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Book Summary: The Secrets
of Word-of-Mouth Marketing - by George Silverman
summarized by Regine Azurin and Yvette Pantilla
This article is based on the following book:
The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth
by George Silverman,
Amacom 2001
Spread the word about your hot new product or company!
Word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful and persuasive weapon you can
use, and it won't cost you anything! Based on George Silverman's years of
consulting with successful word-of-mouth campaigns of his own clients, here
is one of the first resources on how to harness the often underestimated power
of word-of-mouth, and be heard above the media noise.
- Word-of-mouth is actually the center of the marketing universe.
- Just as it is untrue that the sun revolves around the earth, marketing
does not really revolve around advertising, selling, and promotions. Much
of marketing actually centers around illusion-creation.
- Word-of-mouth offers an authenticity to it because the source is normally
independent of the company, he or she is offering his or her own candid
opinion and therefore, the marketing appears credible.
- Advertising is the renting of a medium to send out a carefully crafted
message to a specific audience. Everything is paid for, whereas word-of-mouth
is a more effective tool; and best of all, it is absolutely free.
- Word-of-mouth can take on a life of its own. There are no limits to
how far-reaching it can be. Just study how fast a good joke on the e-mail
circulates.
- Studies have shown that a satisfied customer will tell an average of
three people about a product or service she likes, and eleven people about
a product or service with which she had a negative experience.
- Because this is the age of the Internet, e-mail, websites, chat rooms,
and video teleconferencing, word-of-mouth is even more important to businesses
today than ever before.
- The most important way by which sales can increase is by increasing
the speed with which decisions are made. Decision speed is the time it takes
for your customer to go from initial awareness to enthusiastic use and recommendation
of your product or service. Simplicity, ease, and fun govern the decision
process.
- Marketing success is determined more by the time it takes for your customer
to decide on your product than by any other single factor. Decision speed
is more powerful than positioning, image, value, customer satisfaction,
guarantees, or even product superiority.
- Shortening the customer's decision cycle means your product's benefits,
claims, and promises must be obvious and compelling; information must be
clear, balanced, and credible; comparisons must reveal meaningful differences,
your trials should be free and easy, your evaluations, clear and simple.
Guarantees should be ironclad and generous. Testimonials and other word-of-mouth
marketing must be relevant and believable. Delivery, training, and support
offered must be superior.
- A good way to spread the word on your company is to circulate true,
positive stories about it. FedEx is famous for its legendary employee who
hired a chopper just to deliver a package forgotten on the tarmac. People
love a good story, and that is the essence of word of mouth.
- There are 9 levels of word-of-mouth. They range from the public scandal
of minus 4, the product boycott of minus 3, to the raving customers/advocates
who tell you how great your product or service is (plus 3) to the "talk
of the town" level (plus 4).
- Examples of those who have reached plus 4 level of word-of-mouth marketing
are: Lexus Automobiles, Saturn Car Company, Harley-Davidson, Netscape Navigator,
Celestial seasonings herbal tea, The Internet, and Apple Computer
- Some ways of harnessing word of mouth are by using experts like customers,
suppliers, salespeople, experts' roundtable discussions and selling groups.
Take advantage of seminars, workshops, and speaking engagements, dinner
meetings, teleconferenced panel discussions, and trade shows. "Canned" Word
of Mouth consists of putting out videotapes, audiotapes, using a well-designed
website, or distributing CDs. There are also ways such as referral selling
programs, testimonials, and networking methods, hotlines (1-800 numbers)
and e-mail.
- Using traditional media for Word of Mouth means using customer service
as a word-of-mouth engine, public relations, placements, unusual events,
promotions, word of mouth in ads, sales brochures, or direct mail, salesperson
programs, sales stars, peer training, or using salespeople as word-of-mouth
generators, word-of-mouth incentive programs ("Tell-a-friend" programs),
useful gifts to customers (articles, how-to manuals) that they can give
their friends.
- Employees should be actively spreading word of mouth about your products.
Spread stories around about examples of superior customer service. Give
people a common mission and make rewards dependent on the accomplishment
of that mission.
- Word of mouth accelerates the process of customer decision-making, from
deciding to decide, asking for information, weighing options, evaluating
a free trial, and then finally becoming a customer and advocate.
- With customer-oriented service, your company can increase sales via
word of mouth.
Specific steps in creating a word of mouth campaign:
- Find some way to get the product into the hands of key influencers.
- Provide a channel for the influencers to talk and get all fired up about
your product.
- Gather testimonials and endorsements, like actual letters of praise.
- Form an ongoing group that meets once a year in a resort but once a
month by teleconference or daily by list group.
- Create fun events to bring users together and invite non-users. Saturn,
Harley-Davidson, and Lexus have been successful with this approach.
- Produce cassettes, videotapes, and clips on your Web site featuring
enthusiastic customers talking with other enthusiastic customers. Custom-create
some CDs for each potential customer.
- Conduct seminars and workshops.
- Create a club with membership benefits.
- Pass out flyers. Tell friends. Offer special incentives and discounts
for friends who tell their friends.
- Use the Internet!
- Do at least one outrageous thing to generate word of mouth.
- Empower employees to go the extra mile.
- Network and brainstorm for ideas.
- Run special sales.
- Script! Tell people exactly what to say in their word of mouth communication.
Book summary by Regine P. Azurin and Yvette Pantilla http://www.bizsum.com/freearticle2.htm
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The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth
Marketing
How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth
by George Silverman,
Amacom, 2001 |
Many more articles in Sales & Marketing in
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