The Secrets of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth

by Silverman, George

• ISBN13: 9780814416686
• ISBN10: 0814416683
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-21
• Publisher: Amacom Books

Summary

Nothing moves sales more powerfully than word of mouth. This seemingly mysterious, unstoppable force doesn't merely happen by chance, though-and the good news is that you can systematically create a smart, effective word-of-mouth campaign without the gigantic budgets associated with traditional, "old school" marketing efforts-if you know the "Secrets."

Author Biography

GEORGE SILVERMAN, an acknowledged expert in word-of-mouth marketing, has been designing successful campaigns since 1971. He is founder and CEO of Market Navigation, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in simplifying customers’ decision steps through word of mouth.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Prologue: The Calf-Path	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Why This Book-and Word-of-Mouth Marketing Today-Is Different
Secrets
"Let's Go Up a Level of Abstraction"
Stupid Questions
Customer = Prospect unless Customer ≠ Prospect
"Buy" = "Buy into" = "Adopt" = "Believe," Also, "Sell" = "Convince" = "Persuade"
Product = Service = Idea = Methodology
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Is NOT Word-of-Mouth Advertising
The Systematic Approach to Word of Mouth	p. 7
The Digital-Information-Knowledge-Transportation-Communications-Internet-Marketing-Word-of-Mouth Revolutions
The Dot-Com Super Bowl
The New Media
The New Challenges of Marketing
This Book Has a New Purpose-Our Goals Have Changed
A Trip into a New Way of Thinking
Dominating Your Market by Easifying the Customer Decision Cycle	p. 27
The Function of Word of Mouth
What Is Marketing?
Decision Speed
Your Decision Easification System
How to Do It
Cut Decision Time in Half
How to Use Word of Mouth to Easify the Decision Process	p. 51
Word of Mouth's Megapower
The Speed of Word of Mouth
Independent Credibility
The Hidden Advantage of Word of Mouth: Experience Delivery
Word of Mouth Is More Relevant and Complete
Word of Mouth Feeds on Itself
Word of Mouth Itself Becomes One of the Product's Attributes
The Decision Process	p. 79
The Decision Process-Overview
The Adopter Types: How Word of Mouth Works for Different Types of Decision Makers
Decision Styles-Putting Together the Adopter Types With the Decision Stages
The Decision Matrix
Six Ms to Live By	p. 105
The Six Ms
Give Them Something to Talk About
So, the Form Is Stories. What's the Content?
The 2nd M: The Mavens	p. 123
Delivering the Message
The Controversy: Influencers Versus Peers
Sources of Word of Mouth
Expert-to-Expert Word of Mouth
Expert-to-Peer and Peer-to-Peer Word of Mouth
The Catch-22 of Marketing
Delivery of Word of Mouth
The Care and Feeding of Champions
The 3rd M: Motivation	p. 141
Beware of a Trap: Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Word of Mouth
The Secret Exception
Another Trap
The 4th M: Means or Media	p. 145
Additional Ideas
Search Engine Optimization
Getting Involved
The 5th M: Measurement	p. 155
The Problem
The Difference Between Measurement and Research
How to Research Word of Mouth
Other Research Designs
The 6th M: Multiplication	p. 161
What Is Trust?
Further Secrets of Trust
(Almost) Everything I Learned About Marketing, I Learned in My Father's Drugstore. Let Me Share It With You	p. 165
Key Secrets from My Father's Example
More Secrets from My Father's Example
Constructing the Ultimate Word-of-Mouth Campaign	p. 173
The First Word-of-Mouth Programs
How I First Harnessed Word of Mouth
Success Stories of Word-of-Mouth Sessions
Making Word of Mouth More Valuable
Situations That Benefit from Word-of-Mouth Programs, Events, and Sites
Products With Which You Should Avoid Word-of-Mouth Events
Six Steps to Harnessing Word of Mouth	p. 189
Constructing Your Word-of-Mouth Campaign
An Example of the Six-Step Process
The Process in Detail
Product Seeding
Very Expensive Products
Internal Word of Mouth
Word-of-Mouth Campaigns With High-Ticket, Professional Products
Which Methods Work Best for What? A Word-of-Mouth Checklist	p. 207
Sources and Delivery Mechanisms
Word-of-Mouth Checklist
Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Specific Audiences and Circumstances	p. 213
How to Develop a WOMworthy Differentiation in a Practice or Profession
Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Specific, Special, or Narrower Circumstances
Additional Tips, Techniques, and Suggestions
Tips, Techniques, and Suggestions That Will Make It Easier	p. 231
Who Can Help You Construct Word-of-Mouth Campaigns?
Word-of-Mouth Fraud and Other Shady Practices
Epilogue: Let's Talk	p. 235
Bibliography	p. 237
Recommended Reading	p. 239
Appendix	p. 243
Index	p. 251
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

INTRODUCTION

Why This Book—and Word-of-Mouth

Marketing Today—Is Different

My interest in marketing started one day in my father’s drug

store. I watched a Camel cigarette salesman repeatedly

approach customers who had just bought a pack of the largest

competing brand, Chesterfi eld. He had pushed a Camel and a

Chesterfi eld cigarette through two holes in a 3" × 5" index card, so

that the customers couldn’t see the cigarettes’ brand names. He

asked them to take a few puff s of each and tell him which they

liked better. Most of the Chesterfi eld smokers said that they preferred

the taste of the one that turned out to be a Camel. He showed

them that they had chosen a diff erent brand, Camel, over their

regular brand. Th ey were shocked, much to my amusement. It

looked to me, at about the age of 12, like a pretty good joke on

them. But then came my turn to be shocked. He off ered to exchange

the cigarettes they had just bought for his brand, whose taste they

had just proven they preferred.

Most of them stuck with their regular brand!

I saw another salesman do a similar thing with Breyers ice cream.

Same results. Even though they preferred Breyers, they walked out with

their regular brand. “Why?” I wondered.

At the same time, I was learning to practice the art of slight of hand. As

I mastered more and more sophisticated magic tricks, I realized that people

saw what they wanted to see, no matter what the evidence said. Why?

I was hooked.

I became a psychologist and professional-level magician and concentrated

on understanding the secrets of why people made the choices

they made—brand choices, beliefs, spouses, jobs, strategies—anything

that involved decisions. Even my magic revolved around the choices

people make about what to believe.

In 1971, I invented the telephone focus group, which became my

laboratory for understanding and experimenting with the decisionmaking

process. Th is is the work that led me to a systematic approach to

stimulating word of mouth as is detailed in this book.

I came to understand when and why people changed brands and

why they clung desperately to their Chesterfi elds.

It took about 40 years and more than 8,000 focus groups, word-ofmouth

teleconferences, and experts sessions, as well as the design of

countless word-of-mouth marketing campaigns, to accumulate the

knowledge that’s distilled in the following pages.

Not all of my clients will be happy that I’m divulging the secrets

behind their record-breaking sales gains—without, of course, giving

away any of their proprietary information. To all of my clients who recognized

early on how important it was to harness word of mouth, let me

extend a big thank you (even if you still won’t permit me to talk about

some details you know I’m dying to talk about).

In the fi rst edition, published in 2001, I predicted the birth of the

Word-of-Mouth Marketing industry. It’s happened, supported by

WOMMA (the Word of Mouth Marketing Association). When I stood

in front of the overfl ow crowd of 450 or so people who attended the fi rst

WOMMA conference four years later in March 2005 (about 50 were

originally expected), I was so choked up that I had to stand there, take it

all in, and compose myself before I could speak. I was overwhelmed by

the thought that aft er decades of trying to convince people of the importance

of word of mouth, this was the fi rst audience I had ever stood

before that was made up of people who actually thought that word-ofmouth

marketing was important enough to attend a conference about!

Th is made all the eff ort worthwhile.

I’m extremely grateful for the recognition, even though I’d prefer if

they had called me the “Father,” rather than the “Grandfather,” of wordof-

mouth marketing.

Before we get started, here are a few defi nitions that will help avoid

repetition, confusion, and convoluted sentences. I learned the importance

of defi ning my terms as explicitly as possible a long time ago from

Ayn Rand, who once asked me to clearly defi ne something that I told

her confused me. I was shocked, “How can I be clear if I’m confused?”

She said, “You can always be clear, even about your confusion. Try.” I

immediately answered my own question and resolved to never allow

confusion to be an excuse for indulging in the vague approximations

that are oft en such a tempting substitute for the eff ort of thinking.

Secrets

A teacher once observed a child having trouble zipping up his jacket.

She said, “Th e secret is to put the straight part all the way in, hold it

down with one hand, and pull on the tab with the other hand.”

Th e child asked, “Why is that a secret?” By “secrets,” I mean key

principles, not things people don’t want you to know.

Th e central purpose of this book is to lay out the secrets—key principles—

of word-of-mouth marketing, as distinct from all the details of

the techniques, and to organize them into a systematic approach.

“Let’s Go Up a Level of Abstraction”

Th is is one of my favorite phrases. It omits the distracting details, so we

can focus on what’s important. Th us, we do not get bogged down in the

details, or the latest Bright, Shiny Object (BSO) that catches our attention.

Stupid Questions

I love “stupid” questions. Th roughout this book, I’ll be continually asking

them.

Stupid questions are inquiries whose answers seem so obvious that

people are reluctant to ask them. Th ey are concerned that they will be

seen as dumb. However, I fi nd that stupid questions oft en take us to

another level of understanding by forcing us to rethink what is “obvious,”

but untrue. I would name the ability to ask stupid questions as the

secret to my success. Perhaps my tombstone should be engraved, “He

asked wonderfully stupid questions.”

So we’ll ask such wonderfully stupid questions as:

• “What’s word of mouth, really?”

• “Does it actually spread like a virus?”

• “How has the marketplace changed? Is the change something

deeper and more important than the Internet?”

• “Why do people listen to their friends?”

• “Why do people trust their friends?”

• “What’s trust, at its root, and how do we get some of that?”

• “What gives word of mouth its power?”

Customer = Prospect unless Customer ≠ Prospect

To avoid awkward language, “customers” usually means “suspects,”

“prospects,” and “customers,” as there is usually not a meaningful diff erence.

When the diff erence is signifi cant, I’ll be scrupulous about distinguishing

them. So, although sometimes it’s important to distinguish

suspects, prospects, triers, buyers, adopters, users, promoters, and evangelists,

other times, “customers” or “users” will denote all of the above.

“Buy” = “Buy into” = “Adopt” = “Believe”

Also,

“Sell” = “Convince” = “Persuade”

I’ll usually write, “buy,” even when money is not involved. Th ere’s always

a price to pay.

Product = Service = Idea = Methodology

Most of the time, I use the word “product” to mean anything you are “selling,”

that is, anything you are trying to get people to adopt, buy, or buy

into. So, if I write, “selling them your product,” when you are trying to get

people to adopt an idea, it means, “get them to buy into your idea.” If you

are providing a service, it means, “getting them to buy your service.”

Word-of-Mouth Marketing Is NOT Word-of-Mouth

Advertising

Pet Peeve: Please don’t ever, ever, ever speak of “Word-of-Mouth Advertising.”

Ever. It’s a contradiction in terms that signals you’re an amateur.

Word of mouth is communication that’s independent, unbiased, and

lacking in vested interest. Advertising is the exact opposite. To put the

terms together reveals either sloppiness of thinking or a wanton disregard

for clarity. Oft en both.

Th e phrase is “Word-of-Mouth Marketing.”