Highlights from "Word-Of-Mouth Marketing: Have You Heard The Latest?" panel

By Chloe Stromberg - Researcher, Marketing, Forrester

Some highlights from yesterday's "Word-Of-Mouth Marketing: Have You Heard The Latest?" panel discussion with Dave Balter of BzzAgent, Jon Berry of Keller Fay Group, Sam Decker of Bazaarvoice, and Andy Sernovitz of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), moderated by Forrester's Pete Kim.

(And again, I'm doing this fast, so if any of these points are wrong -- please comment and I'll correct.)

What's real and what's hype when it comes to word of mouth (WOM)?

• Hype: Flashy viral campaigns (e.g., subservient chicken, Paris Hilton) where ad is more memorable than product or brand.
• Real: Authentic WOM about products and brands, transferred to friends and family at a restaurant, in general conversation, online reviews, sustained support for the brand.  Example: Toyota is a long-time WOM superstar, has strong WOM about fuel efficiency and engineering from its customer base.

Eighty percent (80%) of WOM happens offline, but doesn't what people say online have greater impact per voice?

• You can't separate the two.  And it's often a powerful offline experience or recommendation that drives online WOM.  For example, a friend recommends a restaurant to another friend.  She visits and is so impressed, she posts a review on the Web so other people will know.

What WOM issues are marketers struggling to understand?

• How to use use WOM to make existing media more effective.
• Mechanics of how to monitor online consumer conversation.
• How to measure the impact and sell it to my boss.

How do I start with WOM marketing?

• Hop on to Technorati and set up feeds to track your brand name.  Then, be proactive in addressing customer problems posted on blogs.  Having a call center guy go out and address those problems now is cheaper than losing the customer and having to win them back.  (An editorial note here -- Technorati please add a Q in your FAQ on "How do I track my brand in blogs?"  The Technorati site uses very different language, so it's tough to find the instructions.)

Where in the sales funnel -- awareness, consideration, purchase -- should you leverage WOM?

• You need it in two places -- launch (awareness) and decision-process (consideration).

Who excels at offline WOM?

• The Bush campaign credits offline WOM with their success.  They identified 3 million influencers, sent them out materials to seed their conversations.  Then they matched phone callers demographically with the people they were calling.  They didn't have college students call blue collar workers.  Example in business world: launch parties for AT&T Cable.

What are some WOM best practices?

• Don't deceive customers.  Truth floats to the top.
• Combine a little bit of negative opinion with the bad.  Studies show this is more effective in driving purchase decisions.
• Leverage WOM once you capture it.  Good or bad, influencers have people's ear.  Take negative content, feed it to customer service department, have them turn it around positive.
• Start tracking WOM impact on customer acquisition -- if a customer says they found your Web site from an online ad, that's marketing, but if they say from a discussion board, that's WOM.

Where do you find budget for WOM?

• It used to be "shhh, I'm going to take this 100k".  Now it comes from the site management budget, or from traditional stuff like TV, print.  We're also starting to see this budget they're calling "new stuff", things like Web 2.0 technologies.

Can you put WOM into a media mix model?

• Hershey's did this with the second wave of its Take 5 candy bar campaign.

It's clear that rule #1 of WOM marketing is "be transparent", what's rule #2?

• Get your story down.  Have a solution. 
• Act on it.  Example: Went to Amazon after having a terrible time putting it together a toy he purchased.  There were 77 1-star reviews of the toy.  Why didn't Amazon act on this, change its merchandising? 

It's the end of budget season.  Next year we're going to see a lot of social marketing in action.  What can marketers do now to be in a good spot?

• Focus on getting your WOM efforts to work for the long term, rather than doing flash-in-the-pan, Paris Hilton-type viral things.
• Start understanding that your company's behavior, action, interaction with the consumer is your brand.  Focus on the story and brand values that guide this action.
• Look for ways to leverage consumer-generated content across your company -- for copy, reviews, etc.
• Use likelihood to recommend, rather than satisfaction, for your loyalty metric.

Also, note that all of the panelists have written books:

Dave Balter -- The Grapevine

Jon Berry -- The Influentials

Sam Decker -- 301 Do-It-Yourself Marketing Ideas, How To Market To Computer User Groups

Andy Sernovitz -- Word of Mouth Marketing

Comments

[Julie Katz]

The hyped Paris Hilton viral ad was for Carl's Jr., right? Or did you not post that because the product wasn't memorable? Interesting that both examples of flashy viral campaigns were for fast food.