Buzz Builder

Building Your Business with Word of Mouth: A Step by Step Approach

Below is the main article from the February edition of my free monthly Buzz Builder newsletter. If you're interested in having future newsletters sent directly to you inbox, please sign up here.

I recently told a business owner at a chamber of commerce event that I own a word of mouth marketing firm. The response: "That's interesting. Do you hang out in bars whispering why people should buy stuff from your clients?" I've heard variations of this comment so I wasn't surprised, yet it served as a good reminder how misunderstood word of mouth marketing is.

According to the Keller-Fay Group, Americans engage in more than 3.5 billion conversations a day about products, services and companies. Consumer research company ACNielsen found that 78% of all people trust recommendations from friends and colleagues while only 14% say advertising is credible.

Still, many businesses fail to develop a plan for leveraging the value of word of mouth. That's why I'm dedicating each issue of this monthly Buzz Bulletin in 2011 to sharing an actionable idea for turning your customer base into your best source of new business.

Before you kick off a word of mouth marketing campaign, you need to gauge your current level of client satisfaction. It is the biggest determinant to what people are saying about your business.  Sadly, if people are dissatisfied, they have a much greater likelihood of sharing negative impressions with their friends than communicating positive messages about your businesses.

Thus, the starting point of a savvy word of mouth marketing campaign is to monitor and react to what people are saying. These four tools make it easy:

Google Alerts: Enter your company name and you'll get an email whenever it is mentioned in media stories, blogs, discussion groups, etc. Do the same for your biggest competitors and your prospects.

Online Surveys: SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang offer free or low-cost ways to follow up with your customers after a sale. Online surveys not only have much higher response rates than mailed surveys, but also cost much less to administer and provide data that can be easily analyzed. In ten questions or less (I usually recommend five including "Would you recommend our business to a friend?"), you can assess whether somebody is likely to spread positive or negative messages about your company. And remember, a complaint that consistently resurfaces is a clear indicator that something needs correcting.

Phone Follow Up: When negative survey responses outweigh positive ones, forget email and pick up the phone. Call your unsatisfied customers and find a way to satisfy them. From my years in retail, I learned that unhappy customers who've had their problems solved can become your company's best referral sources.

Customer Review Websites: Most customers do online research before buying so you need to know what customers on review websites are saying about you. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to get Google or Yelp to take down a negative review. However, keep in mind the advice of word of mouth marketing pioneer Andy Sernovitz: "The solution to pollution is dilution." In other words, encourage your satisfied and loyal customers to share their thoughts and help boost your overall ratings. And, try not to obsess over bad reviews (I know, it's hard!). But a few negative reviews can actually reinforce the credibility of positive comments since a wide spectrum of opinion breeds greater trust.

So, now you know what people are saying about you (and you've acted upon their recommendations for improvement). The next step is to turn your customers into evangelists. That's what I'll be writing about between now and the end of year.

If you know somebody who might be interested in building their business with word of mouth marketing, I would appreciate your telling them about this blog and my monthly newsletter. Thanks!

New York Times' Report on the Death of Blogging Is Greatly Exaggerated

One of the top-rated stories on The New York Times' website this week is a story titled "Blogs Wane as Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter." You'll notice how the facts presented in the article contradict the headline.

In this video, I share my thoughts about the article and give three reasons why I continue to blog and how Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media platforms don't offer the benefits of blogging.

If you're a blogger, what keeps you posting? 

Walt Disney World Resort Builds Relationships with a Mickey Mouse Doll and Personal Note

This week I received a phone call from my friend Holly Duckworth, who is a speaker, trainer, and consultant specializing in the development of executive volunteers. Holly was calling me as she exited a UPS office and I could hear the excitement in voice.

"You'll never guess what I received," she said. Holly had just opened a package with a stuffed Mickey Mouse doll and handwritten note from Josh Gold, a senior sales manager at Walt Disney World Resort, congratulating her for passing her Certified Association Executive (CAE) exam.

Holly told me that she didn't know Josh but his gift made a very nice impression. She had studied for months to earn her CAE designation, and it felt good to receive recognition from a total stranger. She said that his gift was particularly brilliant because she imagined that he had sent similar items to others who had earned the CAE, a select group of 83 people. And, since many CAE holders are association executives, recognition from Walt Disney Resort is a fabulous way to create a positive memory that might play a role in encouraging a future event booking. 

Have you found a way to wow the people whose business you would like to win in such a personal way that they pick up the phone and say to a friend "you'll never guess what I just got"? Figure out how to do this and you'll be well on your way to creating incredible word of mouth.

Network Solutions's Video Featuring Cloris Leachman Provides Lessons for Making a Video Go Viral

You don't need $3 million to buy a 30-second spot on the Superbowl to create meaningful buzz with video. Today, a friend sent me a link to a hilarious YouTube video from Network Solutions featuring 84-year-old Cloris Leachman poking fun at the sexy GoDaddy Superbowl commercials. In just one week, the commercial has garnered more than 60,000 views on YouTube without ever running on television. People are passing along the video because it's truly funny and different, two important characteristics for making a video go viral.

There's a particularly valuable lesson to draw from the Network Solutions video. Many videos go viral yet have zero impact on the companies that created them. The primary reason is that most online videos have no connection to what the companies behind them are trying to sell. In contrast, three minutes into this video, Network Solutions has one of its customers standing in front of the house used for the Leachman shoot talking about why she's a Network Solutions customer. Her words are quite conversational so there is not a big disconnect for the viewer who has just watched three minutes of monologue. In fact, she relates what she's saying to Leachman's words. Furthermore, her testimonial is powerful yet relatively short. Most viewers will likely watch the entire video since it flows nicely. I like how the video ends with some funny final quips from Leachman reminding people of the humorous message so they forward it to friends. 

What makes your forward a company's video to friends?

Using Social Media to Build Business Buzz: Now It's Just a Question of What Tools to Use

Thanks to my friend Tim Fahndrich of Third River, an Internet marketing solutions company, for bringing this video to my attention. As you consider the best ways to build buzz for your business, this Erik Qualman (the author of the book Socialnomics) video drives home why you need to incorporate social media into your word of mouth marketing campaign. The stats in the video are about nine months old yet they are still worth considering since they demonstrate the incredible growth and impact of social media. Erik's main point, which I agree with completely, is that it's not a question of whether you need to use social media but what social media tools make the most sense for your business.

ManoftheHouse.com Is a Good Word of Mouth Marketing Platform for Procter & Gamble

The recent sale of The Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million is the latest indicator that companies are willing to pay big money for original content. So, it should come as no suprise that some companies are investing time and money to create their own original content. A few weeks ago, Andrew Martin from The New York Times wrote an interesting piece about Procter & Gamble's new website ManoftheHouse.com. Martin wrote that it's a "website created by the company for husbands and fathers offers articles with titles like “Conquering Sex Problems"... While the Internet is crowded with all kinds of sex advice, P. & G. — the maker of Pampers and Ivory soap and the nation’s largest advertiser — says it has found an untapped marketing opportunity for its products in the family man."

The article piqued my curiousity to check out ManoftheHouse.com, and P. & G. is clearly doing a lot of smart things with the website. Here's what I like from a marketing standpoint:

• The website has a nice clean interface and it's easy to navigate.
• The display advertisements are discretly posted and not excessive in number.
• The links to Twitter and Facebook are prominently display throughout the website.
• The articles are written in such a way to encourage comment and this seems to be happening.
• The short "how to" and human interest focus of most pieces are easy and quick to read.

I'm guessing that more companies large and small will follow the lead of P. & G. in creating news and information websites like ManoftheHouse.com that address the needs interests of their customers while providing an appropriate venue for their marketing messages.

What do you think about ManoftheHouse.com and other thematic corporate informational websites?

For Referrals and Reviews, Rewards Come to Those Who Ask

This week, when I was picking up our dog Bella at Dogs in the City in Portland, OR, a dog daycare business that we've been happily using for four years, I noticed a request on the dry erase bulletin board asking for reviews on Yelp, a customer review website. While there is a proliferation of review websites, Yelp is particularly important in Portland for restaurants, retail shops, and many service providers.

I asked the owner about her request, and she sheepishly asked whether I thought she was being too brazen asking for reviews. Definitely not!

One of the biggest laments I hear from business owners is that they don't get as many referrals or positive online reviews as they feel that they deserve based on the quality of their products and services. I puzzled over this for many years until I heard a professor from Northeastern University talk about referrals at a Word of Mouth Marketing Association Conference four years ago. Although I can’t remember his name, one of his statistics was seared into my memory. He said that 50% of all people need to be specifically asked for a referral in order to make one. He said that this occurs for two primary reasons:

• Many are so busy that they simply don’t remember to refer their friends and colleagues to businesses that they like.
• A significant number of people believe that a business that provides a quality product or service doesn’t need referrals because it likely has a good customer base.

If more businesses knew that one of the biggest secrets of getting referrals and mentions on influential customer review websites is simply to ask for them, there would be a lot less frustration. If you’re a skeptic, try it for your business and see what happens. In less than a month of asking for reviews, I’m happy to say that Dogs in the City has gone from having only one review on Yelp to four. And, as long as the owner of Dogs in the City keeps delivering a quality service and asking for referrals, she'll see her word of mouth and business boom.

Do you ask customers for referrals and online reviews? How's that working out for you?