This post will continue my quest to illustrate the fact that social media is not about the technology but the conversations and that social media marketing is simply good old fashioned marketing delivered through new digital mediums.
Before social media became the talk-of-the-town in marketing circles, my marketing teams understood the value of referrals, cause influencers and brand ambassadors to any business. And there are many consumer surveys to back this up including this one from a Nielsen Online Global Study, which reports that 78% of retail consumers state that recommendations from other consumers are the most trusted form of advertising.
Enter Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM), which leverages customers, members, staff or other persons to virally spread the word on behalf of your business or brand. WOMM is more personal than mass advertising, which drove greater response rates. So when you consider the personal nature of social networking, the possibilities of using WOMM tactics online seem to be a no-brainer. Yet, most businesses are stuck in a technology-mind set and simply create online profiles without any thought to the strategy behind them. They see the masses within online communities and focus on mass-marketing to them (Sell! Sell! Sell!), when they should be leveraging the networking aspect of community.
Todays hyper-connected world however, has created the infrastructure and tools for instant-referrals; be they direct (IMs, Twitter, Facebook Likes) or indirect (comments/rating on consumer sites and online product catalogs), which have created an environment where WOMM can be very cost-effective and very powerful.
Consider how important the combination of social networks and WOMM is to non-profit groups or associations today. Most used to focus their efforts on attracting larger corporate donations to fund their activities and charities since cost of acquisition was too high when targeting individuals through WOMM.
Traditional (or offline) WOMM campaign required the marketer and the referrer to work harder since traditional networking required face-to-face, mail and telephones (or a combination of all 3) to make the referral.
Today, it can be more cost effective and drive greater results to leverage online cause influencers or brand ambassadors to drive awareness for you within their online communities as witnessed by the very successful online campaign run by US president Barak Obama during his Democratic nomination run and Presidential election campaign. The now famous example showed how with less initial capital, his team was able to generate more earned media, online referrals and drive a larger war-chest from individuals who gave less than $100/each than his rivals who saw most of their donations come in the from their target audiences (fewer people who could afford the maximum allowed $2,000 donation and businesses).
Since then we’ve seen many fail at this same campaign tactic, but we’ve learned that the key is in finding the best online influencers for your product or brand and then provide them the content and tools that will both simplify the process of marketing your business and incentivize them to do so. But that is the topic of a future post.
What experiences have you had with social media word of mouth marketing campaigns? Join in on the discussion.
Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego