Executive Summary
Word of Mouth Marketing is a book divided into two parts: The Essential Concepts and How to Do It. In the first part of the book, Andy Sernovitz defines word of mouth marketing and tells why it such an important concept and what it kind do for your company. He introduces the big ideas in the first part, and then elaborates on the ideas in the second part.
The book focuses on four rules of word of mouth marketing and the five T’s of word of mouth marketing. Rule one is to be interesting. Everything that you do as a marketer should be something that people will want to tell their friends about. Rule two is to make the message easy to be shared, and find the ways that make it easier to spread. Rule number three focuses on customers being the root of all you do. Happy customers will do your advertising for you for free. The final rule is about trust and respect. Everything you should do should be ethical and honest.
The five T’s of word of mouth marketing make up the majority of the book. The author introduces them in the first chapter, and he elaborates on each of them in each chapter of the entire second part of the book by explaining how to take them in action. The talkers are the enthusiasts who possess the connecters to help relay your message. Chapter five is dedicated on how to identify these talkers, how to create a communication channel to reach them regularly, how to give them topics to talk about, and how to keep them happy and motivated.
Topics are the messages that give your talkers a reason to talk. Chapter six is dedicated to explaining how to easily give your talkers something to talk about, how to find a great topic, and how to take care of your topics to become a buzz worthy company. Tools are ways you can help your message travel. Chapter seven gives three must use marketing tools to help you move your message along. Rule one is to ask people to spread the word, put everything in an email, and put a tell-a-friend link on every page of your website.
The idea of taking part in the conversation is another important factor in word of mouth marketing. Participating results in good customer service, which is what word of mouth marketing is all about. Chapter eight focuses on this and who should join the conversation, how to go about replying and joining in the conversation.
The final “T” of word of mouth marketing is tracking what people are saying about you. Chapter nine talks about finding out who the talkers are, which topics are working and if they are making a difference, and joining in the conversation.
With the explanation of the key concepts and real world examples on how to apply them, this book shows how any company can be successful through word of mouth marketing.
The Ten Things Managers Need to Know fromWord of Mouth Marketing
1. Word of mouth marketing is the cheapest, easiest, and most effective form of advertising.
2. It is important for marketers to join in the conversations people are having about their product or service via blogs and websites. If they don’t join in and keep the good conversation going, it will die out.
3. Satisfied customers that spread word of mouth are the most important assets you can have. They will do your marketing for free.
4. Ask yourself, “is this worth talking about” before you decide anything. If it’s not worth talking about, it’s not worth doing and won’t make money.
5. Always be prepared for negative word of mouth. Think of this as an opportunity to learn and improve.
6. Put honesty and ethics before everything. You can’t fake good word of mouth; the truth will always come out in the end.
7. Every customer matters. Your most loyal and supportive customers may not be big spenders, but still do most of the talking.
8. Keep your topic to be talked about simple yet unique. This makes it easy to be remembered and therefore easy to be repeated!
9. It never hurts to ask your loyal customers to write a good review or testimonial on your product or company. When people see these on your websites, it helps the word of mouth to keep circulating.
10. Someone on your staff should dedicate time every morning to searching the web for mentions of your major products. The quicker you respond, the easier it is for talk to circulate.
Full Summary of Word of Mouth Marketing
Preface and Introduction
Andy Sernovitz begins this book by explaining how important and simple word of mouth marketing really is. This is such an important strategy that every single company in the world, big or small, needs it to increase sales and get the buzz going about why your company is so great. He makes word of mouth marketing sound simple when he first describes it as “joining in the conversation that people are having every day with other people.” He gives credit to pure creativity on his part and talking to many people for his success factor. Word of mouth is such an easy tool to a successful business that it is sometimes looked over because companies are so focused on advertising. In this book, Sernovitz gives inexpensive ways to get people talking about your company.
Sernovitz defines word of mouth marketing again by “Giving people a reason to talk about your stuff, and making it easier for that conversation to take place.”
People are always asking their friends and anyone around about products before they buy them. It’s so important to have good things floating around about your business to get more people to trust you and what you sell. The author relates this to his golden rule of business: “Earn the respect and recommendation of your customers, and they will do the rest. Treat people well; they will do your marketing for you, for free. Be interesting, or be invisible.” While getting people talking online is important, that is not all word of mouth marketing is about. Before something makes its way online, it has already been discussed by a good bit of people. Of course, this concept only works if you have good products and services to give to your customers. If you don’t do a good job, you won’t get good talk from people. People talk whether it is good or bad, so it is important to learn the right way to react to negative attention and turn that attitude around.
Chapter 1: What is word of mouth marketing?
Sernovitz simplifies this concept even more by defining it as everything you can do to get people talking. Of course, the marketing aspect of word of mouth marketing is what makes this so successful. In order to get your word out there, you have to work within the conversations people are having and join in! Working with the right people, sending out a few e-mails, and really understanding what people are saying helps the marketer to get on track with the word of mouth marketing campaign. Great customer service is what good word of mouth boils down to. Customers will reward good treatment with good word of mouth. Organic word of mouth springs naturally from the good parts of the company, and amplified word of mouth is an intentionally spread campaign to get the buzz going about a company.
Sernovitz gives four rules of word of mouth marketing. The first is to be interesting. Before spending money to run an ad really think about whether someone would tell their friend about it. Ads are costly, and need to be worth talking about. The second rule is to make it easy. All it takes is to find a simple message and help people share that message. After that, think of creative ways to easily spread the message. The third rule is to make people happy. This rule is self explanatory, go that extra mile to help customers. The fourth and final rule is to earn trust and respect. If a company doesn’t have the customer’s respect, how are they supposed to get good word of mouth? Ethics should be the center in everything a company does to achieve success.
The success of a word of marketing campaign branches from understanding what aspects of a product or service get people talking. Sernovitz gives three reasons people will talk about you and your company. The first is you and what you are selling. Whether they love you or they hate you, they will make sure that the word gets out. If your product is worth talking about, it WILL be talked about. This involves time and creativity. The second reason people will talk is based on ‘me’ the customer. We want to feel like we have a voice and helping others with their decisions allows us to use that voice. The third reason is ‘us’ and being a part of a group of others with similar interests as us. It makes us feel excited when we are recognized.
The five T’s of word of mouth marketing are the basic elements that make this a success. Talkers are the group of people that care to talk and share your message. Topics are the reason people talk. The best topics are simple and easy to repeat. Tools are what spread the message to a wide audience. Tools such as: handing out menus, free samples, or a special sale that’s worth mentioning are examples that will help move the messages in the right direction. Taking part in the conversation by answering comments on blogs and discussion boards lets the customer feel even more like their voice is being heard. Tracking what people are saying and staying up to date helps marketers stay in touch on what needs to be improved.
The author reiterates the importance of honesty and ethics in marketing with a couple of rules on the subject. Word of mouth is all about open and honest communication with consumers and the community with zero deception involved. Another rule is to never start fake word of mouth because it will not work.
This chapter ends with the author stating again how the word of mouth campaign should come first. It is cheap, effective, and customer friendly. Now it is time for you to make room for this marketing in your budget plan and set clear objectives!
Chapter 2: Deep Stuff: Six big ideas
The first big idea is about consumers being in control. Since people are already talking about you, every decision made from here on out is done with the consumer in mind. They hold all the power in your marketing decisions. This is why customer reviews on company’s websites have become so popular. Keep in mind that the opinions a person will almost always trust is from someone that they know who is just like them. Once this opinion is shared, it will travel a long way.
The second big idea is about marketing being about what you do, rather than what you say. If you don’t have a good product, you can’t fix that with good advertising. The author compares good word of mouth to love when he says, “You can’t fake love—or positive word of mouth.”
The third idea comes from the internet being like a permanent record. Once something is said about a product or service, Google will be able to find it. So, if something is sad about you, handle it well. Participating in conversations comes to play again by telling your story and what went wrong.
The fourth big idea deals with honesty, which is extremely important. Your true colors will always come out eventually, so you should always be honest with the people who are giving you your business.
The fifth idea discusses the costs associated with losing customers through bad word of mouth. You can spend all the money in the world on search engine advertising, but if bad reviews come up, that is a potential sale loss. Your reputation should be factored in with the balance sheets.
The last idea he discusses in this chapter summarizes the ideas to show why this concept makes more money than any other form of marketing or advertising.
Chapter 3:The Word of Mouth Marketing Manifesto
This chapter consists of one page and 12 main ideas that this book summarizes and talks about.
Chapter 4:The 5 T’s in action
This chapter begins the second part of the book which focuses on proactive and practical ways to get people talking and spreading your good messages. The author lists these 5 T’s again and prepares the readers for the ideas he has in the following chapters. Some will be easy, and some will be more complicated. He suggests starting with the easier ideas first to get the message out before you continue to more difficult ideas. He starts off with an idea of giving out some free food at a restaurant to those waiting for a table. People will remember this and want to tell their friends (if the food was good of course!)
Chapter 5:Talkers
This chapter goes deep into detail about how to find and recognize the talkers, the different types of talkers, and how to please and contact them. While it might seem important to focus on pleasing the big spenders of a particular store, talkers are people just like us and could be your newest customer. Again, the author reiterates the importance of treating every customer with respect. Now how exactly do you go about finding these talkers? The first obvious talker is the happy customer with enthusiasm and passion about whatever service it is they received.
Possibly one of the most important types of talkers is the online talkers. As the author previously stated, everyone can see what’s been posted online, so contacting these talkers and keeping them happy is extremely important.
A third type of talker discussed is those wearing logos. This is free publicity for anyone who sees this customer sporting your company’s apparel. Make sure your customers have access to goodies with your logo on it.
Another important talker is your very own employees. A happy employee can go a long way. A happy customer can be more than that when they are a diehard fan of your company. That will really get them talking. When having a professional endorse and support your product, that’s more free publicity right there.
When you find these talkers that have strong credibility and passion about your product, create a plan to reach out to them! When you notice an enthusiast at your store, ask if you can put them on a VIP list. When you see a good review by someone online, contact them and offer them some sort of coupon for becoming a part of the VIP list. By designing some sort of blog or newsletters for your talkers, you will be able to reach them all in one setting. Keep them updated on these newsletters and show them their business is important to you. Acknowledging your talkers publicly and with thank you letters for their business is a great way for them to feel appreciated.
Chapter 6: Topics: What will they talk about?
The goal to have good topics to talk about is to catch the consumer’s attention. Find something unique to your company to run with and get people talking. If it’s special and creative, chances are it will be repeated. The best topics of conversation are surprising and unexpected. This is what differentiates it from its competition. The product features is what word of mouth marketing relies on because the special features are what gets talked about. Make sure whatever feature your product or company capitalizes on is easy to explain to another consumer.
Once you have found your ‘topic’ the work has only just begun. You need to keep improving it to continue to give people a reason to talk and to keep it relevant. To ensure that your topic is going to be worth talking about, test the waters by mentioning it to a few people to see their reactions and how far it goes. People will see your commitment to the product and that will go a long way.
The author proceeds to give some of the inexpensive ideas that keep people talking about your product. He suggests that a special sale will always result in someone telling their friends. The trick is to give the sale something special to where it will have to be repeated. The appearance of exclusivity like a “secret” discount is something to keep the word of mouth moving.
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra”. Extraordinary customer service is an extremely powerful word of mouth tool. Think about it-you’re going to be more likely to refer somebody to a friend when they do not hesitate to go that extra mile to make you happy.
When a company partners with a charity, it results in immediate word of mouth topic. It is going to be hard to forget when someone tells you to go to a certain store because the proceeds are going to a great cause. This may give people that do not normally donate to charities a chance to help out just by buying a certain product. This will also raise the credibility and image of any company.
When a company spends the money to run an advertisement, they need to ensure that the ad is catchy, simple, and easy to be repeated. If you have a truly great and extraordinary product, this goes even farther. Make your entire brand something to be talked about by incorporating word of mouth into it by focusing on what people talk about and capitalizing on it.
Chapter 7: Tools: How can you help the message travel?
It’s great when you have a product worth talking about, but this chapter focuses on something even more important: helping the message travel. Word of mouth is much more powerful when you help it move along. The author has already discussed how to find out who the talkers are, now it is time to help them help you. The tools are all about speed and portability of the message at hand. Viral e-mails make are easy to spread along, as well as popular blogs and review sites. Changing the message every so often is also important to get the topic moving.
The author lists three must-use word of mouth marketing tools: Ask people to spread the word, put everything in an email, and put a tell-a-friend link on every page of your website. It can never hurt to ask a talker nicely to help spread the word. They are already happy with you and your service, so they should be happy to help. Because e-mail is the fastest form of communication and word of mouth, put everything you are doing in an email already designed to be forwardable. The message can be repeated more than once with tactics such as adding extra lines on tell-a-friend forms. Make it so easy for your talkers to help share your message that they have no excuse not to help you out. Having a “share video” link and the HTML code ready to be pasted on your website are good ways to keep this message going. The classic “two for the price of one” offer capitalizes on relying on that extra customer necessary to bring into the store to take advantage of this deal. Always be thinking about why a customer would benefit when their friends use your product too.
Producing tangible items to share with friends is extremely beneficial as well. Giving your customers handouts have two functions: they remind people to talk and they are conversation starters. These are extremely important for companies that sell products online and out of catalogs. Think of the shipping package as an opportunity to spread word of mouth. Stuff the packages with coupons and flyers as well as some sort of special token of your appreciation. Samples are an obvious word of mouth tool that companies don’t always take full advantage of. When you know who your talkers are, mail them something. People will always like free stuff. By handing out “swag” with your logo on it, this is giving tons of people the opportunity to see it daily. They are conversation starters.
The author finds a great deal of importance in blogs. He says that blogs are a tool for extending and accelerating the conversation. Blogs are about linking, sharing, and connecting. Take this opportunity to easily post your conversation starters on blogs. Anytime you have an update you want to share with your talkers, you can post it on your blog. The conversation can take place right here on your blog, and it will help you to build credibility. When you ask your customers to give you a nice recommendation or testimonial, you can ask for permission to share them on your website or blog. This is a great way to show your great recommendations to get people talking.
Chapter 8: Taking Part: How Can You Join the Conversation?
The author defines word of mouth as a dialogue. When someone says something about you, you need to answer them. It is part of your job to join in to keep the conversation going. A big idea suggests that word of mouth is as much about customer service as it is about marketing. Participating is what makes for really good word of mouth.
The author explains how to join the conversation by first finding it. He suggests having someone on your staff searching the web every morning for mention of your major products. Because you can’t always be there when people are having real-world conversations about you, it is important to stay on top of the online conversations. You should reply and respond to product mentions every chance you come across. The more available you seem to your talkers, the more they will feel special and will talk. When someone says something nice about you, thank them! They are more likely to become an active talker when they feel appreciated. It is just as important to respond to negative talk as it is to positive talk. When someone has a problem, the best thing you can do is apologize and find a way to fix it. Fixing problems is the most powerful marketing you can do. The author states that an unhappy customer tells five people, and a formerly unhappy customer who is made happy tells ten people. The solution to negative word of mouth is more word of mouth marketing. Make your responses calm and respond like a regular person instead of a PR person. Follow up with the negative customer and do something wonderful to make up for the trouble.
Another big point is to find the right people to take part in the conversations. A formal word of mouth team is not necessary, the ones that will do the job the best are those that have a passion for what you do and who enjoys being online. It’s not the PR or marketing people, but those that have true enthusiasm for your company. Credibility is a huge part; your blog needs to be real and plain spoken. For the employees that are going to be participating in these conversations, training and guidance should be given to ensure they know the rules and employ them correctly. Good manners and common sense will always keep you out of trouble. When you take part in the conversation, it is not an opportunity for a sales pitch. Stick to the conversation at hand and respect the communities where the conversations are taking place. It is best to begin your comments with, “I work for _____, and this is my personal opinion.”
Chapter 9: Tracking: What are people saying about you?
When you track what people are saying about you, this gives you a chance to make it better. Online tracking tools can break down where the talkers are from, which sites they’ve come from, what sites they’ve looked at, and what they searched for to get there. Encouraging feedback and tracking tell-a-friend forms is a good tool to track the conversation. These tell-a-friend forms give you a ratio of number of referrals divided by number of page views. This is your “buzzworthy” index. Direct mail is a useful tracking tool because the order forms usually have detailed codes that tell you who received each letter or catalog. A very powerful measurement technique is called the Net Promoter Score, which starts with the question, “Would you recommend this product to a friend?” Then it rates the response on a ten-point scale. This is a short chapter because he says these are very advanced techniques, but that they are available. A more simple technique is to ask the question, “How did you hear about us?” Make sure there is a clear choice that indicates word of mouth; you’ll probably discover you are getting a whole lot more word of mouth than you think.
Personal Insights
Why I think:
The author is one of the most brilliant people around…or is full of $ %, because:
As I was reading this book and writing my summaries, I kept getting overcome with déjà vu. It did not take me long to figure out why. The author constantly mentioned the same points over and over in slightly different wording. This made the book very redundant to read and summarize because I felt like it made ME sound redundant as I was summarizing the chapters and mentioning the same things multiple times. Don’t get me wrong, he had some very good points that I think could lead any business into the right direction, points that I will no doubt take into consideration in my future endeavors. I just think this book would be better shortened into an article featured in a business magazine or something of the sort.
With business conditions today, what the author wrote is – or is no longer true – because:
The business conditions today make the topics presented in this book relevant because of how easy and cheap the concept of word of mouth marketing is. With the high advertising costs, businesses that are struggling or looking to save money rely on word of mouth to gain clientele and high profits. With word of mouth marketing, their happy customers will do their advertising for them for free by sharing their good experiences. As long as these business owners and managers work hard to produce a product worth talking about, then they will be talked about. Not only is this concept relevant today, but it has always been relevant and it always will be. People are always going to talk no matter what the business conditions are, it just helps that people’s talking makes it easier on business owners and marketers.
If I were the author of the book, I would have done these three things differently:
1. I feel like he repeated the same main concepts over and over with different wording. It wasn’t a long book, but I would have made it shorter so I did not repeat myself so much.
2. I thought that chapter 3 was unnecessary because it was only one page summarizing 12 points in the book. I thought that was once again repeating himself and could have been highlighted in another chapter.
3. I would have added some pictures. I think these would have helped the main points jump out and he could have used them for some really good examples of good advertisements.
Reading this book made me think differently about the topic in these ways:
1. I never understood before why sometimes my managers would go out of their way and money to give unsatisfied customers what they want and more. Now I realize it is because in the long run they will make more money off of that one customer by the satisfied results they will share with their friends.
2. It made me realize how important each and every customer really is. Losing one customer amounts to much more than that after they tell their friends and the bad reputation keeps traveling.
3. It made me realize the importance of taking part in online conversations. This really makes customers feel like they have a say so that they will keep talking.
I’ll apply what I’ve learned in this book in my career by:
1. I am going to focus more on my good customer service. Often times, I would write off a rude customer, but now I will do what I can to keep them satisfied.
2. I am going to be more active in the online community. This gives opportunity to see what people are saying about you and how you can gain from what they are saying.
3. I am going to do everything I can to get my happy customers to recommend my business to other people. I will make it easy by asking them to refer friends and giving them brochures and other items to give out.
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Contact Info: To contact the author of this “Summary and Review of Word of Mouth Marketing,” please email Caroline.Coats@selu.edu.
Biography
David C. Wyld (dwyld.kwu@gmail.com) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of works he has helped his students to turn into editorially-reviewed publications at the following sites:
Management Concepts (http://toptenmanagement.blogspot.com/)
Book Reviews (http://wyld-about-books.blogspot.com/) and
Travel and International Foods (http://wyld-about-food.blogspot.com/).
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