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I just finished reading the story of word-of-mouth as a potential online savior (http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/9442.html).
Has anyone had a positive FIRST-HAND experience with facilitating a word-of-mouth campaign? (either as a client or in an agency).
What is your opinion?
Word-of-mouth or the power of referral marketing has certaily brought success to several of my online partner stores, one of them Gateway Computers. Gateway closed their walk-in stores partially due to the enormous volume of traffic driven to their site by Indepenent Business Owners like me.
This same word-of-mouth strategy has prompted another partner of mine, Barnes & Noble, to call my network their most important B2B partner.
You may not have heard of the energy drink product, XS Energy, but you will. We're number two under Red Bull and gaining. This is one of my products. Because of word-of-mouth and our network, XS went from a million in sales a year, to a million in sales a week--in 11 days!
Let me know if you'd like to learn more about my company.
This same word-of-mouth strategy has prompted another partner of mine, Barnes & Noble, to call my network their most important B2B partner.
You may not have heard of the energy drink product, XS Energy, but you will. We're number two under Red Bull and gaining. This is one of my products. Because of word-of-mouth and our network, XS went from a million in sales a year, to a million in sales a week--in 11 days!
Let me know if you'd like to learn more about my company.
Actually, the most dramatic examples of succussful word-of-mouth campaigns via the Internet are the Internet itself, and Linux/Open Source. I was directly involved in both.
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The Internet
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The internet was first made available for commercial use in June 1992, but had almost no support from the business community. From January of 1992 to July of 1997, I worked with groups of publishers, bbs operators, and businesses to promote the commercialization of the Internet. In 1993, the online-newspapers mailing list had only 40 members, mostly low-level programmers. By November of 1994, there were nearly 4,000 publishers trying to establish their first web sites. By June of 1995, there were nearly 8,000 online publishers including spin-offs that had weird names like Yahoo, Infoseek, CNet, and ZDNet. Add to that, the hosting companies who helped businesses set up advertizing on the web, and advertizing agencies who began connecting the two and the effort quickly snowballed into now nearly 30 million Internet servers world-wide.
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Linux and Open Source
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Linux was a similar word-of-mouth campaign. Microsoft had an advertizing budget of nearly $4 billion per year in 1993. Linux, which had grown from about 1,000 users in January of 1992, had gained the support of developers from hundreds of companies and organizations. The advertizing was almost entirely word-of-mouth via Linux advocacy groups and advocates posting to other newsgroups.
By the end of 1994, Linux was winning "Product of the Year" awards. By 1996, Linux was challenging Microsoft for the PC Server market. In 2002, Linux is the fastest growing segment of the PC market. Add to that, Linux is now Microsoft's most successful competitor. Linux still has a very small direct advertizing budget, with only IBM actually mentioning Linux by name in national advertizing campaigns. Dell and HP allude to "flexibility" and "not tied down to proprietary technology", but don't directly mention Linux.
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Word of Mouth - keys to success
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The biggest challenge in a word of mouth is that you have to engage in dialogues, in communities or forums with common interests. These dialogues will often involve "hecklers", and those with a negative agenda. To have a discussion about Linux, you have to have people who like Microsoft Windows challenging you and engaging in conversations. To have a discussion about Internet, you have to have people who have a vested interest in Print, mass-media, and other competitors.
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Honesty
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These competitors will look for and identify the "warts" in your product. You have to "fess up" to anything that isn't working as well as you'd like. You can even tell people when you've fixed the problem, and how you dealt with it. The challenge is that you can't have "salesmen" trying to tout their product as being "perfect and defect free", because they will quickly lose credibility.
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In some cases, detractors will point out design differences as flaws. Rather than just saying "ours is better", a good advocate (as opposed to a good salesman) should try to frame the choices as appropriate to different markets. Of course, you want to frame your choice as that which appeals to the largest market :-)
.
The Internet
.
The internet was first made available for commercial use in June 1992, but had almost no support from the business community. From January of 1992 to July of 1997, I worked with groups of publishers, bbs operators, and businesses to promote the commercialization of the Internet. In 1993, the online-newspapers mailing list had only 40 members, mostly low-level programmers. By November of 1994, there were nearly 4,000 publishers trying to establish their first web sites. By June of 1995, there were nearly 8,000 online publishers including spin-offs that had weird names like Yahoo, Infoseek, CNet, and ZDNet. Add to that, the hosting companies who helped businesses set up advertizing on the web, and advertizing agencies who began connecting the two and the effort quickly snowballed into now nearly 30 million Internet servers world-wide.
.
Linux and Open Source
.
Linux was a similar word-of-mouth campaign. Microsoft had an advertizing budget of nearly $4 billion per year in 1993. Linux, which had grown from about 1,000 users in January of 1992, had gained the support of developers from hundreds of companies and organizations. The advertizing was almost entirely word-of-mouth via Linux advocacy groups and advocates posting to other newsgroups.
By the end of 1994, Linux was winning "Product of the Year" awards. By 1996, Linux was challenging Microsoft for the PC Server market. In 2002, Linux is the fastest growing segment of the PC market. Add to that, Linux is now Microsoft's most successful competitor. Linux still has a very small direct advertizing budget, with only IBM actually mentioning Linux by name in national advertizing campaigns. Dell and HP allude to "flexibility" and "not tied down to proprietary technology", but don't directly mention Linux.
.
Word of Mouth - keys to success
.
The biggest challenge in a word of mouth is that you have to engage in dialogues, in communities or forums with common interests. These dialogues will often involve "hecklers", and those with a negative agenda. To have a discussion about Linux, you have to have people who like Microsoft Windows challenging you and engaging in conversations. To have a discussion about Internet, you have to have people who have a vested interest in Print, mass-media, and other competitors.
.
Honesty
.
These competitors will look for and identify the "warts" in your product. You have to "fess up" to anything that isn't working as well as you'd like. You can even tell people when you've fixed the problem, and how you dealt with it. The challenge is that you can't have "salesmen" trying to tout their product as being "perfect and defect free", because they will quickly lose credibility.
.
In some cases, detractors will point out design differences as flaws. Rather than just saying "ours is better", a good advocate (as opposed to a good salesman) should try to frame the choices as appropriate to different markets. Of course, you want to frame your choice as that which appeals to the largest market :-)
rballard wrote: "The internet was first made available for commercial use in June 1992, but had almost no support from the business community."
I was using the internet in the early 1980s. I made the first-ever publicly-accessible, interactive online database (for the HR industry) sometime around 1983.
I think that you are referring to the World Wide Web, based on that great British invention: html.
Other than that, I agree with your comments whole-heartedly ;)
I was using the internet in the early 1980s. I made the first-ever publicly-accessible, interactive online database (for the HR industry) sometime around 1983.
I think that you are referring to the World Wide Web, based on that great British invention: html.
Other than that, I agree with your comments whole-heartedly ;)
Word of mouth can be very effective differentiating products or services in commoditized categories or where the perceived purchase or use risk of a new product is high. The power of word of mouth is twofold - someone else had already taken the risk you are hesitant to take and had a positive experience, and the source of the communication is perceived, in most cases, as more credible than other executional strategies.
Techniques for discovering and "seeding" word of mouth and testimonials vary widely - My experience ranges from products as mundane as tires to those as emotionally charged as luxury automobiles - You are essentially seeking an engaging story or an experience that can internalized by others in your target. Once you have the story, a variety of community building, media and technology stragies can be evaluated against objectives and resources.
Steve Stepanek
sfstepanek@broadbandagency
www.broadbandagency.com
Community is perhaps the most essential part of word of mouth campaign. Nothing will facilitate your word-of-mouth campaign better than an effective, stable, well-targeted community, the ultimate goal of which would be not only to link the customers together, collect testimonials, communicate promotional messages and messages of your advantages over the competitors, but also to build a real alliance with the customer and align your objectives/tactics/strategies with the customers’ vision.
Best regards,
Alexander Bulgakov
Quantum Art
aleksandrbulgakov@artq.com
http://www.artq.com
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Along those lines, I just finished reading the book "Anatomy of Buzz" by Emanuel Rosen, which outlines several key issues, among them, the notion of building a community.
And yet, HOW does one ATTRACT and/or RECRUIT the right people to build your "community" (or communities)? All the typical be-nice rules would seem to apply - but are there other considerations? After all, word of mouth can work for you, or against you. . ..
A colleague of mine who runs an online store actually e-mailed the customers and informed them of her intentions of building a community. She openly asked those who were willing to reply to write first-hand testimonials and to allow her to put them on her site for others to view. Moreover, she simply made them aware of her planned campaign, her main competitors, etc. and… asked them to spread the word. She says that it worked out 100%, and her sales are now great. Of course, community is a thorough project with medium/long term returns. Normally it takes much time to give it the first “kick”, so to say, but, as you know, word of mouth is one of the few promotional techniques with exponential results in the long run.
Even though what she did could work for a small business with really close intimate relationships with customers, it will not necessarily work for a larger business – I’m actually pretty sure it won’t.
Even though what she did could work for a small business with really close intimate relationships with customers, it will not necessarily work for a larger business – I’m actually pretty sure it won’t.
Best regards,
Alexander Bulgakov
Quantum Art
aleksandrbulgakov@artq.com
http://www.artq.com
so - can you use word of mouth to help YOUR business?
Eric Wholley
ewholley@mediaone.net
I have found that any word of mouth campaign needs to have a strong message/vision inorder to thrive. When people see a purpose and/or value to the message they will want to spread it. Also the advertising must reflect a motivation that encourages the word of mouth. This is an important way to keep momentum throughout your campaign. You are trying to create a social currency for those who will spread the word.
pw.
patrick@idmg.org
This thread has been dormant for months, but I'm new here and if anyone is still listening, I'm astounded that no one mentioned the obvious: Add a forum like this one to your website. I have chosen vendors on the basis of their user forums. Everyone should because it is the only (scalable) source of reliable information. Beware of forums where negative posts seem non-existent. Virtually all companies have to deal with customers, and those who do so in public get my business.
Andi
Andi
Yes, there is a big difference between running a small business where you know your customers by name and email them individually, and running a mid-size or large business where your customers are measured in terms of statistics and graphs.
There's no way a company with 600,000 customers can expect to communicate on a personal level with customers, unless they can develop a system where customers support other customers. This is in a way what Amazon did with their review system, and they were very successful with it.
Right, and in addition to that concept of customers helping customers - what about the sales force? Couldn't they be trained to cultivate "community" (via person-to-person contact)? Hmmm. maybe word of mouth DOES have scaleabilty.. . . .or am I just being silly?
Eric Wholley
ewholley@mediaone.net
