Word of mouth marketing. How to make you talk
How to ensure your company a stunning success and popularity without spending a penny on advertising? How to make customers tell all your friends, acquaintances and even passersby about you? And only good! In fact, this is not difficult. You just need to start the word-of-mouth marketing mechanism.
How to do this, in full detail and with vivid examples, was written by Andy Sernowitz, in his acclaimed bestseller “Sarafan Marketing. How smart companies make people talk about themselves. ”
Let’s start with the basics
Word of mouth was always there, even in those times when nobody knew about blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter and other virtues of virtual life. But it was with the advent and rapid development of online communications that companies realized that this whole stream of conversations could be monitored and sent in a profitable direction. That is how word of mouth appeared.
So, what is word of mouth marketing? Andy offers a rather capacious and at the same time simple definition: “Word of mouth is a conversation between ordinary people, which takes place in a natural way. Word of mouth marketing is a job of talking about you during this conversation. ”
Word of mouth marketing is based on four simple rules:
• be interesting
• be simple
• make people happy
• earn trust and respect
Talking people is a key component of word of mouth marketing. But how to make people talk about your company, about your products or services? Why would they even talk about you? There are several reasons. More precisely, three.
1. Love what you do
Cool products, excellent service, unique chips – it could be anything. The essence is the same – your customers are delighted with you!
For example, millions are talking about Apple – even those who have never used iPhone, iPad and other gadgets of this company. Why all? Because their products are so cool that I want to talk about them.
2. Feel important, smart, helpful.
No matter how rational we wish to appear, the role of emotions in our actions cannot be minimized. Show your customers that with the help of stories about your company they will be able to show off their erudition, to help all friends with solving a problem. Highlight their importance to you – invite to presentations, closed events.
3. The need for identification
By purchasing your product, the user automatically becomes a member of his community, and tries on all the values and ideas that he carries in himself. Try to make your company’s customers united into a kind of subculture – so they will feel their involvement in the group, communicate with like-minded people (about you!) And carry rumors to the masses.
Key components
Word of mouth marketing includes 5 elements, without which it will not work, no matter how you would like it:
1. Speakers
Since conversations are the essence of word-of-mouth marketing, you need to understand exactly who will speak about you and establish contact with these people. At the first stage it is necessary to answer the following questions:
• Who are your speakers?
• who do they talk to?
• what are they talking about?
• how to find them?
Speakers may be among your regular customers, as well as those who first approached you. Also, it is worth looking at your employees – often they praise your company. Speakers also include those who act as a free carrier of your logo – use branded products (t-shirts, caps, backpacks, etc.). Also, speakers can be professionals of the industry with which your activity is related.
Having identified your speakers, you need to understand how authoritative they are and how much their audience is. And do not forget that quality is more important than quantity! A speaker with a small public, but a high authority in their eyes, can be much more useful than a thousand man without an adequate level of trust.
Once you have identified your speakers, contact them. After making contact, proceed to the next step – give them topics for talking about you.
“The more information you give to speakers, the more they speak.”
2. Themes
A good topic should be simple, organic, unexpected, and, most importantly, easy to spread. It must be viral.
“Be interesting or invisible.”
How to understand that the topic “shoot”? It is hardly possible to judge with firm confidence, but if you try every day, definitely some, and it will be successful. The trial and error method works here like nowhere.
Having come up with a topic, ask these questions:
• tell your friends about this?
• what exactly will be said?
• who will be told?
• How to increase the number of listeners?
By answering, you can easily identify all the flaws and pitfalls, and eliminate them. Or even come up with a completely new, better topic.
“Remember the rule: what looks great in a press release, booklet or advertisement is no good for a word of mouth”
3. Tools
It is foolish to sit back and wait until they talk about you. Take the first step. Ask to tell about you. For example, place on the site buttons “Share”
