Six Reasons Word-of-Mouse Does Work - Where the MarketingProfs.com Got it Wrong
I was reading one of the numerous newsletters I receive and came across an interesting article by Michael Antman entitled Six Reasons Word-of-Mouth Doesn't Work. The main focus of the article is, and you probably guessed it, that Word-of-Mouth doesn't work. I'm going to look at the arguments he poses and then respond with thoughts about how that would change in the Word-of-Mouse context.
- Word-of-mouth is inherently subjective Well of course it's subjective; isn't any marketing or advertising campaign subjective? I mean just because a half-naked woman sells to every 18-35 year old male out there, that doesn't mean that grandma is picking up some AXE Body Spray because she thinks the girls will like it. The power comes in understanding that it is subjective and that with proper planning you can still control the outcome. What if you could actually leverage all of the good word-of-mouth spokesmen and get rid of the bad ones? Just think if everyone who touched your brand, product or service was impacted enough to actually tell 10 people how great it was over the next few weeks. Now imagine if they could tell 1000's of people over the next few years; would that have a dramatic impact on your business? Of course it would, and using Word-of-Mouse techniques you can have that type of impact (think EBAY customer feedback).
- Word-of-mouth is uncontrollable So true, I have no way to be sure that past customers will tell their 1000's of friends how great of a job I did, but with a little coaxing I bet I could get them leaving rave reviews online. We've all seen BigCompany's canned website testimonials - "Thanks for the great service, we'll be back again and again" - Billy Smith. Who cares, if your like me you probably think that Billy is the marketing guys for the company just writing fluff, what we want to see is Billy Smith telling me how great BigCompany is on their own website or blog where I'm much more likely to believe what Billy has to say.
- Word-of-mouth is limited in reach That leads us back to my prior point; what if you could get 1000's of those reviews all over the web next year and it only cost a fraction of a full blown marketing campaign. Word-of-mouth may be limited to the few friends and family I can touch over the next few weeks, but Word-of-Mouse gives me a permanent voice that can reach thousands of readers. I'm no numbers wiz I'm pretty sure that if I told 1000 people about a great company every year they'd see some really nice return from my efforts year after year.
- Word-of-mouth is easy to subvert Okay, so this is a valid point; negative PR can be very bad for business and taking my example above that negative PR can be compounded drastically. However, the beauty of the web and the whole web 2.0/open community style format is that as a business I have the opportunity to address those issues and resolve the problem. If the process were simply word of mouth I may never be able to find the culprit, much less resolve the issues; in an online world I can now reach out to the customer who had a bad experience and if I work it correctly possibly turn that negative PR into positive.
- Word-of-mouth is limited, by definition Hello, are we on the same planet here? Their argument is that it's difficult to push out a new message with word of mouse, I'd say it's almost impossible; however if you take the online approach you can reach out to your customer and the changes can spread like a wildfire (see Viral Campaign).
- Word-of-mouth is non-replicable So getting Tom, Larry, and Joe to all deliver the same rave reviews offline is next to impossible I get that, but quotes and messages can be copied and pasted all over the internet. Replication on-line is simple and easy if it wasn't you wouldn't have an iTunes library full of stolen music. Word-of-Mouth is a very dangerous way to grow your business and I'll be the first to admit that; Word-of-Mouse allows you to take all the positives that a word-of-mouth campaign offers and really focus in on how best to exploit them. At the same time it allows you to reduce the risk factors associated with certain aspects of the word-of-mouth model.
