If you don’t like it – tell us. If you love it – tell others!
My sister tells a great story about her daughter Jordan. When she was about five years old, she loved to watch infomercials. One morning she came running into the kitchen, very excited and blurted out – “Mom! Mom! we need to buy a Mr. Omelet pan, the eggs won’t stick, it makes turning easy, and if we buy it now, we can get another one for free, we need to call 800-489-0356 right away, supplies won’t last!” While they did not end up the Mr. Omelet pan, this is perfect example of how people talk, and get excited about a product.
At Fresh Baby, we know word of mouth is powerful. Our customers, new parents, are delighted to tell other parents, their parents, their pediatrician, and just about anyone who will listen, about a product that makes them feel like a great parent. We have products that do just that. But you need more than just a good product or service for good word of mouth potential – you also needs a personality that people want to talk about, and that personality needs to shine at every point it touches a potential customer. We’ve decided we want to be approachable and supportive at Fresh Baby.
Some of the things we do to promote word of mouth are simple – we answer every e-mail we receive, we write a newsletter with forward to a friend function, we offer a no questions asked product replacement policy, and we have a content-rich web site.
There are a lot of benefits to word of mouth marketing, best of all, it works! How do you get people to talk about your product or service?
Want a book? Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz
November 13th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Hi Cheryl,
Thanks for your post. That is a pretty clear story on the power of word of mouth. And it was good to read that the nonprofit I work at, Winning Workplaces, is doing many of the things we need to in order to engage our audience and cultivate a bigger audience, including answering all e-mails and featuring a forward function in our e-communications.
I thought your readers would be interested in the news of our partnership with The Wall Street Journal in setting up a Top Small Workplaces recognition program to honor exceptional small organizations throughout North America. The press release providing details of this program is located at: http://www.winningworkplaces.org/aboutus/releases/release101206.php.
We are accepting nominations of Top Small Workplaces through January 2007 on the Journal’s StartupJournal website: http://www.startupjournal.com/about/entryform.html. Any organizations with fewer than 500 employees and annual revenues of less than $200 million are eligible.
Thanks again for your post. I found it very insightful.