eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey discusses how to make Word of Mouth marketing work.
Interest in Word of Mouth marketing skyrocketed last year thanks to a guy in a chicken suit. Burger King, working with ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, made headlines with its quirky, supremely viral Subservient Chicken campaign. The now famous do-your-own-thing-with-the-funky-chicken email campaign, launched on April 8, 2004, is still being talked about at marketing conferences and industry events. The remote-controlled chicken succeeded in engaging consumers, mostly teens and young adults, who spent an average of seven minutes interacting with the chicken, and therefore the BK brand. The Subservient Chicken site has had 14 million unique visitors. More importantly, Burger King reported significantly increased sales of its featured chicken product. Spurred by the ingenuity and success of the BK chicken campaign, "dozens of the world's biggest marketers have scrambled to replicate its success and take advantage of the internet's unique ability to move messages cheaply and quickly from person to person," reported the Los Angeles Times.
Interested in that kind of Word of Mouth success? Here are seven tips for success.
1. Take Off Your Corporate Marketing-Speak Hat
If you're going to join the vast consumer "conversation," you need to speak in their language. In other words, if you're going to pursue viral/Word of Mouth strategies, you will need to refrain from the usual practice of carefully crafting "copy" and positioning statements that will be immediately identified as such and ignored. Think of how you would talk to a friend or family member, rather than some amorphous end user that you want to market to.
In addition to speaking directly and personally, you need to be honest. Are there weaknesses with your product? Did you mess up on customer service with someone? Has your advertising campaign offended some people? Be upfront about it, or you'll create mistrust and potentially damage your brand.
2. Identify Opinion Leaders and Seek to Make Friends with Them
For every category, there are people with expertise who are influential in sharing their knowledge with others. These people have a wide circle of influence and can efficiently spread your word to huge numbers of interested parties. In Emanual Rosen's book, "The Anatomy of Buzz," he recommends finding "Influentials" and arming them with relevant information about your product or service.
3. Make it Easy to Spread the Word
Do whatever you can to facilitate the diffusion of your message. Email, of course, is one of the simplest ways to achieve this, but there are other tactics as well. You can include "Forward to a Friend" buttons on your website, create entertaining podcasts to encourage send-along activity, or provide funny IM or text messages that can be instantly relayed by others using a cell phone. You can even encourage consumers to throw parties. When NBC wanted to create buzz for its new reality television show, "The Biggest Loser," they engaged Word of Mouth marketing firm House Party to find 1,000 consumers willing to host a party. The goal of the campaign was to help NBC benefit from the loyalty of a core group of devoted fans who could spread their enthusiasm to others, notably in the form of house parties. Having identified the right fans, House Party provided a website and other tools to facilitate the implementation of each party.
4. Start with the Big Idea
Don't make the mistake of thinking tactically first, e.g., "We need an email viral campaign," or, "What kind of video can we create that will get passed around?"
Concentrate instead on your core marketing objectives and focus on coming up with the big idea that will resonate with consumers. The best ideas are often the most simple, and ideally incorporate a key piece of insight about the consumer.
5. Connect Your Buzz Program to Your Overall Marketing Strategy
Viral and other Word of Mouth efforts can do wonders on their own, but they're far more effective, and you'll get a lot more bang for the buck, if they're tied to other elements in your marketing campaign.
In a bid to connect with young people, Doritos employed a highly interactive and viral campaign using a mix of outdoor billboards, cell phones and a website. (Teens are watching less television these days, but spending a great deal of time on the web and talking on cell phones). For the campaign, outdoor billboards were used to create intrigue with a mysterious message that could only be deciphered by typing in a special code number into a cell phone. Those texting in with their cell phones were, in turn, directed to the Doritos website, where young folks could read and post to blogs, socialize with others, win prizes and receive free IM buddy icons. An entire community was created using multiple content platforms.
6. Be Responsible (Don't Just Pay "Lip Service" to Word of Mouth)
Marketers are so accustomed to one-way dialogues -- hammering their messages at the consumer -- they can forget they have a responsibility to listen and respond to consumers on their terms. This means, other than a conscious decision to "hear the customer," marketers need to invest in databases so they can deal with thousands of dialogues. You are no longer just responsible for the messages you carefully craft and deliver, you are now also responsible for listening and appropriately responding to the messages from thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers and potential customers.
7. Measure It All: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Every day, consumers are dishing out information and opinions related to your product, service, brand or company. Are you consistently monitoring and tracking this "free" research data? If you are, than you can amplify positive messages and potentially mitigate negative ones.
Let's face it. When people have a bad experience, they get energized to do something about it. And the internet lets them tell a much wider audience. Be prepared. At the very least, have someone assigned to monitor the internet for any negative messages about your company.
Geoff Ramsey is the CEO of eMarketer.