How-To: Marketing WITH Consumers
5 Tips from Bazaarvoice's Sam Decker
"Customers are exposed to anywhere from 247 to 3000 commercial messages each day," says Sam Decker, vice president of marketing and products for Bazaarvoice. "The growing attention on word of mouth, authenticity, transparency, and social networking is in reaction to customer cynicism, distrust, sensory overload and lack of time."
To market with -- rather than to -- consumers, Sam shares these five tips:
Tip #1. Do the waggle dance
In the book "The Wisdom of the Hive" by Thomas Seely (and paraphrased in James Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds"), the author describes how bees find nectar. Since they don't know where different flower patches are located, bees don't consider all alternatives first and then determine an ideal foraging pattern. Instead, a hive sends out scouts and trusts that one of them will find the best patch, return, and do a good "waggle dance" so the hive will know where the good food is.
Consumers, too, follow the waggle that will most likely lead to finding what they want. Learn to waggle.
Tip #2. Go upstream in the company
With a nod to Seth Godin, this means creating great "Purple Cow" products and services. Great products with real value are like a field of flowers: mavens and connectors find these products and waggle others to them.
Tip #3. Foster authentic, direct dialogue with customers
Customers will follow waggles from new sources –- blogs, reviews, personal recommendations, etc. The more emotional the subject and the more passionate and authentic the source, the more visible the waggle. These people are part of the hive, directing others to the nectar.
Tip #4. Empower customers to be authorities
By connecting customers to each other through forums and councils, and empowering them to be authorities (via customer reviews, for instance), they're more likely to express and share opinions.
Tip #5. Commercial messages have less waggle
Commercial messages have led us astray. It's as if spiders have disguised themselves as scout bees and are waggling the hive to fly towards their webs.
"A fundamental issue is to change management culture and perspective from internal waggle to external waggle," says Sam. "Be great, be real, let your flowers bloom, and the waggle will follow."
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Comments
Great tips Sam. I agree that these things will lead to stronger, more legitimate relationships between business and consumer. I wonder about how much time it takes for the results (ie, higher sales) to be seen. For small business, I would assume a fairly quick impact could be measured, at least in terms of site visits (or foot traffic for the bricks and mortar world). Moreover, as a small business, creating a cluster of vocal advocates is essential to help grow - period. Indeed, I think it's this ground-up street legitimacy that has made Craigslist such a powerhouse. But, it wasn't overnight success. And Craig's not a public company and doesn't have to meet quarterly earnings targets.
For large businesses, these are the right steps to take as well. But, particularly if they are publicly held, they'll always be pushing for rapid, quick-hit type initiatives that produce immediate sales. I wonder if there is a 'waggle-to-sales' converter calculator for Fortune 1000 marketing folks to use.
Posted by Sam on 03/ 2/06
WOMM is fantastic and works a treat. I have a little problem in as much as I manufacture and sell personall relocatable polycarbonate safes that are a very very personall item. People will!! tell their close friends. However - for them to open up and sing the praises of our product - which they do directly with me, with no encouragement on my part I might add, is a very different story - they don't want others to know they are using the product.
Have you any ideas
dj
Posted by David Jackson on 04/ 7/06