All Things WOM

More and more brands are using social media tools as a customer service opportunity. The ability to proactively react, rescue, and resolve issues using website like Twitter is truly transformative. Brands, whether they like it or not, are on call 24/7 in today’s online social world.

At a gathering recently in Washington DC, I shared a presentation on how (and why) brands are using social media to deliver customer service. (You can review the presentation slides here.)

As I was putting together my presentation, I noticed two tweets and a blog post that tell the importance of using social media to address issues from customers.

SMART INSIGHT (from @jowyang)

MISSED OPPORTUNITY (from @jackiehuba)

MADE OPPORTUNITY (from Robbin Phillips)

Recently I spoke with Jay Ehret, small business marketing pro with The Marketing Spot about how everything Word of Mouth has become online Social Media-centric. That was the starting point of our discussion. We covered lots of other territory. Paul Williams from the Idea Sandbox added in another perspective on the podcast.

One question Jay asked me was:
Is WOM diminished as a marketing discipline?

My reply:
“Absolutely not. A word of mouth recommendation from a friend or an acquaintance is and will always be trusted more than traditional advertising. Friends trust what friends say more than people trust what companies say. That isn’t going to change.

As a marketing discipline, WOM is now more important than ever because we have so many ways to connect with people besides a phone call or a face-to-face visit. Being able to have a conversation with someone using computers and smart phones increases the opportunity for WOM to happen.

>>> Have a listen to the podcast <<<.

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Key quotes from the podcast include:
“In the past, we just felt word of mouth would happen serendipitously…We’ve now learned through The Tipping Point…more people are trying to think about getting people to talk, not serendipitously, but strategically.” | John Moore

“The key of it is, people passing the word about you. …It just boils down to ‘what does it mean to be remarkable?’ So remarkable, that people remark.” | Paul Williams

“My advice is to be 100% confident in how you deliver a customer experience before you start to try to strike up conversations online. Because if you are not confident, you will not want to listen to some of the negative feedback online about how you are doing business.” | John Moore

“Word of mouth, to do it properly, it’s not just a department head; it’s not just one person. It’s the way you run a company.” | Paul Williams

“It doesn’t matter how many fans you have online. But we get caught up in that as a measurement of success, and frankly the real measure of success is; is a company making money. Are they turning conversations into transactions?” | John Moore

“I sort of see word of mouth as how do companies, and businesses and people give a script to the people who might talk about you. That way you can guide the discussion. So, ‘how can I give you bullet points to talk about my brand?’” | Paul Williams

According to a recent survey from Synovate for PostRelease.com, the most common word of mouth (WOM) activity is helping someone, either a friend or family member, with making a purchase decision.

Also, 40% of the survey respondents said they shared advice with friends and family offline (in-person or via phone) about something they read online.

This is strong evidence to support the 90/10 split of offline WOM to online WOM.

Learn more from this emarketer article.

MINI COOPER gets it. They know how to use advertising to spark conversations. In Amsterdam, MINI’s ad agency created an outdoor campaign that managed to break through the holiday advertising clutter.

This is old school offline WOM that spreads online as well. You may have already seen this passed around over email or twitter. On the MarketingProf’s DailyFix blog, Paul Williams breaks down the marketing strategy behind creating advertising that is worthy of WOM by being:

Read Paul’s excellent breakdown of MINI’s WOM-worthy advertising.

As 2009 turns to 2010, it’s fitting to think about new ideas for the New Year. My latest article for PROMO magazine shares four big ideas overheard at WOMMA’s recent “Creating Talkable Brands” conference that brands and agencies would be smart to think about in 2010.

Here’s a snippet…

Clear is the New Clever
It used to be that cheeky advertising was the dominant driver of brand messaging. Not today, according to Rob BonDurant, marketing vice president at Patagonia. In his keynote address, BonDurant talked about how his Patagonia marketing team follows the credo of “clear is the new clever.” He believes brands need to be more transparent in how they do business.

Patagonia is serious about being an environmentally sustainable business; they are also serious about visually showing their commitment to the environment. Their clever Footprint Chronicles website allows consumers to track the social and environmental impact of a Patagonia product through all phases of production from design to manufacturing to delivery.

Patagonia displays its clever transparency in other ways. For example, its digital catalogs are created using photos submitted by customers. (Last year, the company received 100,000 unsolicited photos from its customers.)

To create sustainable word of mouth conversations, BonDurant recommends businesses practice storytelling more than marketing, “At Patagonia, we don’t sell. We tell stories because storytelling creates a tribe of believers, which is more valuable than ‘customers.’ ”

>>> READ MORE from PROMO Magazine

Perhaps you know someone at your company who needs to get up to speed on word of mouth and social media marketing. Perhaps that someone is you. WOMMA is here to help.

Beginning Jan. 5, WOMMA is offering WOM-COMM, a seven-week online course sharing best practice education on how to more effectively and ethically use online and offline word of mouth marketing. You’ll learn the core strategies and tactics benchmark businesses are using to get customers talking. And, you’ll gain the knowledge needed to best measure the success of your next WOM marketing program.

The faculty for WOM-COMM is top-notch with practitioners (not pundits). At the recent CREATING TALKABLE BRANDS Conference, the WOM-COMM faculty gave us a sneak preview of what to expect.

Interested?

Click to learn more about WOM-COMM.

In presentations I give on word of mouth marketing for WOMMA, this slide always causes debate. It shares research findings from the Keller Fay Group on where conversations about companies take place. People are shocked to see the online percentage so low.

People are further shocked to learn, according to more Keller Fay statistics, about 1.3% of word of mouth conversations about brands happen on social media websites. Given the reported widespread usage of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc, how could that number be so low?

At the recent WOMMA Creating Talkable Brands conference, I heard Brad Fay, coo of Keller Fay, address this issue head-on. Fay explained, “It’s not that the online conversation is so small. It’s the other is so big.”

The big number Brad refers to is … 3,000,000,000. (Ahem, we’re talking three billion here.) That’s the number of word of mouth conversations Keller Fay estimates take place on a typical day in America. If 1.3% of word of mouth conversations about companies happen on social media websites, then that’s 43-million daily conversations. A VERY sizeable number.

In an email exchange with Ed Keller, ceo of Keller Fay, I asked him to support his company’s offline/online word of mouth findings.

“At Keller Fay we are measuring word of mouth conversation, not readership of consumer generate content. Lots of people might read information on social networking sites, but contribute infrequently. Especially when it comes to brands. There is recent research cited in the attached from digital agency Razorfish that says about 2% of online Americans post something online “daily” relating to brands.

People read statistics about the huge growth in social media and the numbers are impressive. There are fewer stats generally reported about the ~3 billion brand impressions created each day via offline WOM. The social media stats do not come close to that number. So the disconnect is that the offline number is so large, but not generally reported, so there is no point of reference from which to compare the social media stats.”

Ed Keller shares more explanation in this editorial piece. WOM Marketers … pay special attention where Ed says,

“… social media alone is not going to be the pathway to word of mouth success for most brands. It is a pillar, an avenue for conversation. The role of social media for consumers is, for now at least, more about connections with other people than connections with brands.”

Last month I joined Zuberance ceo/founder Rob Fuggetta for a webinar on creating and energizing brand advocates through word of mouth marketing.

Rob presented his company’s recent work for Symantec’s Norton anti-virus software where 10,000 Norton brand fans were energized to post online reviews. The result was significant: average online ratings increased from two-stars to four-stars and Norton’s “net promoter” score doubled. This online word of mouth program from Zuberance was recently awarded a 2009 Groundswell award.

I opened the webinar with some general information about the impact of word of mouth and a unique way to look at creating on-going word of mouth.

Watch and listen to this archived webinar…

At the WOMMA “Creating Talkable Brands” Conference in Vegas, I stumbled upon Steve Hershbeger (ComBlu), Blake Cahill (Visible Technologies), and Sean O’Driscoll (Ant’s Eye View) doing their “Socializing Media” podcast in the conference room foyer at Paris Hotel.

Their weekly podcast routinely highlights smart marketers and smart thinking about how brands can better connect with customers in the online world.

This video shares snippets of smart marketers talking community, influencers, word of mouth, and social media. The smart marketers include Scott Wilder, Emanuel Rosen (“Anatomy of Buzz Revisted”), Ian Baer (Cheil Worldwide), and Pauline Ores (IBM).

Video breakdown:
0:00 – 0:45 | Intuit community building with small businesses
0:45 – 2:08 | Distinguishing between “Influencer” & “Influential”
2:12 – 4:30 | The next big idea for marketers
4:31 – 4:40 | Emanuel Rosen on the state of WOM
4:41 – 6:25 | Attention Building vs. Community Building
6:25 – 8:05 | Consumer electronic brands and social media
8:05 – 8:50 | Kristen Smith, WOMMA Exec. Director

In the hour-long show, more smart marketers joined the podcast to sound off on all things word of mouth and social media marketing. Click here to listen to the full episode of “Socializing Media.”

When you return from a conference chock-full of insights, it’s difficult to share everything you learned. Sure, you can transcribe your notes but your notes are bound to have some holes. You can also pull insights from summaries other attendees have posted on their blogs.

Or … you whittle through the thousands of tweets from attendees to carve out a more complete list of insights. That’s the path I’ve chosen to take after returning from WOMMA’s Creating Talkable Brands conference.

Over 470 attendees shared 3,600+ tweets (.pdf download) with the #WOMMA hashtag during the three-day conference. I’ve whittled down the 3,600+ tweets to a more digestible collection of 165 tweets and compiled them into this SlideShare presentation. Enjoy.

NOTE: I’ll also be sharing video snippets and more in-depth summaries after the Thanksgiving holiday.