Word-of-Mouth by Ryan Pitylak

August 15 2009 by admin in Ryan Pitylak |33 Comments

Word of mouth marketing is very powerful.  Unfortunately, it works in a negative way more powerfully than it does in a positive way.  I’ve heard that every upset person will tell 8 people about their bad experience, whereas a happy person may only tell 1 person.  That effectively means that you better provide good service and have a great product.

Pete Blackshaw asks some good questions that any company seeking to perform viral marketing should address:

  • Are we nurturing or compromising the integrity of trusted consumer-to-consumer conversations? Are marketer-designed word-of-mouth programs helping or hurting?
  • Are we sufficiently transparent in the way we message with consumers in the so-called “trust zone”? If we’re not, what’s the risk and associated cost?
  • If we use incentives to drive word-of-mouth, are there important disclosure obligations? Should a more rigorous disclosure standard apply to younger consumers and/or their parents?
  • Why even consider offering incentives to consumers when viral brand enthusiasts are already sitting in our corporate opt-in database? Maybe we just need to retool our segmentation models.
  • If things go wrong, who’s accountable: the brand group, the agency, or the viral marketing firm?
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