[Welcome back to the You Can Be a Word of Mouth Marketing Supergenius! newsletter. This is text from the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]
Word of mouth works best when it’s something every employee is thinking about. How you can do it:
1. Help them talk to more customers
2. Make them look good
3. Give them the tools to talk about you
1. Help them talk to more customers
If you can get your employees talking to just a few more customers a day, imagine what you could do in a year. Kaiser Permanente, a huge healthcare company, is working to get more of their employees — everyone from physicians, dermatologists, and IT professionals — online and engaging customers. And as a result, they’ve seen dramatic increases in positive conversations about their brand. Because they’re talking to more people, more people are talking about them.
2. Make them look good
Set your employees up to look like heroes to the customers they’re serving. Give them the authority to bend rules, extend deadlines, check in on customers, and go the extra mile. At the very least, give them a stack of note cards they can send to customers to say thank you. No expensive or complicated campaigns have as much potential to earn you loyal fans like an army of capable, energized, and motivated employees.
3. Give them the tools to talk about you
So much energy and focus is spent on getting customers to talk about you, it’s easy to forget all the people on your payroll. Try getting started by giving them product samples, friends and family discounts, insider info, or company swag. Remember, your employees have friends, clubs, networks, Twitter followings, blogs, and influence too.
[Welcome back to the You Can Be a Word of Mouth Marketing Supergenius! newsletter. This is text from the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]
Devote time and resources to making existing fans feel great. The happier they are, the more new fans they’ll introduce to you. A few ideas to get you started:
1> Feature their content
2> Ask for their help
3> Create a lot of insider moments
1> Feature their content
Few things get fans more excited than seeing their work promoted by a brand they love. And often, the stuff they’re making is better than the work you’re paying for. To get an idea of how this can be done, check out how InterContinental Hotels is using fan photos to promote their locations.
2> Ask for their help
Want fans to feel great? Put them to work. It may seem counter-intuitive, but reaching out to your evangelists for feedback, for beta testing, or for spreading the word can get them excited. Done right, this request for help will feel like a privilege, not a plea for favors.
3> Create a lot of insider moments
Nothing works better at making fans feel special than those insider moments. As a word of mouth marketer, your job is to create a whole bunch of them. Try it with first glances at your new stuff, a special customer service line for them, gear they can wear, or private events.
[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.]
When you’re looking for new ideas on how to create conversations, don’t forget to look to the group who often know best — your fans. Three ways to do it:
1> Look for unexpected topics
2> Accommodate the superfans
3> Ask them
1> Look for unexpected topics
If fans are starting trends and conversations that involve your product or your industry, look for ways keep it going. When Duck brand duct tape saw kids creating prom suits and dresses out of duct tape, they supported the topic by creating a simple contest and offering scholarships to the best ones.
2> Accommodate the superfans
Sometimes all it takes to create more conversations is to get out of the way when your biggest fans want to help. When IKEA let online personality Mark Malkoff live in a store for a week and film his experience, they in turn got a significant boost in web traffic, YouTube views, and sales — and more than 382 million media impressions. When you let fans know you’re open to this sort of stuff, they’re much more likely to approach you with their next big idea.
3> Ask them
The most straightforward way to get ideas from your fans is to simply ask them. Put an idea submission form on your website, save room on your hand-outs for fans to offer suggestions, or simply try calling up your biggest talkers and asking for ideas. To get an idea of how well this can be done, check out how the NHL’s Boston Bruins are getting input from their fans.
[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.]
Your biggest fans are the talkers you can turn to when you’ve got something new you want the world to know about or when you need feedback from a loyal group you can trust — and great word of mouth marketers know exactly who they are. Three ways to find yours:
1> Ask them to take action
2> Let them identify themselves
3> Get out and meet them
1> Ask them to take action
The fastest way to find out who really cares about you and your cause is to ask them to take action. People are busy and overloaded as it is — so anyone who takes the time to volunteer at your event, make a donation, or opt in to your special newsletter is a passionate follower. Give the people who step up your extra attention, they’re the ones most likely to start conversations.
2> Let them identify themselves
Where do your fans that have written songs about you and have tattoos on their arms go to show off their love? Shiner is doing it with BockLove.com, where they’re inviting fans to upload videos, audio recordings, photos, and stories about their love for their beer. Not everyone who buys Shiner’s beer goes and posts something, but that’s not the point — it’s to give the big fans a place to go and meet others like them (and for Shiner to get to know them all).
3> Get out and meet them
If you want to meet your true die-hard fans, sometimes it’s best to go out and take a walk in their shoes. It’s simple things, like greeting the fans who are waiting out in the cold to be the first to buy your stuff. You can meet your biggest fans by going to the geeky trade shows, stopping by the local meet-ups, and paying attention to who’s showing up at the grand openings.
