Decoding Word of Mouth

by Scott JeffreyJun 17, 2010

Getting customers to talk about your products and services has long been the marketer’s coveted goal. Elusive as word of mouth (WOM) may be, the fruits of positive consumer talk can transform any business.

No matter how great your advertising and promotional strategies are, nothing is more powerful than one real person telling another real person why they should buy from you.

Most marketing initiatives and business plans incorporate some aspect of so-called viral marketing since Seth Godin’s Unleash Your Ideavirus and Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

But knowing terms like sneezers, influencers, connectors, and mavens won’t help you create authentic WOM.

What will? Start by understanding why your customers talk in the first place. Then, you’ll be less likely to waste time trying to manipulate your customer’s opinions and more time supporting them with a superior customer experience.

Our latest slideshow, created by Aaron Shields and designed by Melissa Thornton, makes the rules of WOM crystal clear:

If you want to go deeper in your understanding of consumer talk, check out BJ Bueno’s Why We Talk: The Truth Behind Word of Mouth.

Motivating Positive Word of Mouth

by Aaron ShieldsFeb 25, 2010

Motivating customers to talk about your brand isn’t about providing incentives. Incentives only drive short-term talk, and talk fades away after the incentives disappear.

Driving long-term, positive talk requires innovating around what customers love about your brand and exceeding their expectations.

Exceeding expectations and taking into account customer needs is why the original Apple iPhone dominated post-release buzz when compared the the release of the recent Palm Pre.

Apple knows that a central component to what its customers love about the Apple brand is an easy user experience. Despite levels of hype leading to the iPhone being dubbed the Jesus phone, the iPhone exceeded everyone’s expectations on its ease of use, leading to a plethora of blog posts proclaiming its virtues and even YouTube videos of toddlers working the intuitive user interface.

In contrast, the Palm Pre was positioned so that at best its interface could match the ease of the iPhone, but not exceed it by noticeable degrees. Even if the Pre matched the iPhone, meeting expectations is not enough to generate a viral spread of positive word of mouth.

Palm would have been wise to head the advice that helped Ed Colligan, Donna Dubinsky, and Jeff Hawkins to turn Palm into the giant it once was: Underpromise and overdeliver.

For more on generating positive word of mouth, check out my deck The New World of Word of Mouth over at SlideShare.