How-To: Winning at WOM Internally
5 Tips from Intuit's Kira Wampler
As a senior marketing manager for Intuit, Kira Wampler has a simple job description: focus on word of mouth. "I knew pretty quickly that it was important for me to build internal support," she says. "Even though we're cutting-edge, this whole area of amplified word of mouth is quite new to us."
Here, Kira shares her tips on how she garnered support for word of mouth from the inside out:
Tip #1. Identify mavens, connectors and sales people
Network like crazy. Invite to lunch anyone who has even remotely had anything to do with WOM.
Kira identified a crew she called Intuit WOMmers who ended up being a sort of internal support group for the company's WOM initiatives.
Tip #2. Give them a home
Initial meetings were one-to-one, but of course, WOM is about many-to-many conversations. If your goal is to rapidly expand and gain traction for WOM throughout the company, the word must spread.
Kira organized optional monthly sessions, a WOM wiki, and a WOM distribution list.
Tip #3. Offer relevant and desirable information
People need information in order to spread the word. After learning that the hottest internal WOM topics were measurement, internal support, and best practices, Kira pre-populated a wiki on those topics.
She also built a special "evangelist presentation" and asked WOMmers if they'd be interested in seeing the presentation first so they could provide feedback and feel engaged.
Tip #4. Evangelize like crazy
While Kira started with highly engaged groups, she also wanted to influence the larger Intuit population. She created another presentation that focused on key trends in society that are making WOM critical, plus a series of best practices examples which she customized depending on the audience.
Tip #5. Dive in and participate
Be willing and available to serve as a consultant or as part of the conversation between other teams and within other teams. She helps teams see "low-hanging fruit" that they can begin testing without investing large amounts of money and time.
More about Kira:
Comments
Great tips. Kira's a brainiac babe on a mission - to make Intuit a grassroots marketing and social software thought-leader. Her case studies are powerful - and she's an engaging speaker.
Go Kira! & Go Duke!
Posted by kirsten on 07/13/06