Strategies to drive Word-of-Mouth
Is your industry becoming saturated, with new competitors surfacing every day? Are you struggling to hold on to your market share? Are you struggling to capture a share of the market? If so, don’t worry we are going to look at how to differentiate your brand without spending big money on advertising, but by leveraging your best asset, your customers. How do we do that? Easy….Word-of-Mouth. It is one of the oldest and most effective forms of marketing, yet many companies seem to have forgotten about it.
In this post we will discuss 2 strategies that will help you drive word-of-mouth for your company and clearly differentiate you from your competition. These two strategies are Talk Triggers a term coined by Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin in their new book “Talk Triggers” and Superfans a term inspired Kevin Kelly’s article, 1,000 True Fans, and coined by Pat Flynn in his book “Superfans: The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, and Build a Successful Business”.
What is Word-of-Mouth?
Word-of-mouth marketing is when a customer’s interest in a company and its product or service offering stem from their daily conversations or interactions. Word-of-Mouth occurs all around us in every conversation we have, on social media and online. Word-of-Mouth is free advertising that is driven by unique customer experiences or that exceed expectation (Investopedia, 2018).
The value of word-of-mouth marketing is that we aren’t the ones telling customers how great we are, but it is someone they already trust advocating for our products or services. If we focus on the customer experience the word-of-mouth benefit will not only drive new business but should win repeat business for the company as well.
With all these benefits I find it surprising to see that companies operate without an intentional word-of-mouth strategy. Yes, if we offer high quality products and services we might indirectly benefit from the benefits of word-of-mouth on occasion, but we won’t be able to replicate this experience without focusing on the customer experience and exceeding expectation constantly.
Strategy 1: Talk Triggers
What is a Talk Trigger?
It is important to distinguish between a talk trigger and surprise and delight marketing. Surprise and Delight focuses on treating specific customers in a remarkable way and hoping that they share their experience with their network. This is a stunt that attempts to go viral and is not predictable or easily repeatable and this is where Talk Triggers are different and provide immense value.
A Talk Trigger is an intentional strategy that affects every customer and drives word-of-mouth by differentiating your brand from your competitors. Jay Baer states that in order to be a Talk Trigger the differentiator must have 4 attributes:
1) It must be Remarkable. If the differentiator isn’t worth remarking on, then it won’t drive any word-of-mouth.
2) It must be Repeatable. Talk triggers are intentional and can only be a viable strategy if it is available to every customer.
3) It must be Reasonable. Talk triggers must be viable from a business perspective and must be unique enough to differentiate your brand but not create suspicion.
4) It must be Relevant. Relevance just means it must tie into your product or service offering and not confuse your customers.
Talk Trigger Examples?
My two favourite examples that Jay and Daniel also mention is DoubleTree by Hilton and Skip’s Kitchen. Both these companies have managed to create such a buzz with their talk triggers that it has become an iconic part of their brand.
DoubleTree by Hilton have for the past 30 years, been giving each guest a warm chocolate chip cookie upon check-in. The hotel chain currently gives out 75,000 warm chocolate chip cookies every day. This may be a costly exercise, but this cookie has become the centre piece of DoubleTree’s marketing efforts and brand. The warm cookie is relevant as DoubleTree is all about the “Warm Welcome”. The cookie is repeatable, as every guest that checks in gets a cookie. A quick twitter search proves that it is a remarkable cookie and it is also reasonable, a cookie seems like nothing extravagant, but it creates a memorable experience.
Skip’s Kitchen is a restaurant in California. Now what makes Skip's different is that after you order at the counter, a deck of cards is fanned out, face down, on the counter in front of you. Every customer then gets an opportunity to pick a card and if they pick a Joker, the entire order is free. This talk trigger has seen Skips who have never spent money on advertising be named as the 29th best Burger restaurant in the USA. What Skip’s Kitchen manages with this differentiator, is to create buzz not only for the individual who gets to pick the card but builds anticipation and excitement for every other customer present.
These are two great illustrations of the powerful and viral effect a talk trigger can have. The best thing about them are they are repeatable and intentional you are relying on a process to improve your business and not dumb luck like with surprise and delight stunts.
Strategy 2: Superfans
What is a Superfan?
A Superfan according to Pat Flynn is a fan who is in love with everything you do, someone who will go out of your way to support you and make sure that everyone knows about you. Superfans are those fans that will camp outside the store to get the latest product release or will drive 8 hours to watch your show.
The Superfan Hierarchy?
The Superfan Hierarchy
The Superfan Hierarchy flips traditional marketing funnels on their head. Flynn splits customers into 4 groups and discusses how to move customers from the groups on the lower part of the hierarchy to Superfan status.
The first group in the hierarchy is the Casual audience. The Casual audience is just being introduced to your brand; they do not know much about you, but they are interested. These customers tend to find you through Search, ads and social media. The Casual audience is just getting to know your brand, and this is where many marketers tend to spend most of their time. While spending getting new leads or customers is an important aspect of every business, providing a customer experience that creates Superfans will help you create a more consistent customer base.
The next group in the Hierarchy is Active audience. These customers have taken action to show interest in your brand and what it offers and will start paying attention to what you do. However, these customers aren’t willing to join any community that surrounds your brand. The Active audience includes your email subscribers and social media followers as well as some of your customers.
The next group is the Connected community. This is where your customers start interacting with each other and with the brand. People are finding a sense of belonging and your brand is forming a part of their identity.
The top of the hierarchy and the 4th group is the one we have already discussed, Superfans. Superfans will defend your brand and be actively involved in the community surrounding your products or services. Superfans are not only great for the direct revenue they generate but the word-of-mouth value is almost immeasurable.
When examining where your highest engagement and best repeat customers are coming from, you would quickly realize that your Superfans constitute the majority of these groups. Brands however tend to focus their resources on customers who are not at the Superfan level.
Moving up the Hierarchy.
Pat Flynn recommends two things to get members of your casual audience to your Active audience.
Firstly, speak their language, Flynn cites a quote from Jay Abraham, “If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they’ll automatically assume you have the solution.” How do we speak our customers language, easy we have conversations with them, and we listen. Listen to the words your customers are using when they describe their problems and repeat them back to them in your marketing copy.
Next, give them a quick win, a quick win is helping your customer solve a smaller problem quickly to establish trust with the audience and pique their interest. This quick win must help establish authority and position you as a knowledgeable guide in their pursuit to solve their problem.
Now let’s look at Moving from the Active audience to the Connected community.
Firstly, get people involved with your brand, make your customers feel like they are involved in, and influencing something bigger. When people invest their time, they tend to be willing to invest their money. Ex. Leverage your community to ask for new content or even new product ideas. This can be as easy as a post on any social platform.
Next, make it possible for your community to meet each other. When your customers start to interact and form a community your brand will only benefit from the positive experience you have created. These communities can be online or offline as long as it gives your customers the opportunity to meet like minded people.
Finally moving from the connected community to Superfan status requires some personal care and attention. This can be anything from sending a personalised video or email to a customer after a purchase or giving the customer something more than they expected. When you are taking the time to do something personal for your customer, it will show them that you care about solving their problems and even better that you care about them.
The only thing left to do is for you to maintain your Superfans. Flynn’s recommendation here is to make your Superfans shine. This can be done by featuring them in your community and making them feel like the hero in the story.
Conclusion
Both strategies discussed here have the potential to create great value for your business with word-of-mouth marketing. What is important however is that these strategies must be implemented with your customer’s experience in mind and your customers best interest at heart. A company that focuses on putting their customers first and solving their problems will find it much easier to implement and find success with these strategies.
When we exist only for ourselves our customers will lose interest quickly however if we exist for our customers, we will create relationships that will benefit our customers and our company.
To find out more about either strategy follow the links below:
