[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.]
With just a few tweaks, you can get a lot more conversations out of the remarkable stuff you’re already doing. A few ways to do it:
1> Open it up
2> Stuff it
3> Build it to be stolen
1> Open it up
Fans love the behind-the-scenes stuff they don’t normally get to see. It’s things like your product testing, your outtakes, and your company culture. The Zappos facility tour thrills fans — so recently they opened the experience up to the world with a live webcast and an email to tour alumni encouraging them to invite their friends and family to check it out.
2> Stuff it
Your shipping boxes aren’t just a way to get your product to your customers — they’re also a way to get them talking. Try stuffing them with coupons for friends, stickers, T-shirts, and catalogs. Ask yourself, “What can we put in here that our customers will immediately share with a friend?”
3> Build it to be stolen
Look for ways to make your reports, your research, and your graphics easier for the world to steal. To see how an expert does this, check out how eMarketer gives away all of their graphs and charts in PowerPoint friendly layouts. With a simple copy and paste, presenters have been happily promoting eMarketer for years.
According to a survey of online moms by review site EXPO and highlighted by eMarketer, online moms doing product research trust consumer reviews and descriptions nearly 12 times more than that of manufacturer descriptions.
Findings from the survey:
- 92% of moms trust the description provided by consumer reviews over manufacturer descriptions
- More than 80% of moms say word of mouth from friends and family influences their purchase decisions
- 64% of respondents had watched a user-generated video review, and more than three-quarters of that group said it helped them make a purchase decision
- Nearly 50% of respondents had uploaded user-generated videos, and 35% of those were about products and brands — and of those who hadn’t, 90% said they would do so
Learn more: eMarketer
When it comes to BtoB word of mouth, one of the best ways to get stuff shared is to give it away as research. People love to forward statistics, quote research, and cite your findings in their own studies.
Your research efforts don’t have to be complicated. Here are 3 simple steps to creating something worth sharing:
- Get some simple, honest numbers. Poll your customers, ask your fans for feedback, or compile a study by bringing together existing research.
- Put it in an incredibly easy form to share. Email it out as a .PDF file, create a simple YouTube video, or put it up for download on your homepage (but don’t bury it behind a complicated form!).
- Send it out to key talkers. And when you do, don’t just send them the link, send them the full content so it’s ready to pass on.
How a word of mouth marketing supergenius does it:
eMarketer regularly sends out research in a simple email that’s ready to paste into a PowerPoint slide. In addition to their emails, their online articles also include simple graphs and charts that are easy to grab and use elsewhere.
And not only is each graph and chart ready to use in your next presentation, but they all include a link to eMarketer’s website and all are designed in the brand’s signature style — so everyone knows where it’s from.
