Generating Word of Mouth
Word of mouth: the marketers holy grail? Certainly sharing has become a mandatory criteria when choosing ideas.
I read an interesting article a while back on McKinsey’s blog that outlined a method of measuring the success of word of mouth. Whilst it was interesting, I took more from the insights it raised and how they effect the creative process.
First fact: word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. That’s a big stat.
Second fact: word of mouth influence is greatest when purchasing a product for the first time, or with expensive items.
Third fact: consider that due to internet, word of mouth is no longer one –to-one, it’s one-to-many due to the internet….think Tripadvisor and review sites. Reviews get shared on a massive scale. This shift has led to the upweighted importance of sharing ideas.
At the same time, consumers are overwhelmed by product choices and they are tuning out to the ever-growing barrage of traditional marketing, which (conveniently) word of mouth cuts through and, in some cases, negates altogether. We are well and truly in “review culture”: how many online purchases have been cancelled due to a negative posts or ratings?
Next fact: word of mouth messages are more frequently focussed on functional benefits. This makes sense, but it’s an interesting insight. When you recommend something to someone, it’s generally because you value something specific, or disliked something specific.
For example, “yeah, it’s got really good battery life”. Even for Apple – who have managed to achieve excellent brand loyalty – recommendations still centre around functionality or usability in the main. I’m not saying brand loyalty doesn’t exist, just that recommendations are based predominantly about something very specific.
The original article lays out three types of word of mouth recommendations:
-Experiential if someone has experienced the product.
-Consequential if someone has been exposed to a marketing campaign and passes on the message or advert itself
-Intentional if a brand has associated with a celebrity, event or other partnership with the intent of triggering positive recommendation through the association.
Experiential sources are clearly the most important, especially when you consider the functional characteristic of word of mouth messages. If I have experienced the battery life of a phone, I will share this with friends. If I am told that something has a good feature in an ad, I won’t take it as seriously.
So, accepting that product experience is key (as ever) how do you reinvigorate product experiences to keep people sharing their functional recommendations?
One good example is the iPhone and the App store. The iPhone is an old product, but new apps keep coming out given people reason to recommend apps and indirectly sell the iPhone to friends. This refreshes consumers’ experience of the product.
Consider that a year after I got my iPhone, I’m still showing people new apps in the pub, which in turn promotes the aesthetic appeal and functionality of the iPhone. From a marketer’s position, it doesn’t get any better. The apps give the marketing team a reason to keep talking to us about new, unexpected features and benefits while the product remains the same. Apple have pounced onto this and their ads for some time simply communicated the latest cool apps, which in reality was selling us the iPhone, not the apps.
Finally, there are two key attributes that ensure word of mouth recommendations take place:
- Interactivity of experience
- Creativity of idea
Interativity generates the functional message discussed earlier, whilst the genuinely creative concept makes it memorable (the Cadbury’s gorilla for example).
Perhaps these aren’t surprising to experienced marketers; we know the impact of experiences and we know the power of good ideas.
But, it made me think of an equation:
(Surprising creative idea + experience) x functional new product feature = word of mouth recommendation
