This week we’re taking a look at BtoB word of mouth marketing inspired by the new chapter in the revised edition of Andy Sernovitz’ best-seller, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.
BtoB marketers spend a ton of time at conferences and trade shows. They make speeches and sit on panels. And they usually miss all the best word of mouth opportunities. Get people talking about you with these simple techniques:
For speeches
- Never let anyone leave the room without something to share. You did all that work to prepare, you did a decent job impressing the audience — and then you let them walk away without a word of mouth topic or tool. Use handouts (not sales material) such as bookmarks, worksheets, or fun buttons.
- Do something surprising. Share something fun with the audience or bring them a snack. Nobody will complain about the ten-pound bag of chocolate you’re passing around.
For your booth
- A regular booth is never enough. Neither is a silly stunt or a boring handout. Every one of your competitors are doing the exact same thing. Push yourself to answer the question: “What would get people to talk about this? Why would someone drag a friend across the exhibit hall to see what we’re doing?”
- Give them something to take back to the office. Attendees leave trade shows with bags full of gifts and flyers — and a blurry memory of their conversation with you. Focus less on how you can get a lead in the booth and more on what is going to cause them to tell everyone about you when they get home. Instead of giving them a gift, offer to mail it (so it starts a conversation a week later, when they are undistracted). Or take their picture with a celebrity in the booth and email it to them in a week. Help it go viral by posting it to a website as an e-card so they can forward it to their friends.
One of the biggest additions to the new edition of the best-selling book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, is the five new case studies of brilliant word of mouth marketing from Dell, Potbelly, FreshBooks, Microsoft, and Levenger. We’re highlighting a different case study each day this week, continuing with FreshBooks today:
Word of Mouth Case Study: FreshBooks — A Zillion Little Things
You never know which talkers and which topics will kick off a major conversation — just like traditional advertising. But with word of mouth, you don’t need to spend any real money until after you know it’s working.
Saul Colt is “Head of Magic” for FreshBooks, a service that helps freelancers send invoices. They want every designer in the world to try it, so Saul and the FreshBooks team began testing every word of mouth topic they could find:
- Saul saw Andy writing about a mustard he loved from Toronto (where FreshBooks is based) and mailed him some, even though they’d never met. Why? Because he knew Andy was a talker.
- The FreshBooks team drove an RV between conferences in Miami and Austin instead of flying, having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with everyone they could. They met 1,500 customers in ten days.
- At a conference, they passed out 1,000 hangover kits, had employees in company shirts acting as volunteer doormen, held a pancake breakfast in the parking lot, and used their RV to shuttle people from party to party.
- They hired an artist to paint a mural live in a trade show booth. It took three days, and people kept coming back to check on the progress.
- Every time employees travel, they hold a dinner (the “FreshBooks Supper Club”), where they invite 20 to 30 customers and local bloggers. Customers are shocked when a company calls them and invites them to dinner to say thanks (especially the customers using the free version of the service).
- They have a weekly email newsletter full of contests and love for their talkers.
All of these little things add up. FreshBooks grew from 250,000 to 425,000 customers since starting the nonstop word of mouth campaign.
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We’re giving away 10 copies of Andy’s book. You can win one by letting a friend know about it! Click here for more details.
