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Issue #147: Overcoming the 3 common barriers to word of mouth

September 8, 2009

[Welcome back to the You Can Be a Word of Mouth Marketing Supergenius! newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]

There are certain products, issues, and groups of talkers that have natural word of mouth barriers. Here are three common examples and how to overcome them:

1> The secret advantage
2> The embarrassing issue
3> The busy group of talkers

1> The secret advantage

Sometimes your stuff is so good it creates a competitive advantage that people don’t want to give away. While it sounds like a good problem to have, you’ve got to work extra hard to spread the word by creating case studies, how-to videos, and stuff that people can easily pass on. If you’ve got something fantastic that people aren’t readily sharing, it’s up to you to create the material that everyone can spread.

2> The embarrassing issue

If using your product reveals something embarrassing about a customer, it’s going to be difficult for them to tell friends about you — much less strangers. You can overcome this by making it easy for them to share reviews in an environment where they don’t have to specifically identify themselves or by creating a forum for people to ask questions and post tips anonymously. If you make it easier for folks to talk about the embarrassing issue without attaching their face to the topic, you’ll dramatically reduce the word of mouth barrier.

3> The busy group of talkers

If you’re targeting a busy group of talkers to help spread your stuff, you’ve got to radically simplify the sharing. Put everything in email form (because it’s still the easiest to forward), give them ready-to-forward whitepapers (without making them enter a bunch of annoying information), and give them lots of simple links to quickly share stuff via Twitter or Facebook. Busy talkers can be fantastic at spreading your word of mouth — they’ve often got big networks and are constantly making new contacts — but you’ve got to make it easy on them by making it extra simple.

Tagged as: difficult topics, embarrassing issues, GasPedal, Newsletter, secret advantages, talkers, WOM, word of mouth, word of mouth barriers, word of mouth marketing

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