Word of Mouth Marketing l RaveTopia l

Why Social Media is Not About You, Your Brand, Technology.

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

Heineken and 1 Million Hugs

By Michael Cowen 2 Comments

This is priceless. I just love the emotions that are expressed in this video. I do love the Heineken brand and I do like their beer. I think they do a clever job and really do try and embrace new things.

In this video Heineken “reward” their customer (and probably non-customers) for the million likes they got on their FaceBook page. They gave away a million hugs.

Just have a look at the grumpy man. Lets hope people don’t feel like this about your brand.

Now if they would just do it in a pub I was in

How To Leverage The Customer Experience

By Michael Cowen Leave a Comment

The trigger to word of mouth marketing is the customer experience. It is the root of all word of mouth marketing and defines how people feel about you. And what people feel about you defines what they have to say.

This makes the overall customer experience pretty important. You can not leave it to chance. It is the one thing that you can control when it comes to today’s marketing and word of mouth.

But What Is The Customer Experience

When we sit back and remember things, we sit back and remember how we felt. We do not think about the logic of the conversation or the experience. Yet its is easy to sit and write this. How do we make our customers love us?

How do you create a customer experience that really engages our customer and blows their socks off?

A Broader Customer Experience Definition

To generalise about the customer experience is too broad. There are many parts to it and is as complex as the people you are dealing with. Well, to try and add some for of clarity I have broken down the customer experience into 4 elements that you can control: [Read more...]

3 Steps To Getting Your Customers To Tattoo Your Brand To Their Body

By Michael Cowen 4 Comments

As a form of word of mouth marketing it does not get better. Your customer’s physically tattooing their bodies with your logo.

Yet how do you get the employees to feel this passion? How excited do the staff get and how do you go about bringing them into this movement that you want your brand to stand for?

There is no doubt that this is a huge job. And it goes way beyond the marketing director and any word of mouth marketing strategy. It is as much an organisational development process as it is a brand and marketing process.

The 3 Step To Creating A Tattoo Brand

Having given this a lot of thought and research over the years I think you can break it down into three things.

1. High Product and Service Differentiation.

To many products are “me to” products that lack any form of differentiation whatsoever. Your product and / or service needs to be mind blowing, to blow the socks of your customers. If you look at the tattoo brands they do this. Think of Apple and Harley Davidson. They stand out from the crowd based on how good they are. They stand on their own and word of mouth marketing is a natural outcome.

[Read more...]

The Most Expensive Mistake Marketers Make

By Michael Cowen 2 Comments

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...]

Why Social Media is Not About You, Your Brand, Technology.

Heineken and 1 Million Hugs