More Reasons Why Word of Mouth is Kind of The Best Thing Ever for Your Marketing Plan . . .

Not convinced about Word of Mouth?

Here are some more things to consider . . .

Andy Sernovitz, in his book Word of Mouth Marketing puts it this way . . .

“Good marketing is easy. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that word of mouth marketing can be so easy and obvious that everyone misses just how easy and obvious it is.

Marketing is what you do, not what you say. The story that will be told by the power of word of mouth is what really happens underneath all the marketing. If you have good products and good services, people will say good things about you. If you fall down on the job, they will say that, too.
When you are thinking about a new product, what you really should be thinking about is what people will say after they use it-its functionality, its quality, and how you treated them.

A 2006 study by the Verde Group showed that people who hear about a bad shopping experience are less likely than people who actually had the bad experience to ever set foot in the store. And when you realize that someone’s who’s had an unpleasant encounter with your stuff is going to tell, on average, five other people, you start to see just how damaging bad word of mouth can be in the real world.

Big Idea: Success comes not from what you advertise, but from what you deliver.”

Or as Mark Hughes points out in Buzz Marketing:

“There are four reasons to pay use word of mouth: The ad clutter is rising to intolerable levels in America (a 283 index on the Clutter Curve; see chapter 10). Traditional forms of media are rising in cost, compounding the issue of clutter. We’ve been lied to so many times with advertising, it seems like te only message we trust these days comes from regular people like you and me. Technology is accelerating word of mouth.”

Listen closely to George Silverman, author of The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing:

“It’s more relevant and complete. Word of mouth is “live,” not canned like most company communication. When a friend tells you about a book, movie or other product that she thinks you would like, she is telling you because she thinks that you–not some anonymous stranger–would like it.
The inherent honesty of word of mouth further adds to its credibility. The customer determines who he will talk to, what he will ask, or whether he will continue to listen or politely change the subject. For instance, if 25 people tell 25 people and the process is repeated five more times, the number equals approximately the population of the United States. One more iteration and the number equals approximately the population of the entire world!
Word of mouth saves time and money. Another element of word of mouth is that it can be extremely efficient. If you want to buy a product that you don’t know too much about, the best way is often to find a few people who have investigated the product, and learn from them what they have found out. The product literature gives you only promises. Word of mouth gives you reality.

o    Is the most powerful, influential, persuasive force in the marketplace (the most obvious reason)
o    Is an experience delivery mechanism (the most important and overlooked reason)
o    Is independent, therefore credible
o    Becomes part of the product itself
o    Is custom-tailored, most relevant, and complete
o    Is self-generating, self-breeding, grows exponentially, sometimes explosively
o    Is unlimited in speed and scope
o    Can originate from a  single source, or a relatively small number of sources
o    Is extremely dependent on the nature of the source
o    Can be tremendously time-saving, efficient, and labour-saving
o    Is often negative, but the negatives can actually be positive
o    Can be very inexpensive to stimulate, amplify, and sustain.”

 

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