Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking
The Four Rules of Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of mouth marketing means giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and making it easier for that conversation to take place.
Be Interesting
Nobody talks about boring companies, boring products, or boring ads. If you want people to talk about you, you’ve got to do something special.
Make People Happy
Happy customers are your greatest advertisers. Thrill them. Create amazing products. Provide excellent service. Go the extra mile. Make the experience remarkable. Fix problems. Make sure the work you do get people energized, excited, and eager to tell a friend.
Earn Trust and Respect
If you don’t have respect, you don’t get good word of mouth. Nobody talks positively about a company that they don’t trust or like. Nobody puts their name on the line for a company that will embarrass them in front of their friends. Make people proud to tell your story to everyone they know.
Make It Easy
Word of mouth is lazy. You’ve got to help it along if you expect it to go anywhere. You need to do two things: Find a super-simple message, and help people share it.
The Three Reasons People Talk about You
It’s about you, the marketer and the products. People talk because you’re doing or selling something that they want to talk about. They love your products. They like how you treat them. You’ve done something interesting. It’s about giving them a reason to talk about you. You’ve got to arouse some passion before your advocates will begin talking about your company.
Talking makes them feel good. We want to look smart. We want to help other people. We want to feel important. We want to express ourselves.
It’s about us, the group of enthusiasts. The desire to be part of a group is one of the most powerful human emotions. We want to be connected, very badly. We are emotionally rewarded when we share excitement with a group that has a common interest.
The Five T’s of Word of Mouth Marketing
Talkers: Who will tell their friends about you? Find people who will talk about you. Fans, volunteers, customers, bloggers, influencers.
Topics: What will they talk about? Give people a reason to talk. Special offer, great service, cool product, silliness, neat ad, new feature.
Tools: How can you help the message travel? Help the message spread faster and farther. Tell-a-friend form, viral email, blogs, handouts, samples, message boards, online communities.
Taking Part: When should you join the conversation? Join the conversation. Let staff surf and reply to comments, post on blogs, join discussions, answer email, offer personal service.
Tracking: What are people saying about you? Measure and undertand what people are saying. Search blogs, read message boards, listen to feedback, use advanced measurement tools.
Big Ideas
Customers are in control
We are reviewing like crazy
People like me.
What we say goes everywhere
Traditional media and word of mouth are forever intertwined.
You are the user experience.
Success comes not from what you advertise, but from what you deliver.
Word of mouth makes all marketing more honest.
The Word of Marketing Manifesto
Happy customers are your best advertising. Make people happy.
Marketing is easy. Earn the respect and recommendation of your customers. They will do your marketing for you, for free.
Ethics and good service come first.
You are the user experience.
Negative word of mouth is an opportunity. Listen and learn.
People are already talking. Your only option is to join the conversation.
Be interesting, or be invisible.
If it’s not worth talking about, it’s not worth doing.
Make the story of your company a good one.
It’s more fun to work at a company that people want to talk about.
Use the power of word of mouth to make business treat people better.
Honest marketing makes more money.
Talkers: Who Will Tell Their Friends About You?
You job is to find the right people who like to talk about you.
* Happy customers
* Online talkers
* Logo lovers
* Eager employees
* Listeners
* Fan and hobbyists
* Professionals
Great talkers have passion, credibility, and connections.
Build a talking profile: Who are they? What are their characteristics? What are they already talking about? Whom are they talking to? How do you contact them?
Talkers want to see: detailed date, progress reports, and company news.
To motivate talkers: always say yes to a volunteer, make them feel important, make it fun, and throw good parties.
Thank them personally and publicly. Make recognition part of the program.
Create a talker program: fan clubs, ambassador programs, and customers advisory boards.
Topics: What Will They Talk About?
Your job is to give people something to talk about.
Good topics are organic, based on the exceptional qualities that make your stuff stand out. Word of mouth marketing is as much about product features as it is about marketing.
Good topics are portable, easy to move along.
Amazing topics are unexpected. Whatever gets your customers excited is a great topic.
Find a topic you can use today: special sale, extraordinary, viral campaigns, free information, or wacky stunts.
Become buzzworthy company. Extraordinary products create sustainable, long-term, company-change word of mouth. Be unique, do things that are, by their nature, an interesting of conversation.
Tools: How Can You Help the Message Travel?
Your job is to make it easier for the message to spread.
Three must-use word of mouth marketing tools:
* Ask people to spread the word.
* Put everything in an email.
* Put a tell-a-friend link on every page of your website.
Make your pages super-viral.
Build word of mouth into your product.
Look for network effects.
Give your customers stuff to share.
Create blogs and message boards.
Make it exclusive, keep it secret, give sneak previews.
Let your talkers build the product.
Promote positive testimonials.
Capture passive word of mouth.
Taking Part: How Can You Join the Conversation?
Your job is to participate in the conversation.
Word of mouth is as much about customer service as it is about marketing.
Thank people who say nice things about you.
Fix problems and make people happy.
Keep good manners: never sell, follow the rules, say who you are.
Fixing problems is the most powerful marketing you can do.
To manage negative word of mouth:
* Know what you are saying.
* Build credibility before you need it.
* Show that you are listening.
* Enable your hidden supporters.
* Convert critics when you can.
* Don’t try to win.
Tracking: What Are People Saying About You?
Your job is to listen to the word of mouth and learn from it.
Things to do
Look on the web for people talking about you.
Decide who will join those conversation. Start today.
Create a blog.
Make a new rule: Ask “Is this buzzworthy?” in every meeting.
Come up with on buzzworthy topic. Keep it simple.
Put something by your front door that will remind people to talk to a friend.
Let your talkers sign up for a private newsletter.
Pick on easy way to track word of mouth.
Put a tell-a-friend form on every page of your website.
Put a special offer in an easily forwardable email.
Add a small gift and a word of mouth tool to every package you sell.
Have a private sale for your talkers.
Apologize for mistake and solve problems first.
Partner with a charity.
Do something unexpected.
Be nice.



Edification is fundamental to your success. Say it with me, “edification is fundamental to my success.” Why? Well, when you talk to your friends and family they know you. All the good and all the bad. They listen to you through an unconcious filter that usually they’re not aware of. Thus they might not be able to listen to all the information you give to them in its purest form. Also, if you’re new and have not made a single penny in your new business yet, why would they listen to you about an opportunity to make money?
It’s all about RESPECT. Your friends trust you but they do not respect you in the area of your new business. You have no history in that field. If you’re an exellent tennis player, they will trust and respect you when talking on the issue of tennis. But not with your new business. So, with an edified expert, respect is created — and that’s the missing ingredient to getting your prospects out to a Briefing or any Live Event.
So what you want to do is edifty an expert in the field of your new business. Here’s how:
1) Edifty your expert’s ability to make money. “He’s having a tremendous amount of financial success with our company, already.”
2) Edifity your expert’s knowledge in team building. “He knows 100% of the facts.”
3) Edifity your expert’s ability to help others get started and make money. “He’s helped so many people earn money (including me!)”
4) Now bring him down to earth. “And he’s a ton of fun to work with.”
After you edify your expert, you then want to edify his time.
He’s a busy person, but let me see if I can get a minute of his time.
Then as you put him on the phone (either in person or in a conference call) introduce your expert to your prospect formally and then ask him if he can share his story and answer some questions.
Hey Hannah, I want to introduce you to Mr. Alan Nato. Mr. Nato this is Hannah.
Then…
Mr. Nato, I was hoping you might have a moment to share your story with Hannah and answer a few of her questions…
You have just leveraged The System. And “Hannah” can now say to herself, “Hey, I can do what you just did!”
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve” -Napoleon Hill
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Only about 2 out of every hundred people know precisely what they desire from life and have a workable plan for attaining their goals. These are the people who are leaders. They have found success that has made life pay off on their terms. The strangest thing about these people is that they have the same amount of opportunities as those who have never achieved success.
If you know exactly what you want and have absolute belief in your ability to get it, you can achieve success. If you are not sure what you want from your life start now! Start this very second and decide definitely what you want, how much of it you want and when you want to have it in your possession.
Are you a brand new distributor?
The first step in setting goals for your business is to complete a Strategy Planning Session with your sponsor. They can help create a business plan that fits your needs.
How to earn your prospects’ trust, build rapport & convince them to take action.
Based on the work of educational theorist, David Kolb, in the area of experiential learning, the universe of audiences (or prospects) can be segmented into four categories–each of which has its own perspective or question it asks when processing messages. If you answer each of those four questions in your video messages, you’ll reach 99% of all audiences successfully.