The Six Steps of Word of Mouth Marketing

Derived from…
Andy Sernovitz, Word of Mouth Marketing

PROFIT : The difference between word of mouth and word of mouth marketing is that one is random and the other is structured, organized and planned with a marketing objective to fulfil. Here’s six steps to help you design your WOMM campaign.

Trigger

What’s the trigger? What’s going to motivate, tease and prompt people to talk about you?
It’s about YOU! It’s about your stuff. Your audience love you, hate you or find you interesting.
It’s about THEM! It feels good for the talker to talk about you. It makes them feel smart, important, lets them help others or express themselves.
It’s about US! They feel connected, part of the brand family, part of a community/team or they feel like insiders.

Talkers

Some people are more likely to talk about you than others. They’re your influencers, evangelists and advocates.
These are typically people close to you. They’re friends, colleagues, neighbours, volunteers, employees, customers, fans, bloggers…
Think of the people you come into contact with on a regular basis.
Ideally, they want to talk about you because they ‘love ya work!’

Topics

This is where you need to give them something to talk about.
Rather than spark random conversations, design a clear message that can be spread.
It might be an anecdote, a spectacular result, a strange fact, an event, a story, something funny, a uniqueness.
The idea needs to be portable, simple and easy for someone to repeat.

Tools

Now to give your talkers and your message a helping hand… Create the means for the idea to spread.
Online this might be a ‘Forward to a Friend’ button or an RSS feed on your blog. You might also present your info in a pdf so it can easily be copied and passed on.
Offline this might be a coupon, a free sample or a postcard.

Taking Part

Traditional marketing focussed merely on getting the message out there.
That’s no longer enough. To keep the conversation fresh, alive and moving you’ll want to join in.
Online you can update your status, comment on blogs, reply to email and join discussion groups.
Offline you can also phone, do coffee and txt people.

Tracking

Following what people are saying about you is even easier online – the conversation is captured for you.
Creating ways to measure your word of mouth marketing is important to know if it’s working.
It’s also critical to know when people are saying less favourable things about you.