Download WoMM FAQ`s - Contagious Agency


Q: ‘We’re interested in word of mouth marketing but don’t really
understand what it is’
A: Word of mouth marketing is a relatively new concept although organic word
of mouth recommendation has been helping to market and sell products for
years.
In its simplest form word of mouth marketing is:
Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and
making it easier for that conversation to take place.
At Contagious Communications we extend this definition and offer two types of
word of mouth marketing:
1.We give influential consumers the opportunity to ‘experience’ a brand’s
product or service in order to create recommendation
2.We create branded platforms and initiatives that encourage consumerto-consumer conversations and brand advocacy
Q: ‘Ok, so I understand what it is but can you give me some examples of
word of mouth marketing services or solutions’
A: Word of mouth marketing does not involve the ‘broadcasting’ of a message,
it focuses on developing honest, meaningful relationships with consumers and
harnessing consumers to organically promote a brand, therefore the
‘solutions/services’ can vary immensely. Ultimately this means that there isn’t one
‘off the shelf’ solution as each brand’s marketing objectives need to be
addressed individually before deciding what activity to undertake.
Given that we offer two types of word of mouth marketing our range of services
and solutions are varied and can include:
• Harnessing ‘influential’ people and networks to create grassroots buzz
• Developing tools to help make it easy for people to talk about a brand
• Utilising existing social media to promote brands
• Creating Guerrilla marketing strategies to drive grass roots awareness
and connectivity
• Promotions or campaigns that invite consumers to ‘create’ alongside
brands
• Developing forums for consumers to share their opinions with each
other and brands
• Providing further opportunities for consumers to work alongside brands
(consumer poll voting comps)
• Creating branded infrastructures that ignite consumer conversations
Q: ‘Why is it essential that I do word of mouth marketing now?’
Word of mouth marketing has become vital for brands due to three main
factors:
1. The highest levels of consumer connectivity the world has ever seen consumers are actively discussing everything (inc brands), everyday
through a multitude of channels both on and offline
2. Saturation of advertising - consumers are being bombarded with
advertising, it’s becoming harder and harder for a brand to ‘get through’
to consumers
3. Consumer scepticism of advertising - consumers are becoming
increasingly distrusting of ‘one-way’ advertising messages and now have
the tools and inclination to discuss their own ‘real’ opinions about brands
Consequently, brands must now create a deeper level of engagement with
consumers in order to cut through. Our white paper ‘Understanding Word Of
Mouth Marketing’ goes into a lot more detail about the socio-economic factors
that have made word of mouth marketing essential – you can download it at
www.contagiouscomms.com.au
Q: ‘We would love to implement word of mouth marketing but we don’t
understand how it can be measured’
A: Word of mouth marketing can be measured very effectively provided the right
procedures and measurement tools are put in place. The metrics used can differ
from traditional advertising measurement but still provide accurate and reliable
indicators of campaign success.
It is true that every single last conversation that occurs as a result of word of
mouth strategies can’t be measured (it would be physically impossible) however
we don’t believe that there is a single advertising measurement method whereby
you can precisely measure every single last person that has taken in that
message. You can conduct post-broadcast research etc to ascertain advert recall
but this only provides an indication of the effectiveness.
Similar measures can be implemented with word of mouth marketing whereby
we ask participants how many people they have talked about or recommended a
product to. Plus many word of mouth strategies now include a digital
communication element providing further opportunities to track effectiveness.
Contagious use measurement strategies that include:
o TalkgaugeTM (as explained below)
o vlogs and voxpops from participants
o digital ethnographic measurement
o pre, during & post campaign surveys
o brand health research
o PR achieved
o sales results
Q: ‘So what’s ‘Talkgauge’?’
A: The founders of Contagious Communications have developed, managed and
implemented word of mouth marketing campaigns for a number of years. In
that time we have developed metric tools that give us an accurate and
trustworthy indicator of campaign success and reach.
More specifically, we have developed a unique proprietary system of word of
mouth conversation measurement (TalkgaugeTM) that takes into account:
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conversation topic ‘talk-ability’
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consumer influence rating
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conversation tier dispersion
For a detailed understanding of our TalkgaugeTM measurement we recommend a
face-to-face meeting so we can explain further.
Q: ‘I’m not sure that my colleagues understand word of mouth
marketing and I think it would be difficult for me to sell it in’
A: We can help you and would be happy to meet with your colleagues or pull
together a document that explains word of mouth marketing. This FAQ
document may well be a good start to help explain things further. We also have
an online presentation hosted at www.contagiouscomms.com.au and have
written a comprehensive white paper ‘Understanding Word of Mouth
Marketing’ that can be downloaded at the end of this online presentation.
Q: ‘How do you find people to spread word of mouth communication?’
A: We look to recruit and engage consumers to take part in campaigns through
a range of channels. This can be anything from utilizing existing database
information that our clients may have about their customers, to developing
networks and communities that will aid recruitment, through to utilizing social
networks to source participants. We also advertise for consumers with specific
interests to sign up to our ‘Contagious Network’ (our database of influential’s)
through a variety of ATL media.
Q: ‘So the ‘Contagious Network’? What is this? Please explain’
A: The Contagious Network www.contagiousnetwork.com.au is an online
community that consumers can join for free. The community provides its
members with a host of unique opportunities and benefits. Members get to trial
new products before anyone else, hear about new innovations and brands first,
and are privy to an array of creative ideas, exclusive offers and other member
privileges. In return we ask for their honest feedback about anything that we
send them and we encourage them to talk to their friends and family about the
products and services they’ve been sent that they genuinely like.
The community is open to anyone to join (as every single human being has the
ability to recommend brands to their peers) but does profile and segment users
into categories based on their tastes, influences and social networks. This
segmentation is done via a series of qualifying questions that each new member
has to answer in order to sign up to the network and allows us to ensure that
suitable consumers are invited to take part in particular campaign initiatives.
Q: ‘How do we know that the people you find will talk to their peers?’
A: This lies in the accuracy of us firstly finding that ‘conversation worthy’
element of your brand (which we’re very good at) and secondly by identifying
people on our database (through our network profiling system) who have a high
propensity to like and want to talk about that product.
Results have proved that if we find that conversation worthy element of a
product and educate a profiled group of consumers (who are genuinely
interested in the product) then they will talk about it. There are occasions where
we may need to generate additional ‘talking points’ for a product to ensure that
there are sufficient conversation topics. We do this in many ways depending on
the product but as an example we may create a promotion or reward scheme.
Q: ‘So do you only recruit people who are extremely influential?’
A: We recruit all manner of consumers for our campaigns. There is much debate
about the types of consumers that should be utilized in a word of mouth
marketing campaign. Our experience has shown us that different products and
objectives require different communicators. Everyone has potential and
propensity to recommend a product or service given the ‘right’ tools and
reasons. At Contagious we provide the right tools and reasons.
What we never do though is pay people to spread artificial word of mouth, this
entirely goes against the grain of genuine, real word of mouth recommendation
and defeats the purpose of creating honest, trustworthy relationships for brands.
Fake or contrived recommendation can also have huge negative implications for
a brand if consumers discover they are being deceived.
Q: ‘What if they talk about my brand negatively?’
A: They may already be talking negatively about your brand. The first step is
awareness! What they are saying? The reality is if consumers are talking about
your brand negatively then that is something that you need to address and
potentially fix. It’s imperative that every brand understands its consumers’ issues.
As Microsoft founder Bill Gates said:
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”.
A great way to make your brand stronger is by understanding what consumers
are unhappy about. Ignoring what consumers are saying about your brand is a
sure fire way to allow the conversation to continue (and potentially build) plus
you miss out on the opportunity to address any possible weaknesses in your
brand or communications.
There are numerous examples of brands that have actively engaged in
understanding and embracing consumers who have criticized them and turned
those critical consumers into advocates. Those who ‘shout loudest’ about your
brand negatively will most likely do the same in a positive fashion once you
appease them, understand their issues and act upon them.
Q: ‘We would love to do word of mouth marketing but we don’t have
the budget’
A: ‘Word of mouth campaigns can be very cost efficient – we want to help your
brand and prove to you that word of mouth marketing works. We are so
confident in our ability to deliver value for money word of mouth marketing
activity that we will happily work with you to develop strategies that can fit to
any budget.
We believe it’s vitally important for every brand to focus on developing word of
mouth and brand advocacy. Brands can no longer ‘ignore the conversation’ and
those that do run serious risks with the health and longevity of their brands. We
believe it costs brands more in the long run not to engage in word of mouth
strategies even if that means reallocating budgets.
If you have any further questions about Word of Mouth marketing
please don’t hesitate to contact the experts at Contagious
Communications (as below).