Can we talk WOM?
Our industry is excited – about Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, blogs and a whole host of new and evolving social media tools. But it’s important to remember that they’re just that – tools. And in the end, as marketers, we still have to first clearly understand what we’re trying to accomplish and who we’re talking to before we can determine the best way to achieve the results we want --results that admittedly seem more and more challenging to attain.
Which brings me to my main subject. It’s been three years since I first immersed myself in word-of-mouth marketing. My goal was to learn everything I could about influencers. I started out with many assumptions about how and why people talk about the products they love or hate, but interestingly many were disproved through research and discussions with other industry experts.
Like how influencers pass along information to others. Despite how they get it (email, websites, newsletters, social media sites) influencers do most of their recommending face to face – almost 90% of the time they pass it along to friends or family in person or by phone.
And how influencers don’t talk about everything. They talk about a few categories – likely because of interest or perhaps because of where they are in life. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Take diapers, for instance. If you’d talked to me a couple of years ago, you’d have walked away thinking I had a degree in baby undies – I could tell you which were more absorbent, which were softer, which were cuter and which were the best value. And if we were trapped in an elevator, you’d have no choice but to listen to Gillian’s 101 fun facts about diapers. A marketer could have gained a lot of free advertising from me at the time, but today my interest in diapers has – perhaps unsurprisingly – waned.
My husband, for his part, can talk your ear off about natural remedies and will do so at every opportunity and proactively, but, unlike a lot of other guys his age, will only discuss electronics when prompted.
Little nuggets like these – anecdotal as they may be – confirm a growing body of in-depth research that suggests targeting influencers to spread the word and drive traffic or
sales is more complex than choosing a few demographic or psychographic variables and sending out direct mail or an email – or a tweet for that matter. Understanding who these
brand advocates are, what motivates them and how they behave is an exercise that must be handled with care – especially when you consider that, while they’re a small group, influencers can have a dramatic effect on brand building and sales.
I have a lot more to come on this topic and I can’t wait to share it with you in coming posts. Hope you’ll join me.
In the meantime if you would like a copy of a paper we just prepared detailing much of our new research, email me – I’d be happy to send it along.
BTW, what has been your biggest eye opener in WOM marketing?
NEXT TIME: Do marketers have a clear roadmap for social media marketing or are they simply following the crowd?
Gillian MacPhersen
