Andy’s Answers: How a focus on word of mouth changes your business
When a company focuses on earning the respect and recommendation of their customers, it fundamentally changes the way a business operates. You become obsessed with the individual customer experience, you learn how rewarding it is to engage with your fans, and you find yourself, bit by bit, doing your part to make the world a little more pleasant to be a part of. And above all, you see why it’s more fun to work at a company people love to talk about.
What happens:
- Things are nicer. When you’re focused on earning word of mouth, you empower your employees to deliver awesome service, to take extra care of your customers, and to challenge your business to be better every day. This proves to be more fun and more profitable than the alternative.
- You can simplify. Everything boils down to the key question: “Would anyone tell a friend about this?” If not, is it really worth doing?
- You’ve got more to spend on what counts. When you see how effective your fans are at bringing in your new customers, you can divert all the money you once spent on advertising into making your product and experience better — creating a powerful cycle leading to more word of mouth from more happy fans.
Posted by Jay Deragon on May 12th, 2009 at 10:20 am
The surge of people engaging in social media continues. Everyone seems to use different processes for designing and distributing content. Individuals and brands try different products and they also try and create pull to their products. So the question is which is more important to the dynamics of social media, people. process or products?
A product doesn’t get produced, marketed, sold and delivered without people involved in the process. A process is only a method by which people leverage productivity (time) and create improved value (efficiency and engagement). So it would appear that the “people factor” is the dominant factors that influence processes and product. People are the “engagers” in products and process and neither can deliver to the expectation, or beyond the expectation, of the consumer, other people, without people standing behind the process and the product.
Is The KFC Campaign An Example?
pull-marketingKFC and Oprah created massive buzz and traffic with their viral offering of a coupon for a free lunch. Oprah’s role was the “marketing process“. Given her following and brand appeal all she had to do is make the offer to the marketplace.
KFC’s role was relative to their people delivering on the product by planning and deploying the relevant processes. By all measures they did not plan or anticipate the pull created by the campaign. They did not properly inform or train all their store managers and employees about the potential implications of the campaign or how to handle unexpected results. Several locations around the country ran out of chicken. Many limited the time frame for consumers to use their coupons. Few of the managers were trained on how to handle the press. When I asked the local manager if he know how powerful social media was in terms of this campaign he responded “what is social media?”.
The “internal people” simply were not prepared to handle the process or the product effectively. Subsequently, and less than one week into the campaign, KFC is scrambling to manage their people, the process and the product delivery for the remainder of the campaign.
The people who created the campaign simply did not think systemically as to the impact and requirements needed to successfully deliver (the process) the product in a way which the subsequent experience with the customers (people) would have created more brand equity and media buzz than just the campaign itself.
So the lesson learned ought to be “think about the people” first, then the process and the product will deliver on its promise. Otherwise your negative PR from not being properly prepared will reduce the “systemic gains” which could have been the results from using social media in a unique way. Additionally social currency ( the value created with your market) is not simply a marketing task rather it requires total integration of people, processes and products. The product engagement and performance processes cannot be improved without the people being properly engaged (trained).
Otherwise your currency is reduced to a bad experience with people, the most important part of any process or product.
Posted by Danny M on May 12th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I agree that word of mouth does give a very personal insight on a company or service provider. In fact, a customer’s good experience can be the difference between you getting the customer or the customer going somewhere else because of a company’s marketing campaign.
In the current day of social media, the “word of mouth” is no longer the physical act of one person telling another. Rather it is one person telling a multitude of people via blogs, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc.
Now more than ever, we need to recognize that the power of “word of mouth” isn’t going anywhere and is more the reason to pay attention to what our customers want and what we need to do to make it happen.
Danny M
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Posted by Matt West on May 13th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
As a consultant, I see the value of providing an online experience. Social media is a great example of an interactive digital medium with real power, provided you know how to use it. For the average small business, effectively navigating social media is largely about understanding Generation Y. Please see my review of Millennials and social media.
http://thegreenmarket.blogspot.com/2009/05/power-of-social-media-and-importance-of.html
See also the ways in which social media and sustainability are aligned.
http://thegreenmarket.blogspot.com/2009/05/social-media-and-sustainability.html
Posted by How a focus on word of mouth changes your business | Webbyn.com on May 15th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
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