Yes, on steroids!
I remember when the Firefox browser was first introduced in 2003. It was a very low key event. I’m sure Microsoft wasn’t the least bit concerned that their Internet Explorer would lose market share. Today Mozilla’s Firefox has a 25% share of the browser market. That’s word of mouth on steroids.
Today, the same thing is happening with Google’s Chrome. When it first came out, I paid no attention. A few months later, Carla Yashiro, co-founder of Gather Your Crowd and always a trusted early adopter, mentioned she was using it and liked it a lot. That was all I needed. I downloaded Chrome immediately and have been using it ever since.
There are many powerful benefits to word of mouth marketing, and yet it is by luck and grace that companies, products and services get lifted on the wave of this viral phenomenon . Here are some of the ingredients that start the wave:
- It must be spontaneous and freely offered
- It must be the authentic opinion/advice of a trusted source
- It works even better if multiple sources give the same recommendation
- The product or service must live up to the recommendation, because the trusted source is putting their reputation on the line
- The product or service must have been experienced by the trusted source, not second-hand hearsay
Companies that spend huge amounts of money on traditional advertising would die to receive word of mouth endorsement, because they know it’s worth its weight in gold! Recently there has even been an attempt to kick-start a word of mouth ripple effect by hiring “buzz agents” to act as “unbiased sources” who recommend a product. For instance: attractive, high energy young people are hired to hang around crowded areas like Times Square, using their employer’s product and trying to hook people into asking them about the product (cameras, videos, PDAs, laptops, etc.). If done right, the endorsement does seem to carry the cache of unbiased word of mouth.
In October 2005, the advertising watchdog group Commercial Alert petitioned the United States FTC to issue guidelines requiring paid word-of-mouth marketers to disclose their relationship and related compensation with the company whose product they are marketing. The FTC stated that it would investigate situations in which the relationship between the word-of-mouth marketer of a product and the seller is not revealed and could influence the endorsement.
You know word of mouth works when the federal government has to regulate it!
Truth be told, good social networkers also use this buzz agent concept to add velocity to their Internet presence. They may not pay these agents, but there is a tit for tat exchange. It works like this: an agreement is reached that I will comment on your social post, if you’ll do the same for me. I’ll put a link to your website on mine, if you’ll do the same for me. I’ll take pictures and videos of you at events and post and tag them on my social network sites, if you do the same for me. Why? Because all this activity and cross linking is one of the ways the search engines determine which sites end up on the first page of the search results.
Word-of-mouth marketing encompasses a variety of subcategories, including buzz, blog, viral, grassroots, cause influencers and social media marketing, as well as ambassador programs. Because of the personal nature of the communications between individuals, it is believed that product information communicated in this way has an added layer of credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe word of mouth endorsements over other advertising and promotion.
So whether you think you can intentionally generate a viral word of mouth campaign for your products and services, or feel it’s the luck of the draw, the phenomenon is here to stay. Start noticing where you are contributing to the phenomenon, either as a seeker of or giver of an endorsement – both at a personal level and within your viral social network. It is grassroots democracy at its finest.
Kent Pelz, Founder of Self Marketing, a new thought business networking group.