Word-of-Mouth by Ryan Pitylak
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?