Word of Mouth is a bit of a primal thing. We cant help and talk about things that make us go wow or things that niggle and irritate us. It’s what we humans are programmed to do.

Word of Mouth Marketing is the art of getting people to fall in love with you, your brand or your business. To get them to revere and respect you so that they recommend you — for free.

Of course when they really do not like you, or you treat them with contempt, ignore their pain and generally not care, they will also share that for free.

A Series of Planned Events

In days gone past, word of mouth marketing could be left to a hope, a prayer that it happened for the good. Not any more.

Word of mouth marketing is a planned series of events that is designed to get people to talk about you, to rave about you.

It is a process that uses the newest strategies and tactics with the human behaviour. It triggers feelings and passions. It stimulates conversations that flows between channels and weaves in and out the online and offline worlds.

The Six Step Structure That Thrills

Word of Mouth marketing is the art and science of getting people thrilled and turned on by what you are doing so that they have no choice but to rave about you. To do this well takes six steps:

1. Know who your fans are, who is talking about you
2. See and feel their passions and emotional drivers
3. Design an experience that stimulates these drivers and passions
4. Activate the right tools to accelerate the conversations
5. Step up and being part of the conversation
6. Tracking, reviewing and redesigning

Becoming Familiar with The Unfamiliar

These six steps are not as structured as the traditional media methodologies, and are unfamiliar to many marketers and business owners. Yet they are common sense. They are the future of marketing. And I think the biggest challenge for most marketers is not these steps but becoming familiar with the unfamiliar.

It’s about people. Always has been. Always will be. It’s about getting new customer to buy and to keep old ones buying. This is what marketing is and

Marketing is about buying decisions. It’s about focusing on the elements that make people buy and making it simple for them to choose you. Yet this paradigm has changed.

How Are Buying Decisions Made

What is very clear is that brands are no longer trusted. With to many choices and marketers pimping their message in anyway possible, customers are looking elsewhere to get an unbiased, qualified opinion. They are looking to each other for information – or what we call word of mouth marketing.

And the stats show this. Socialnomics reports the following:

• 78% of people trust peer recommendation
• 14% of people trust TV Advertising
• 18% of traditional TV advertising managed to generate a positive return

When you read these stats it is very clear that we are now living in a people driven economy and companies have to re-design themselves around people rather than their process and systems.

What Is The Internets Role?

Here is some research conducted by Google and Keller Fay to see the effects of the Internet and Internet enabled devices on word of mouth conversations about brands. It is research based on the US market and the numbers are staggering:

• There are 2.4 billion conversations that involve a brand per day.
• There are 3.3 billion mentions of brands in a day.
• This is about 1.4 per conversation.

What makes this really interesting for me is how we go through the information gathering process and how we qualify our buying decisions.

This dynamic need state makes me think of how easy business are making it for people to deal with them. How easy is it for a customer to engage the company through each touch point. Certainly in South Africa, I don’t think to many are focusing enough attention in these keys areas.

Here is a summary of the research from Google and Keller Fay. You can download the full report here. Let me know what you think below in the comments.

67%. For Free! And this was in 2001 before the real internet explosion. This is not a phase or something that can be left to chance. Word of mouth is the most powerful media network in the world. Are you using it yet?

What percentage of your business is driven by Word of Mouth?

The seed to the greatest shift in marketing is how your customers now make their decisions. They ask their friends, colleagues, even strangers on the internet.

They believe these sources. They trust them and value their lack of bias. And they identify with them when they reflect who they are.

Your marketing strategies has to adapt to this, has to redefine how it influences your customers.

And this is why a word of mouth marketing strategy is not a process left to chance. Rather it is a deliberate, calculated process that is designed to build trust, inspire conversation and turn ordinary customers into raving fans.

Word of Mouth Is Driven By An Offline World (not Online).

Word of mouth marketing is not an online process. Given that the Internet has given word of mouth marketing a steroids boost, it’s easy to think so.

The numbers change depending on who you are looking at but as much 93% of all word of mouth happens offline, over coffee.

Just think about it. You have been inspired by a book, a movie, a product, an experience that shook your world. It made you excited about something that had meaning to you! And it was worth sharing with others.

It made a friends life better, or an acquaintances saw your value just a little bit more, or it just made you more part of the group. Whatever. By sharing you created value for you. You gained recognition, status.

This is why your customers talk. The reasons are the same. Word of mouth marketing happens when you make someone’s life better.

The 67% number was reported by McKinsey and Co.

I was really cynical when a colleague recommended Launch by Michael Stelzner. My first thought was here is another how to book that is short on the how and long on go use Twitter, Facebook etc.

Boy was I surprised – and blown away. I just wish that Michael had written this book 5 years ago.

What I really do like is that Michael has proven how effective a proper content strategy can be and where to focus. You don’t go from nowhere to number two in the social media niche by missing the boat. Michael shows you how to build the boat.

And if you think this takes any of the work out of the picture you are in for a nasty shock. Like all things in business it takes hard work and dedication to achieve.

Michael just guides you on what fuel to use and how to make it go nuclear. Enjoy the video below:

Here are the links:

• Amazon
• Social Media Examiner
• Launch Home Page

This is a superb video from the authors of Socialnomics about the power of social media.

No, it’s just that there is nothing great with it! Seriously, get over yourself. It’s boring and bland. It looks like a TV commercial. It’s about your brand and nothing about the consumer.

Of course the brand in question and the agency felt this was not true. They love it. They love the fact that their Facebook page has so many more fans than the competition. Their social media Rocks – and there is nothing like a bit of internal high five to get you re-motivated, excited and willing to spend more money.

This was my take out of a discussion on LinkedIn about Vodacom’s Facebook page. Before you read any further there are three things I would like you to do.

• Go check out the offending page here (they are like hundreds of other pages so it is not really about Vodacom).
• Go and read this article on why you should not hire a social media strategist.
• And this is a must, a superb article on why you need to create social objects.

You back. Good. (If you did not read those article please bookmark them for later. Especially the socials object one, as it is what it is all about). Ok, enough reading for one day.

I will give you my thoughts in the next post but have a listen to Seth Godin first. He is so much more eloquent than me ☺.

Till tomorrow