Word of Mouth Marketing: What it is & where to start.

WOMm

Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMm) is giving your customers reasons to talk about your business and giving them the tools to do so.  Why is it important?  Good WOMm empowers your customers to share their experiences with their friends, associates and partners.  It's viral (can we still use that term?), it inspires new products and services, and it minimizes the damage from unsatisfied customers.

Here are a few simple best-practices to start the conversation:

1.  Give them reasons to talk about you:

• Build an amazing product or deliver an amazing service.
  • The lightest hammer
  • The cheapest drainage system
  • The most elegant presentation
  • More

• Listen to what they say.
  
  • What does your customer really want?
    • More features?  Which ones?
    • More live conversations with you (and fewer emails?)
    • Delivery? (doesn't have to be free.)
    • A personalized ________________ ?
    • More

2.  Give them the tools:

• Set-up a blog and invite your customers to comment.
• Invite 5 customers to lunch and ask them (good) questions.
• Create a prototype and ask a few customers to give you feedback.
• Survey your customers (of course everyone already is doing so, right?) and ask questions that will garner objective feedback.
  • Look the surveys
    • Do things differently based on the survey feedback.

Like all mission-critical marketing initiatives, I'm not too hip to the idea of adding a little WOM 'stuff' into the marketing mix. That said, I'm also pretty pragmatic, and I don't think most organizations need 3 months of research before rolling out a WOM campaign.  How about this middle-ground:

1. Define your WOMm objectives based on your customer and business-model.
2. Create a set of tools that can be rolled out quickly, measured and scaled.
3. Execute.
4. Evaluate.
5. Enjoy.