QViews

How Pepsi Identifies Evangelists

Some companies try and recruit evangelists (loyal customers who help market the company), but I think a wiser route is to identify them by their actions, the way Pepsi does.

RetailEmail Blog: Takeaways from the Email Evolution Conference. 2008-Feb-14, by Chad White:

We identify email forwarders and treat them differently, rewarding them, said Lawrence DiCapua, Pepsi’s senior marketing manager. They reward them by promoting them to a VIP program within their Pepsi Extras loyalty program, along with others who show acts of evangelism. People have to requalify for VIP with each campaign—except for bloggers, some of whom are permanently VIPed.

How LifeSize Runs a Tight Partner-Ship

If your products are distributed through partners or retailers, then your success is influenced by the quality of their web site. Of course, manufacturers have always had to police their distributors to some extent, but the internet has certainly complicated the process. In any circumstances, if you have affiliates or influencers who link to your web site, then good marketing requires that you give them some direction. A recent Marketing Sherpa case study includes information about how LifeSize Communications excels in this area, featuring Megan Lueders, Director Worldwide Marketing Channels. "She started with only 20 partners, but now has more than 120 external sites linking directly to her site from a page with keyword-optimized and LifeSize-relevant content."

MarketingSherpa: Case Study #CS811, 2007-Nov-15.

[Leuders at LifeSize] developed a process to build two-way links between her Web site and industry partners and resellers....Rather than simply linking to partners’ homepages, she required partners to provide a direct link to a page with relevant content about LifeSize Communications. To make it easier on partners, she provided an "SEO 101" document with step-by-step advice on how to create a search-optimized link. Tips included: keywords to include on the page, specific copy to paste into their own sites for certain products, and the precise location on the LifeSize site to link back to.

How to Improve the Odds in Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Okay, I learned about "weak ties," the people who we know more functionally or formally than our friends and family, several years ago. Connecting with your weak ties is the best way to keep up with what's going on in the wider community, including business and job opportunities. Email, blogging and now social networking sites have made it much easier to stay connected with your weak ties, and marketers are dying to have product endorsements circulate through them.

Now marketers have to learn about "moral hazard." When your weak ties share information, they will be more or less free with the information depending on the risks of being wrong, of being "old news," or of increasing competition for a limited resource. (For example, I probably won't tell you about a job I'm trying to get for myself, especially if I think competition for the job will increase as a result.)

Search Insider: The Strength Of Weak Ties and Search, 2007-Aug-2, by Gord Hotchkiss

...a successful viral campaign is largely dependent on those weak ties being motivated to pass along the information. It needs to be remarkable in some compelling way (i.e. Godin's Purple Cow), it has to eliminate a scarcity mentality, it has to feel authentic and, to appeal to the mavens, it has to have the feel of news.

Co-opting the Critics?

If you can't silence them, put them on the advisory board! Whether or not this strategy works depends on whether or not McDonald's listens to mothers, not on how many of the mothers see inside McDonald's.

Promo: McDonald's Brings Moms' Voices in the Kitchen Via Blogs. 2007-Jun-22, by Amy Johannes

McDonald’s is using real people to tell its story in hopes that will better resonate with other customers. “We tried to [tell our story] but it’s something not as credible as if it’s coming from customers,” Starmann said. “We know moms listen to other moms and word of mouth is the most incredible source. We think they are great advocates for our quality story.” Experts say McDonald’s PR push to get moms on board is nothing new. The company ran McMoms, a direct marketing program targeting mothers. An online newsletter offered parenting, women’s health and nutrition tips.

Word-of-mouth is Fundamental

If most businesses had only word-of-mouth advertising, they would grow very slowly (although much more profitably). The following statistics are a big reminder to make your marketing communications repeatable--in common, not-embarrassing-to-say-outloud words. One excellent way to help your supporters is to use narrative techniques, creating stories they can re-tell in their own words.

Promo magazine: Word of Mouth the Biggest Influence in B-to-B: Survey. 2007-May-15

The executives said that word of mouth has more than twice as much influence on their purchase decisions as advertising, direct mail or press coverage. That includes (in order): recommendations from colleagues or friends, conversation with a salesperson, participation at marketing events, conferences and tradeshows, and last, the Internet. Fully 75% of these influential conversations happen in person; only 3% are conducted via e-mail, with text messaging and blogs/online chat each accounting for just 1%, the survey found.

Popularity Contest

Have you noticed those little links on web sites that say "Digg this" or "add to del.icio.us"? With these links, marketers are giving web visitors the tools to encourage more traffic. Here's the trick: the content on the page has to be worth sharing. Whether or not you think you have an item that could go viral, any content that's worth referring back to--tools, tips, hard-to-find history or explanations--could be easier found with social bookmarks. Your site actually becomes less reliant on the search engines.

WSJ: The Wizards of Buzz - WSJ.com, 2007-Feb-10, by Jamin Warren and John Jurgensen (subscription required)

A new generation of hidden influencers is taking root online, fueled by a growing love affair among Web sites with letting users vote on their favorite submissions. These sites are the next wave in the social-networking craze... Digg is one of the most prominent of these sites, which are variously labeled social bookmarking or social news. Others include Reddit.com (recently purchased by Conde Nast), Del.icio.us (bought by Yahoo), Newsvine.com and StumbleUpon.com. Netscape relaunched last June with a similar format.

Chevy Aveo: A Car to Live In

To market the Aveo to advertising-avoiding college students, Chevy launched a contest calculated to create evangelists. Teams from several campuses were invited to compete for a new car by taking one to live in for a few days and seeing which team could get the biggest online following of friends. A blog site was supplied but they were also encouraged to use MySpace and any other social media to promote their team activities. The contest is over now, but judging for the entries, a good time was had by all.

Detroit News: Catering to Gen Y drives Chevy ad blitz. 2006-Oct-30, by Josee Valcourt

...Khatiwoda, 20, is pairing up with a college friend, Keriann Zolman, a 21-year-old pre-law student, in hopes of winning their own wheels....The MSU students, both from Madison Heights, plan to park their Aveo near a downtown bar in East Lansing and pump up the car's sound system as loudly as municipal ordinances allow for an outdoor Halloween party...."We're just going to make people come to us," Khatiwoda said.

Striking While the Experience is Hot

Managing the email program to the customer experience, off-Broadway producer Ken Davenport has an excellent method for generating referrals and repeat purchases for shows like Altar Boyz. More than other producers he thinks about the customer experience outside of the theater.

Email Insider: E-Mail Theatrics, 2006-Jul-26, by Bill McCloskey

"Audiences were going crazy during the show, and I wanted a way to recapture that feeling." The solution was the "Thank You for Getting Footloose With Us" e-mail that went out the Monday after the show. Davenport studied e-mail sending and open rate patterns and determined that the best time to send his blast was a few hour after the women got to work and had had time to catch up on their day's activities.

T-Mobile VIP Events

Luxury brands have long courted customers with VIP events, but now mainstream marketers like T-Moblie are sponsoring intimate events where customers can bring their friends and see hot bands in off-beat venues. These events have limited reach, especially since they are not publicized beyond the inner circle. As a method of influencing influentials and creating community, they may pay a high return. I would say they will have to keep track of this audience and how much they advocate the brand in the future.

BBC NEWS | Business: Brands take new ideas underground, 2006-Jul-20, by Simon Atkinson (via MediaPost Marketing Daily)

Although the Street Gigs typically have only 50 to 500 people, T-Mobile says they still represent good value for the marketing budget. "We know that people are telling two or three friends about the gigs, so word of mouth is growing hugely," Ms Harrison says. "The feedback we are getting is people saying they felt like VIP's. They never thought they would see these kinds of bands in such usual kinds of places."

Better Buzz Marketing

When I was at the Innovative Marketing Conference in New York last month, I heard presentations from several inventive firms doing "buzz marketing," and talked with a marketing professional who participates in the two P&G "word-of-mouth" intiatives, Vocalpoint and Tremor. However, no one was talking about the model being used by Streetwise in Los Angeles. "Use it or lose it" is a powerful approach where marketers present their product or service for a vote. If 80% of the influencers want to promote the product, a campaign is launched. If they decline a product they are asked to explain why and this feedback is given to the marketer. This approach sounds very authentic to me. Now Tremor and Vocalpoint don't encourage members to promote a product they don't like, but it seems to me that advertisers will not get as much from buzz networks that don't start to pick up on these Streetwise tactics.

ClickZ: A Buzz Network With a Twist, 2006-Jul-12, by Zachary Rodgers

"Use it or lose it" is also part of an overarching strategy of transparency, De Pastino said. "You don't get emails from us saying, 'Here's something to blast out as many people as you can and whoever sends it to five million people wins the prize.'" ... More often than not, the offline channel promotion involves distributing schwag to the most active team members, for instance those who have added a client's HTML banner to their MySpace page and reached out to all their friends there.

Good Marketing is Leverage

Phillips Norelco's Bodygroom campaign is an official success, but I find it hard to believe they spent only $500,000. However much they spent it was a very smart campaign. Accepting the idea that the product itself is pretty outrageous, they set about having fun with it. They're lucky Howard Stern talked about it, but I think that's calculated luck--a lot of advertisers send him stuff, I'm sure. This campaign demonstrates that understanding your audience, not just throwing money at it, leads to profits. And that web site made it easy for guys to refer each other without having to get personal: "Man, I'm not saying I recommend this product, but you've got to see the web site."

USA Today: Marketers aim for 'engaged' consumers, 2006-Jun-20, by Theresa Howard

Talking posters at urinals in New York City bars and 13-inch rulers with the shaveeverywhere.com address helped build buzz for Bodygroom, Norelco's hair-removal device for men. At the site, a man instructs in a humorous (and racy) way about shaving male body parts. After Sirius' Howard Stern mentioned the site on the radio, more than 600 blogs were buzzing about the $39.99 Bodygroom and the website. Tribal DDB created it, and CEO Matt Freeman says that engagement is about selling. The site links to retailers and, "They have exceeded their sales goal," he says, with a campaign that cost Norelco just $500,000.

Experiences Ripe for Sharing

Generating referrals can be very challenging, especially if you ask people to share at the wrong moment, or ask too often. At ClickZ, Pete Blackshaw recommends that every business examine their customer experience to find the "ex-spot" or point at which the customer is most likely to share. Ex-spot experiences, as Pete describes them below, probably fall into a limited number of catgories, such as annual events and newly discovered bargains peopel want to pass along. Do you think ex-spot experiences are relatively predictable or unexpected and unique?

ClickZ, May 2, 2006: Do You Know How to Find the Marketing "Ex-Spot"? by Pete Blackshaw

The ex-spot is that critical moment of experience that makes feedback and word of mouth slide off your tongue like kids on a waterslide. It is always well-timed; piggybacks on the great things we love about products, services, and brands; and is never -- I repeat, never -- forced. A big reason so many marketers fail in word-of-mouth marketing programs is they embark on programs well outside the ex-spot. They push messages that are out of context with the actual customer or brand experience.

For even more information about why people do and don't share, look at this iMedia Connection article by Joseph Carrabis, Why Some Viral Marketing Doesn't Work, May 5, 2006.

Generating Referrals Can be Its Own Reward

The agencies which were "early adopters" of planned word-of-mouth advertising campaigns are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of the process really works. Apparently, it's not enough to be a big fan, you have to be a fan who wants to influence others. And maybe you just have to be a fan of being an influencer(?)...

LA Times: Taking the Fans' Word for It by Charles Duhigg, March 15, 2006

"We started looking for the top 1% of fans," Neupert said, explaining how he built teams of online volunteers for each campaign by finding people who were "already proactively searching for information about the band or TV show they loved." Then, M80 created Internet forums that contained information, clips and gossip, and primers on how to spread the word....

The most successful promoters were rewarded with T-shirts, CDs and sneak peeks of upcoming releases. But more than getting freebies, Neupert said, his volunteers liked believing that their opinions mattered. ...

Neupert says dedicated volunteers such as Mayo are the key to his company's success. But he admits that Mayo has also disproved some of his theories about superfans. After "Highlander" lured her to join, Mayo began signing up to promote TV shows she had never seen before, such as the FX Network's war drama "Over There." ... "I find that when I say, 'I don't know what this TV show is about,' other people start saying, 'Well, let's figure it out together,' " she said.

Being an effective word-of-mouth campaigner, it turns out, may have less to do with one's enthusiasm for the product and more to do with how much one enjoys campaigning. "You can't fake passion," Neupert said. "As long as we have team members who want to enthusiastically share their opinions, they'll convince others to try something new."

Avoid Betraying your Customers

Over at ClickZ, Pete Blackshaw has a great article which puts a recently published book into context. I've always been skeptical of "easy answers," but Fred Reichheld says the Ultimate Question is all you need to measure success. Pete Blackshaw compares this with his experience collecting customer feedback, and agrees with Reichheld that companies need to watch carefully and catch practices that leave customers feeling betrayed.

Oh, and by the way, the Ultimate Question is "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?"

ClickZ: Are You Asking the Ultimate Marketing Question? by Pete Blackshaw

In the course of collecting and analyzing over a million letters and comments, I learned companies that received the highest percentage of love letters trend favorably in the marketplace. In contrast, the companies and brands that served as magnets for negative feedback not only suffered from high rates of negative word of mouth but also were disproportionately vulnerable to regulatory oversight or hostile media scrutiny.

What also jumped from the data is the most intense viral complaints typically emanated from incidents in which companies sought to claim (vs. create) value from their customers. Billing practices in ... telecommunications ..., for example, triggered astonishing levels of consumer hostility and virality. Consumers always felt companies were sneaking in extra "bogus" fees or hiding behind "fine print." Shoppers became viral terrorists over impenetrably bureaucratic rebate programs....

... Reichheld... calls these "bad profits."