by: Christian Smagg
You may have come across one of my posts entitled “Which consumer 2.0 are you?” urging marketers to develop a better understanding of their customers’ online behaviour and devise a coherent and adapted social strategy accordingly.
You probably also remember a recent post called “The Shifting Balance of Power: When CRM becomes CMR” where I was addressing how marketers should understand how to craft the collaborative customer experience and better engage the customer in order to increase profits, improve marketing efficiency and develop customer satisfaction.
Well … Nielsen released a couple of days ago the results of their “Online Global Consumer Study” surveying Internet users on their attitudes toward many types of communication channels, including consumer-generated content. This worldwide study shows that while there are more marketing channels aimed at consumers than ever before, yet more than three-quarters of Internet users surveyed find that consumer opinions and recommendations are the most effective form of advertising with more than 60% trusting consumer opinions posted online.
Another interesting and increasingly important concept is the one of “brand evangelists”. Indeed, consumers who are passionate about their interests spend a lot of time online keeping up to date and are natural brand evangelists. According to a recent Yahoo! and MediaVest’s study called “Passionistas: The New Empowered Consumers”, these passionate consumers spend six minutes online for every one minute spent with the same content by most other Internet users. While the number of consumers whose advice is sought, trusted and acted upon by consumers is increasing, passionate consumers are naturally predisposed to spread not only the word about their interests but also the associated brands.
Finally, a recent Deloitte survey also addressing the trustworthiness of sources used to make online purchases found that 62% of Internet users read product reviews written by other consumers and that virtually all online shoppers (nearly 99%) are now finding them credible. More than eight in 10 respondents who read consumer-generated online reviews said their purchase decisions have been directly influenced by the reviews, either influencing them to buy a different product than the one they had originally been thinking about purchasing, or confirming the original purchase intention. 42% of online shoppers also thought that featuring consumer reviews on Web sites increased consumer trust in the sites – and presumably the products therein.
Some online retailers are reporting higher sales conversion rates as a result of allowing customers to post product reviews on their Web sites. Marketers should therefore not only focus their attention on what consumers are saying about their brands online but also make consumer feedback an essential part of every marketing initiative. Granted, the majority of products and services are not purchased online, but site trust is also important to consider for consumers who research online but purchase offline.
All recent studies demonstrate that word-of-mouth (“WOM”) has more of an impact than any other traditional forms of communication. Having a word-of-mouth and social marketing strategy is therefore becoming essential and marketers will have to quickly learn how to effectively target consumer influencers. They should focus as much attention on what consumers are saying about their brands online as they do on any other form of communication.
Word-of-mouth marketing may be the oldest form of advertising but, as a marketing discipline, is a relatively new and increasingly important phenomenon that should be considered as a double-edged sword by marketers. Indeed, the more companies try to control or direct word-of-mouth, the greater their risk of failure. Inspiring consumers to “spread the word” is challenging, and clumsy attempts at it can do more harm than good. Marketers therefore need an authentic approach to make word-of-mouth work well. On the other hand, properly executed, WOM marketing is an incredibly effective weapon in the marketing arsenal, because the message comes from a trusted source.
Giving consumers a reason to talk about you, making it easy for them to share information about you, engaging and energising them to spread the good word are key ingredients of any word-of-mouth marketing campaign. Here are a couple of tips & tactics to start reaping the benefits of effective WOM marketing:
Word-of-mouth marketing starts with customer satisfaction: A happy customer is a potential advocate and influencer but watch out! … An unhappy customer is even more powerful. It is therefore critical to measure your customer satisfaction by asking your clients whether they would recommend you and track key customer loyalty metrics.
Give your customers a voice by making it easy for them to recommend your products and/or services. Facilitate communication and encourage positive conversation about your brand and organisation (by simply adding a "tell-a-friend" component, “product rating” or “customer reviews” feature to your website for example).
Identify and equip your customer evangelists. Give these influential customers inside information and reward their evangelism with recognition and support.
Join the blogosphere. A great corporate blog is the perfect tool to encourage open communication and information sharing. It creates a two-way dialogue with your customers and facilitates active discussion among your fans. Your blog also provides instant feedback from your customers so participate in the online conversation and take the pulse of your supporters … and your detractors.
Above all, keep it honest. Good word-of-mouth marketing is honest, transparent and real. Avoid spam and other unethical tactics at all costs!
Finally, and most importantly, don’t forget that customers don’t repeat ad messages, they share experiences!
Viral marketing, buzz marketing, blogging, community marketing, customer evangelism and other "consumer-to-consumer" techniques all inspire people to recommend your product or service. Key questions that need to be addressed by marketers include the role word-of-mouth is playing in the decision-making process, the identification of who the influencers are, the understanding of the context in which word-of-mouth is happening, the most effective way to devise an appropriate strategy and the techniques enabling both online and offline word-of-mouth to be tracked and measured.
Today, consumers have more ways to wield their influence and opinion than ever before. They are increasingly empowered, everyone has a voice, information and opinions are instantly dispersed. Word-of-mouth is quickly becoming the most credible form of marketing and organisations therefore need to determine how best to capitalize on this new landscape, in a context of increased market transparency.
For further insight on this topic, popular reading on Word-of-mouth marketing includes "The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth" by George Silverman, "Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff " by Mark Hughes, “Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution” and “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking” by Andy Sernovitz. These highly recommended books are all available online through your SaaShop.
Original Post: http://www.saastream.com/my_weblog/2007/10/word-of-mouth-o.html
