It’s about people. Always has been. Always will be. It’s about getting new customer to buy and to keep old ones buying. This is what marketing is and

Marketing is about buying decisions. It’s about focusing on the elements that make people buy and making it simple for them to choose you. Yet this paradigm has changed.

How Are Buying Decisions Made

What is very clear is that brands are no longer trusted. With to many choices and marketers pimping their message in anyway possible, customers are looking elsewhere to get an unbiased, qualified opinion. They are looking to each other for information – or what we call word of mouth marketing.

And the stats show this. Socialnomics reports the following:

• 78% of people trust peer recommendation
• 14% of people trust TV Advertising
• 18% of traditional TV advertising managed to generate a positive return

When you read these stats it is very clear that we are now living in a people driven economy and companies have to re-design themselves around people rather than their process and systems.

What Is The Internets Role?

Here is some research conducted by Google and Keller Fay to see the effects of the Internet and Internet enabled devices on word of mouth conversations about brands. It is research based on the US market and the numbers are staggering:

• There are 2.4 billion conversations that involve a brand per day.
• There are 3.3 billion mentions of brands in a day.
• This is about 1.4 per conversation.

What makes this really interesting for me is how we go through the information gathering process and how we qualify our buying decisions.

This dynamic need state makes me think of how easy business are making it for people to deal with them. How easy is it for a customer to engage the company through each touch point. Certainly in South Africa, I don’t think to many are focusing enough attention in these keys areas.

Here is a summary of the research from Google and Keller Fay. You can download the full report here. Let me know what you think below in the comments.

67%. For Free! And this was in 2001 before the real internet explosion. This is not a phase or something that can be left to chance. Word of mouth is the most powerful media network in the world. Are you using it yet?

What percentage of your business is driven by Word of Mouth?

The seed to the greatest shift in marketing is how your customers now make their decisions. They ask their friends, colleagues, even strangers on the internet.

They believe these sources. They trust them and value their lack of bias. And they identify with them when they reflect who they are.

Your marketing strategies has to adapt to this, has to redefine how it influences your customers.

And this is why a word of mouth marketing strategy is not a process left to chance. Rather it is a deliberate, calculated process that is designed to build trust, inspire conversation and turn ordinary customers into raving fans.

Word of Mouth Is Driven By An Offline World (not Online).

Word of mouth marketing is not an online process. Given that the Internet has given word of mouth marketing a steroids boost, it’s easy to think so.

The numbers change depending on who you are looking at but as much 93% of all word of mouth happens offline, over coffee.

Just think about it. You have been inspired by a book, a movie, a product, an experience that shook your world. It made you excited about something that had meaning to you! And it was worth sharing with others.

It made a friends life better, or an acquaintances saw your value just a little bit more, or it just made you more part of the group. Whatever. By sharing you created value for you. You gained recognition, status.

This is why your customers talk. The reasons are the same. Word of mouth marketing happens when you make someone’s life better.

The 67% number was reported by McKinsey and Co.

No, it’s just that there is nothing great with it! Seriously, get over yourself. It’s boring and bland. It looks like a TV commercial. It’s about your brand and nothing about the consumer.

Of course the brand in question and the agency felt this was not true. They love it. They love the fact that their Facebook page has so many more fans than the competition. Their social media Rocks – and there is nothing like a bit of internal high five to get you re-motivated, excited and willing to spend more money.

This was my take out of a discussion on LinkedIn about Vodacom’s Facebook page. Before you read any further there are three things I would like you to do.

• Go check out the offending page here (they are like hundreds of other pages so it is not really about Vodacom).
• Go and read this article on why you should not hire a social media strategist.
• And this is a must, a superb article on why you need to create social objects.

You back. Good. (If you did not read those article please bookmark them for later. Especially the socials object one, as it is what it is all about). Ok, enough reading for one day.

I will give you my thoughts in the next post but have a listen to Seth Godin first. He is so much more eloquent than me ☺.

Till tomorrow

Word of mouth marketing has always been recognised as the most powerful form of marketing. It has the power to do amazing things and is the platform most business grew out of. It is still these businesses greatest resource.

Yet, ironically, it the one marketing strategy that many marketers do not try to implement. This is the most costly marketing mistake in todays marketing world, given that it is so important.

Word of Mouth is Your Most Profitable Strategy.

Word of mouth marketing will make you more money than any other marketing approach, strategy or tactic. Here are just some of your key benefits: [Read more...]