.
Tip #4. Be involved
All consumers appreciate it when companies reach out to and within their communities. In a recent word of mouth campaign, Tom says, Tillamook and Conkling Fiskum & McCormick flew employees from their Oregon office to California in order to volunteer within its Hispanic customers' communities. "The local communities really appreciated that the employees got involved, and that they're consistently involved."
Tip #5. Hire experts to help you
It's OK if your company doesn't understand the Hispanic market; partner with one that does. "There are a variety of good Hispanic and Latino research and PR firms out there," Tom says. "They may not be doing word of mouth yet, but they understand the market very well."
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Posted on
10/25/06
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5 Tips from GolinHarris' Jeff Beringer
Earning customer enthusiasm in a word of mouth world takes more than a plastic loyalty card and a few nominal discounts. According to Jeff Beringer, head of the interactive communications team at GolinHarris, it takes innovation and conversation. "In today's interconnected world, the voice of a brand loyalist carries more weight than ever before," he says.
To keep your most loyal customers excited and delivering positive word of mouth about your brand, consider Jeff's five tips for energizing brand evangelists:
Tip #1. Find your brand loyalists
Before you can energize brand evangelists, you must be able to find them. Jeff recommends establishing clear criteria for doing so. "One of the most important components of energizing your brand's loyalists is to first understand who they are," he says. "The definition of what constitutes a brand evangelist varies widely from company to company, so be sure to work closely with communications, marketing, and sales functions to get a clear picture of who the most loyal audiences are."
Tip #2. Give exclusive access and special privileges
Evangelists expect to be courted in return for their loyalty. "It's not enough just to produce great products or offer leading-edge services," Jeff says. "Customers want more from the companies they engage with." Show loyal customers you care by giving them special access to your company -- an advance-look at new products, for instance, or a dedicated customer support line for issues. "A little TLC goes a long way at building and maintaining loyal customers who will spread the word."
Tip #3. Respond quickly to comments and feedback
Evangelists not only expect companies to listen to them -- they demand it. "If you're a loyalist, there's nothing worse than a company that doesn't value your input," Jeff says. "Companies who ignore the voices of their brand loyalists often see not only a loss of repeat business, but also ill will, which can harm its quest for new customers, too."
Tip #4. Monitor and reach out proactively
Don't wait for loyal customers to find you before you recognize and reward them. "Savvy companies are closely monitoring online chatter to unearth opportunities for engaging their loyalists -- and even detractors -- in dialog," Jeff says. "Imagine the goodwill generated when a company posts a simple 'Thanks for your support' comment to a positive blog posting pertaining to their product."
Tip #5. Give brand evangelists a voice
Don't just engage brand evangelists, make them content co-creators. "For true brand evangelists, there's nothing more rewarding than seeing their input and passion for a product play out publicly or shape the future direction of a brand," Jeff says. More and more marketers are seeing results from open source initiatives, he adds, whether a television campaign or a survey that helps dictate product attributes. "Loyalists are typically thrilled to provide feedback and see their input put to work."
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Posted on
10/18/06
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5 Tips from Best Buy's Laurie Blum
Word of mouth marketing is effective when it inspires conversations about your brand. It's truly successful, however, when it also motivates people to buy more of your stuff. Laurie Blum, senior digital strategy manager for Best Buy, knows that. That's why this year her team organized a Labor Day weekend promotion that used online word of mouth to drive in-store purchases. "We'd always looked at very traditional vehicles, such as bag stuffers or direct mail pieces, to drive in-store traffic," Laurie says, "and we wanted to give this a try."
To give your own go at boosting brick-and-mortar sales with online word of mouth, consider Laurie's five tips:
Tip #1. Define your target
Finding the right audience is essential, according to Laurie. "We knew we wanted to target a younger audience to drive them into our store over Labor Day weekend, because we knew they weren't in school," Laurie says of Best Buy's recent campaign. "The main thing [that demographic] looks at is entertainment products, so we developed a coupon around those." The coupon was distributed along with copy and banners exclusively to online influencers who were charged with passing the coupon on to their friends and peers -- the very customers Best Buy hoped would use it.
Tip #2. Identify your partners
Most brands need a little help in order to create an effective campaign that's put together quickly and for the right audience. "Identify who can help you and how you want to spread the word," Laurie suggests. She points to existing ad agencies and vendors as possible allies in new word of mouth endeavors.
Tip #3. Watch how your message spreads
Metrics are necessary to all marketing campaigns. Word of mouth campaigns are no exception. "Make sure that you have tracking in place so you can see how [WOM] is being spread," Laurie says. "Internally, here at Best Buy, we make sure we have all our different coupons tracked individually. But we also apply a tracking code that's in the url people visit to download them."
Tip #4. Track online sales
If your campaign successfully drives in-store sales, chances are good that it will boost sales on your website, too. "We saw quite a few page views on our website, so we tracked back to our site to see how many people who saw the coupon made a purchase on our website," Laurie says. "It was higher than we expected. So we did see online results as well as offline."
Tip #5. Play with timing
Scheduling proved critical in Best Buy's Labor Day promotion, according to Laurie, who suggests certain times of year might be more word-of-mouth-worthy than others when it comes to driving in-store traffic. "We're going to continue leveraging online word of mouth moving forward for our second-tier holidays," she says, adding that those days are more ripe for word of mouth promotion, as customers are less aware of in-store sales during those times.
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Posted on
10/18/06
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5 Tips from BzzAgent's Dave Balter
"Word of mouth as a media form has substantial norms and trends that make it work," says Dave Balter. He should know. As founder and CEO of word of mouth innovator and advocate BzzAgent, he's spearheaded some 260 programs to pin down those word of mouth norms and trends.
To effectively implement word of mouth as a marketing tool, consider Dave's five tips for creating word of mouth media:
Tip #1. Think in terms of generations
Try visualizing word of mouth as ripples in order to understand its value. "It's not how many people you reach directly," Dave says, "but how many people they pass your message on to." That can be statistically represented by generations, he adds, which are a common word of mouth metric.
Tip #2. Know that WOM works with, not against, other media
"Word of mouth is a core element of how other media works," Dave says. He adds that 40% of all word of mouth dialogs use some other media form. "Word of mouth and other media are tied at the hip. You need to understand how other media is going to be talked about."
Tip #3. Approach WOM as a two-way dialogue
Word of mouth is a conversation. In other words, it's not just about showing a message, but about building a discussion around the values of a product or service. "The average word of mouth interaction lasts around eight minutes," he says. You should therefore educate customer volunteers to have the knowledge and background to have an informed discussion about your product.
Tip #4. Embrace disclosure
Word of mouth media requires disclosure because it's based on trust. "The reason word of mouth is so powerful is because it is credible and real," Dave says. Disclosure of involvement, then -- in a promotion or a conversation -- is key to success.
Tip #5. Spread WOM to multiple networks
Plant word of mouth seeds in the many networks that already surround you, Dave suggests. "It's not about creating word of mouth," he says, "but about generating it, finding communities who want to engage in it -- from social networks to book clubs -- and letting them in." Word of mouth, he concludes, travels faster when it exists within several circles of influence, rather than a static target audience.
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Posted on
10/11/06
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5 Tips from Beck Ag's John Finegan
Not all your customers are everyday consumers. Many, in fact, are your fellow businesses. Like consumers, they buy stuff -- and they buy a lot of it, too. Unlike consumers, however, they aren't easily sold, says John Finegan, CEO of agricultural WOM agency Beck Ag Com.
To successfully motivate business buyers, consider John's five tips for using word of mouth in the BtoB marketplace:
Tip #1. Practice integrity
Successful word of mouth marketers aren't perceived by businesses as marketers at all, according to John. They avoid making hard sells and are able to appear objective about their product. "Part of the reason word of mouth marketing has been so successful through the centuries is that it occurs between trusted sources and not because a marketer or agency is driving it as a 'new medium,'" John says.
Tip #2. Establish credibility
Credibility is key in marketing to business, according to John. That means making sure your advocates are believable and perceived as being genuine and real. "Situations where advocates are paid in cash or product generally do not work, especially in the BtoB world," John says. "If our audience feels the advocate has a vested interest in the product or service, there is low credibility. People see right through you if you're not credible."
Tip #3. Be professional
Quality and professionalism are of the utmost importance in BtoB marketing. "It's critical to offer our audience well-designed and implemented programs with fully trained and knowledgeable moderators," John says. "We cannot waste our audience's time." He adds that organization and functionality go a long way in proving reliability to business customers.
Tip #4. Add value
John encourages word of mouth marketers to remember the following acronym: WIIFM -- What's In It For Me? That's a question most business people ask, he says, especially when considering an investment of time or money. "We must bring value to our audience or the first program will be the last program," he says, adding that Beck Ag Com's mission statement includes a line about helping customers improve their business results. "If we continue to keep that goal in mind, we'll always bring value to our customers."
Tip #5. Raise the bar
Complacency is a disease, John suggests. To cure it, he recommends always striving to grow and get better at what you do. Don't settle for the types of campaigns you know will work -- be willing to get creative and to try new things as you learn more about your profession and your audience. "By always raising the bar of quality in everything we do," he says, "we increase the value that our audience gets from our programs and ultimately raise the ROI for our clients."
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Posted on
10/11/06
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5 Tips from BIGresearch's Joe Pilotta
"Word of mouth marketing is the type of marketing that most people already knew was important, but they never had a very systematic way of looking at what it means and how it works," says Joe Pilotta, VP of Research for BIGresearch.
In order to make WOM practices work together, you must have a way of synthesizing efforts. Here are Joe's five tips to make it happen:
Tip #1. Don't put WOM in isolation
Word of mouth campaigns can't be isolated from other marketing campaigns. That only puts them into a silo -- exactly what marketers should shy away from.
Tip #2. Learn where WOM works best
Word of mouth can be done in a variety of ways, but not every form of communication works as well as others. The best WOM occurs when it is similar to the way people truly speak. Face-to-face communication is obviously important, and cell phones with IM can be used successfully. Even text messaging, because of its use of a sort of encrypted language, can also be a successful WOM medium.
Tip #3. Consider the category of product
Marketing should be tailored to the type of media style for the category in which you are involved. Not all categories work well for WOM. For example, word of mouth is very useful in the electronics category, but not as useful in the area of purchasing groceries.
Tip #4. Be aware of where WOM is coming from
Companies too often look at WOM as originating from consumers' mouths. But very seldom do people "fall out of the sky" with great opinions. Generally, those opinions are taken from some form of media, whether it's from print or broadcast media or from the company itself.
Consequently, look not only at what your influencers are saying, but at what other media they are consuming that is helping shape their word of mouth.
Tip #5. Analyze and look for the real meaning
What is actually said in WOM is not always what is meant. Ask yourself: "Is it jest? Is it tongue-in-cheek? Is it serious?" Often, the people analyzing word of mouth look strictly at the transcript of what is said. Instead, look at the meaning behind the words, as well as the words themselves.
More about Joe:
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Posted on
07/25/06
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5 Tips from Informative's Greg Clemenson
"A brand is defined not by what we tell the customer but by what customers tell each other," says Greg Clemenson, CTO of Informative. "But that doesn't mean brands are helplessly adrift, unable to control or even influence the currents of consumer empowerment."
Here, Greg shares his tips on joining and staying involved in the consumer conversation.
Tip #1. Have a valid place in the conversation
Consumers talk about brands every day. While it may not be the first place they look, eventually consumers visit a brand or manufacturer's web site to find information about a product. Be sure to offer information that answers questions.
Tip #2. Use your voice and have an opinion
Think about "voice." How does your voice tie in with your conventional advertising? What are you doing and saying on the website? Are you reflecting your brand's personality across your entire communications strategy? Listen to what people are saying about you, and have an opinion.
Tip #3. Be relevant
Understand what's important to consumers as they talk about your product. Then be relevant when responding to their needs.
For example, one of Informative's customers, Royal Mail, is rolling out an electronically available stamp aimed at small businesses. Initially, they thought that businesses would choose it as a faster, more convenient way of getting postage. But the most important aspect of the product to real people turned out to be the fact that it made them look professional. That changed Royal Mail's whole marketing message.
Tip #4. Be responsible
You can have all kinds of modes of communication with people, but they'll only appreciate it if you're up front about who you are. Be responsible about your identity.
Tip #5. Remember that it's a social phenomenon
Companies that feel they have to isolate participants in market research to keep them from talking with each other ("unaided awareness") are forgetting that WOM is a social phenomenon. Always keep in mind that when people make a decision about something, it very seldom happens in isolation.
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Posted on
07/25/06
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