By Linda Forrest
This Thanksgiving weekend, my family attended a pottery sale just outside my husband’s hometown. There were lots of beautiful pieces and the weather was perfect to wander in the outdoor tent, watch a potter at work and debate whether to buy this piece or that for Christmas gifts. How did we hear about it? We have good friends who attend every year and, having admired their bounty from this sale, we finally managed to attend this year. I expect it won’t be the last time we do so.
Similarly, we attended a pumpkin patch to select a gourd worthy of being our Jack-o-lantern. How did we select what patch to go to? We had a recommendation from friends about one they’d been to and liked.
As ardent movie fans, especially of the horror genre, my husband and I eagerly await the showing of the new horror movie Paranormal Activity in a theatre near us. The movie is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project in a number of ways, but for this blog’s purposes the most relevant is the huge word-of-mouth marketing campaign that the movie has undertaken, and the large numbers of people flocking to see it because they’ve heard from their friends and other taste-makers that it’s a rollicking, scary good time. The folks behind the movie used the internet to best advantage, asking for 1,000,000 votes to secure nationwide distribution for the film. It passed that mark on Friday. There’s nothing like a good horror movie around Halloween, so here’s hoping that the movie makes it to Ottawa in the next few weeks.
In today’s day and age where the proliferation of marketing channels and media messages is at an all-time high, it’s interesting to note that our purchasing decisions are still so heavily influenced by word of mouth. The best way to ensure good word of mouth is by providing excellent goods and services along with superior customer service. If you have these elements well in hand, your customers will happily spread the good word.
/// COMMENTS
No Comments »allan isfan
October 13, 2009 12:51 pmThere is little doubt word of mouth is powerful … we generally trust our friends more than experts or media in general. Once you have good products though, you ought to provide your customers the tools to share that joy otherwise you’re missing a huge opportunity.
Linda
October 13, 2009 1:16 pmYou’re absolutely right, Allan, and thanks for reading.
Word of mouth shouldn’t supplant other elements of your marketing mix, rather it works to complement them. Heck, we’re a fee-for-service company selling marketing communications services! As such, we know first hand the value of our tools and services and that they do move markets.
I merely wanted to point out that in addition to, rather than in spite of, existing marketing activities, word of mouth may significantly impact your bottom line. For example, Paranormal Activity would not have garnered the attention it did were it not for more traditional media channels carrying paid marketing messages; that got the ball rolling and sustains interest when perhaps the initial burst of conversation dies down.
There are plenty of tools – especially in the realm of social media – to help “share the joy” as you so aptly put it. Determining what mix of those tools is right for you is something that companies like ours help our customers to determine.
A great example of word of mouth being captured by social media is currently playing out in our comments on a recent post of Francis’ about a positive experience he had at a local restaurant. He blogged about it, readers have commented that based on his blog post they’ll be dining there as well, and just this morning we found out that the blog post made it to the restaurant owner’s attention and he shared it with his staff. While the channel may not have belonged to the restaurant, the message made it back to the powers that be. What would be interesting to know whether the restaurant owner found out about the blog post because of social media tools or because of word of mouth. 🙂