This blog is for students in Seattle University's Marketing 491 class: Word of Mouth Marketing and Social Media, spring 2011.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Marketing 491 Class Two
Joe Barnes and class- I am officially an avid blogger considering I am blogging once a week! This is my second blog I have just finished the book "Word of Mouth Marketing" written by Andy Sernovitz. The second half the book was much more intriguing than the first because the reader is able to utilize what he/she has read from the first half into the later chapters. There were some main ideas/concepts that really grasped my attention and here they are: As a marketer your job is to give consumers something to talk about with your product/service. Ie. A unique example of this is Zappos an online shoe store that has a 365 day return policy on it's products. In other words a consumer can return their shoes they bought a year ago. In addition their is free shipping. The author makes the point that the liklihood of a consumer doing this is fairly low however the value of the message is priceless. Word of Mouth Marketing is something simple; not your mission statement but something different--could even be product features. Red Envelope another fine example is an online gift catalog. The unique thing about their product features is that every gift comes in an elegant red gift box with a bow. It gets consumers talking! Their was a unique definition in Chapter 8 which drew my attention which stated, "Word of mouth marketing is as much about product features as it is about marketing" A keep to having a successful message is to not drop the topic but keep the committment. Once people are talking about your unique feature or benefit keep the buzz going. There is three steps to achieve this: The first being start a special sale (put a sign in the window and put a discount on a product line). Second is to have extraordinary service (go the extra mile, smile with every customer coming to and from your store). Lastly, Do something silly (business's are to serious these days; humor is always catchy) Ie. Jansport is a backpack retail store. They know some customers have an emotional attatchment to their backpack's thats why whenever a customer sends in a back to get it repaired they call it "backpack camp". The backpack even sends you a post card as to how much fun it is having at camp while it is being repaired. Another key concept in the later chapters was message need to be able to travel. Ways in which a message can travel are through viral emails, popular blogs, product review sites, social media, etc. A unique analogy that Sernovitz uses in his book is the idea of a message being a drop of oil and that Word of Mouth marketing is the idea that the drop of oil gets placed on a rushing river. Their are many channels and much movement the message can take if you place it in the right spot of the river. There are tools that enable you to put this analogy into action. The first being "ask people to spread the word", second "put eerything in an email", lastly "put a tell-a-friend linik on every page of your website". Reply and respond to every post a consumer puts up on your page, tak people who say nice things about you and fix the problems that arise to make people happy. I am going to end this blog by stating my favorite part about the book and that was the Twofers concept. An example of a Twofer is "two for the price of one". What is so powerful about this is that it gets twice the amount of Word of Mouth Talkers in one sale. If you do it right this can make your company's name grow astronomically. The second class was interesting in that we started our first "briefing" on our group projects. Honing in on the Talkers was easy but once we got down to Tracking or Traveling the project guidelines are tougher than I expected. And the CocaCola Youtube video was very inspiring for a good use of a viral message. The setting of the video took place in a college campus lunch mess hall. It was a two minute clip which is fairly easy and inexpensive to post on Youtube about the "happiness machine" a Coca Cola vending machine which gave out free soda's, pizza etc. Simple, Easy, Inexpensive and most of all Powerful. Best Regards, Tim McCauley
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