Get Your Customer's Talking

WOM secrets to success

With marketing budget’s shrinking, growing pressure to win more customers and more people networking through social media, WOM is a critical strategy to have in your marketing mix.  But, what strategies can you adopt to increase customer’s talking about your brand.  In my earlier blogs I looked at a number of successful WOM campaigns that have enabled companies to reach the tipping point.

The key take-outs from these campaigns were:

• Get a few people of a particular set of social skill involvement in spreading the word first. Provide opportunities for influences to have a conversation on behalf of your brand. This could be as simply as an online forum for selected customers, like E.L James did to develop her 50 Shades of Grey story line.
• Release content that is highly creative that’s aligned to your audience’s interests. Creative content will increase the stickiness factor and render the content memorable.
• Launch your product when you know your market it ready to adopt the new idea.

Today I’d like to give you a few more simple strategies to get customers talking about your brand immediately and ongoing.  These tips are based on research conducted by Berger and Johan in 2011. 

Tip 1 – how to drive up immediate WOM.

Research shows that products that offer more interest to customers will receive more immediate WOM than products that don’t.  

Be interesting by being interested in your customers

Following this philosophy will help you keep your product interesting and increase immediate WOM for your brand. Do you think Starbucks in the US became so popular because of their $4.00 lattes? No they became popular because they offered customers a unique product as well as a customerised experience. This intense focus on their customers drove interest and talk about their brand. It’s a shame they haven’t been able to continue that level of customer interest as their brand has grown globally.

Another way to drive interest in your brand is by launching innovative promotional activities. A company that is famous for this style of WOM promotional activity is Red Bull. Red Bull embraces its brand vision, ‘Red Bull gives people wings’ through ever thing it does. This translates into a company that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.  An example of how they met this philosophy and increased WOM significantly was their sponsorship of the Red Bull Stratos space diving project, which involved Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner going into the stratosphere before free falling in a pressure suit and then parachuting to Earth. Alone the You Tube video of the Felix Baumgartner’s freefall to date has received 34 million views.

Click here for You Tube video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I

Tip 2 – driving ongoing WOM.

Research shows that whilst people want to talk about interesting things, in reality people’s conversations revolve around things that are mundane and day-to-day. This means that the products people mostly talk about are those that are publicly visible, i.e. those that spring to mind.  Therefore, if you want your product to be talked about, you must make it visible to your target market.

An example of this is Red Bull progressive marketing activities. To keep their brand visible they push their brand forward by engaging social and digital media and centering their customers at the heart of their promotional campaigns. Red Bull uses innovative marketing techniques to listen and react to their audience in relevant and engaging ways.

Tip 3 – driving immediate and ongoing WOM.

Research shows that products that are cued to the environment are more likely to increase WOM. A great example of this is the campaign launched by Michelob beer in 1978, “The Weekend’s are made for Michelob beer”. Michelob beer launched a campaign that link the weekend with their beer using social media as a platform. This commercial demonstrates a simple and effective why to build a strong connection between a product and consumer activity Michelob beer and consuming over the weekend break and drive up relevant WOM conversation about your product. 

Whilst thinking up environmental clues that work with the type of product you have this is an extremely effective strategy to adopt and worthwhile putting time into developing a number of good environmental marketing ideas to test.

Michelob Beer 'Weekends' Commercial (1978)

Click here for the commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1uaCmBXrU

Berger, Johan (2011), What Drives Immediate and Ongoing Word of Mouth, retrieved from, http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/ehost