Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Trend Watch)

There's a new wind blowing through the marketing arena. You will be hearing more about Word of Mouth Marketing.

It really is nothing new. People have been telling their friends about good (and bad) commercial experiences since Eve told Adam about the forbidden fruit.

What's different about this new wind is the intentionality of the approach. There's even a Word of Mouth Marketing conference sponsored by the WOMMA - Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Seems like someone is finally trying to control the organic path that WOM messages follow. My advice is to keep an ear open for dialog about WOM. The same way you paid attention to noise about the "World Wide Web" and "One-to-One" marketing a few years back. This is going to grow for a while and the things we learn as a result will change the way we tell stories about our products and services.

For a good discussion thread on WOM, visit John Moore's Brand Autopsy blog.

Question: Is this a different thing? Or, a thing done differently?

Wisdom from the plains of Texas

True story -

I was the brand new marketing director for an association of 350+ retail stores and very excited about the comprehensive Christmas advertising campaign I had developed. Each store as going to be able to select elements that were "perfect" for their market and we had gathered a significant amount of co-op money from vendors.

After mailing out information packets to all the stores, my customer service team sat poised by the phones anticipating the flood of calls we were going to receive as store operators placed their orders for Christmas advertising.

As you can probably surmise, there were very few calls. I was flabbergasted and decided to call a few stores to make sure the mailings had arrived.

It only took one call - to a store in Brazos Valley, Texas - to teach me a lesson I've never forgotten and try to pass along as often as I can.

The store manager affirmed that he had received the package and had actually tried to figure it out. Unfortunately, the matrix of choices and options I had developed were far too confusing for anyone to understand, despite the fact that I had even designed the material with color charts and graphs.

In his best Texas drawl, the guy in Brazos Valley said, "Jim, this might be a great program but confusion is the mother of indecision and I cain't make a decision if I cain't understand what Ah'm supposed to be deciding."

It really was a good program, but he was passing up a couple thousand dollars worth of free advertising because I had made the decision too complex.

Suggestion: Bring someone from outside your company, someone who knows nothing about what you're trying to accomplish, and ask them to make decisions based on your material. Watch them try to negotiate your website, decipher your deal flyers or understand your discount schedule.

YOU may know how to read your stuff, but that doesn't matter because YOU do not shop at your store. What you think doesn't matter - it's the customer's indecision that's killing you.

Question: Can you think of examples where a good product or service suffered because the explanation or sales pitch was too confusing?

Tell me this is a fake, PLEASE

Ben and Jackie at Church of the Consumer open the door to a sad commentary on customer relations.

Read this and try to decide if it's really a fake conversation.

Tell me something I don't know

I was watching the Chris Matthews Show on Sunday morning and heard something he does each week, but this time from a different perspective.

Chris ends his program each week by asking his panel to "tell me something I don't already know."

Tough assignment. Matthews is one of the sharpest guys on TV and there probably isn't much he doesn't already know.

Washington politics is a group sport and there isn't much an insider like Matthews hasn't heard. However, the members of his panel were in a position to give their host a different spin on the prevailing conventional wisdom of the day and offering a fresh perspective brings something of value to the table.

What he should say each week is, "give me a fresh perspective on something I already know."

Suggestion: Greet your management team at this week's meeting with the request for them to give you a different spin on something you already know.

While you're going around the room, pay attention to those who tell you what they think you want to hear and to those who give you genuinely valuable fresh perspectives. Doing so might help you increase profits by eliminating people who aren't contributing something you don't already have.

Weekend Bonus

Because I live close enough to Yosemite to make it up and back in a day, I drove up the day Glacier Point Road was opened and snapped a few photos. Thought you might enjoy this view of Nevada Falls in full roar. Have a great weekend.


Most browsers will allow you to click and enlarge the picture.

Good weekend chuckle

This post from an author in Australia is a real hoot - I laughed all the way through.

Enjoy

And it wouldn't be anywhere near as funny were it not unfortunately true.

I am NOT kidding

While reviewing some meeting notes with a pro bono client, I came across something that caused me to LOL (laugh out loud).

The organization desperately needs to update some service offerings and programs but doing so will slaughter some very well-established sacred cows. From just about everyone’s perspective the changes are critical and without them the organization will be doomed to fail within the space of just a few years as constituent levels continue a steady decline.

One member of the leadership team is highly invested in maintaining the status quo; having successfully blocked every attempt to implement new ideas. It was this individual whose comment during the meeting was packed with ironic hilarity.

When another team member suggested the organization might run a 6-month test to “see how people respond to the idea” this guy says – and I am NOT kidding, “I don’t want to try anything new, because if it works, we’ll never go back to the old way.”

Read it again.

And you thought your group was the only one with problems like this!