George Silverman's Word-of-Mouth Marketing Blog

I'm back

I have some good news for you

The publisher of my book “The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” wants a second edition. But that's not the good news for you. This time, they have agreed to let me use word-of-mouth marketing techniques to create and sell the book.

What this means to you is that I will be writing substantive revisions of the book as essays on this blog. I promise you that they will go way beyond what has been written on the subject so far.

In addition, I will be writing my new book, currently untitled, also on the blog. The premise of the book is that there is only one thing that marketers have to do to be successful, only one thing that organizes and forces you to do all of the other right things: help customers make the right decisions faster.

I will be doing all of this is a series of blog posts. That's one of the great things about blogging. I can write things as they occur to me, the way I usually do, and you can get the benefit without my having to worry about all of them hanging together, until the book is published.

You can also participate by making comments. We can refine and tune the ideas together, making for a much better book. You can use the ideas now, rather than waiting a year or two until official publication.

That's what's so wonderful about the New Marketing. Its participatory nature drives up the quality, while letting people get the benefits during the development process, or at least ensure that the eventual product is more suited to their needs.

This is like beta testing a new piece of software. I've recently been a beta tester for OmniFocus,  a spectacular new piece of software designed to keep track of projects and activities using the GTD system. I was struck by the extreme degree of cooperation between the developers and the beta testers. I'm experiencing another even greater example of that by beta testing another piece of software that has turned me around from what would have been an extreme skeptic, spreading negative word of the word of mouth, into a wild evangelist about the greatest piece of computer software ever developed. It's going to provide a spectacular example, once I can talk about it, hopefully in a week or two.

From time to time, I will organize the blog posts into essays and e-books or papers.

Before the book is published, I have permission to distribute it as a free e-book. We'll probably keep distributing it as a free, or very low cost e-book, even after publication.

It has been intensely frustrating to have to use conventional marketing and be precluded by contract from using my own principles.

In fact, it became so unbearable that when my publisher asked me to come up with a second addition I immediately came to the conclusion that I would do it on my own terms: either the publisher would have to agree to what conventional publishers just don't agree to, or I would write a completely new book and publish it myself. My agent said that there was no way a publisher would agree to publishing a book on the blog as it was being written, and giving it away as an e-book, other examples like Seth Godin and Bob Garfield notwithstanding.

About 10 minutes into the conversation, the publisher (I'm leaving out the details here until I get permission to use his name) agreed. Turns out, he was totally informed about what is going on in publishing today, and was eager to try this new approach. He just couldn't get an author who wanted to give away his own books. My agent and I practically had to be picked up off the floor. In fact, I actually said to the publisher, “I can't believe you're not giving me more of a fight here, how come?” He basically said that he knows where things are going and wants to try the new marketing, and why not with one of the leaders of the new marketing?

Anyway, it's going to be a blast.

Pass the word.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, WOMM, Word-of-mouth marketing

The secrets to Apple's success

Steve Chazin, a former Apple marketing and sales exec, has identified 5 of the things that make Apple such successful marketers.

This little  8 page eBook is absolutely brilliant.

He calls it MarketingApple: 5 Secrets of the World's Best Marketing Machine.

I believe that there is one, underlying thing that Apple is doing, and I wonder if Steve Jobs has realized it:

All of the great, wildly successful products, services, companies, institutions of the last decade or two have all done one thing at the root. They have helped the customer make Better Decisions Faster: not only faster in buying, using, recommending the product itself, but also helping the customer use that product to make better decisions faster in their lives.

For instance, Apple makes it faster to get on the Internet; operate a computer; organize, find, store, carry & access their music, photos, etc.

Amazon has done the same for books, eBay for collecting, Google for searching & reaching the customer at the exact point of interest, Yahoo for accessing certain types of content, Prius for making a certain social statement, Toyota in general for making it easy to buy a more reliable car, etc.

An the root of all successful marketing these days, is helping the customer make Better Decisions Faster. I have always been able to find several major ways to make it faster for your customers to decide on your product, if your product is the better decision.

When you enable customers to make better decisions faster, you accumulate customers faster, your customers get to be better users faster, they feel better about the whole experience, so they spread the word faster.

In the Age of Overload, time is more than money.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Customer Decision Experience, Marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

WOMWorthy product: Harry Potter at the IMAX

Quick heads up:

I don't know where the word of mouth is on this one. You just HAVE to see the new Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) at the IMAX. Turns out that (only at IMAX) the last part is in the most mind-blowing 3D you've ever seen. The rest of the movie is great, too. They managed to resist overdoing the magic special effects (can't believe as a magician I just said that), focused on the important things: values, relationships, characters, etc.

I haven't seen any mentions of the 3D IMAX version. Found out about it by WOM from my daughter, who dragged us to see it. I wasn't even going to go because I didn't enjoy the last one enough to bother. I've never seen a movie that was better than the book, except for “The 10 Commandments.”

Technorati Tags: Womworthy products, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing

Surprise! Give 'em a little frisson to be Womworthy

Did you know that there is a hidden symbol in the FedEx logo?

It symbolizes speed and precision.

Once you see it, you can't not see it. I won't spoil the fun by pointing it out. If you don't know about it, stop here and look for it.

Yes, it's intentional. The designer, Lindon Leader, had some very interesting things to say about it.

What's this doing in a Word-of-Mouth blog? Glad you asked.

I was struck by the question that the logo designer says he is always asked:

“Why choose to keep the arrow so subtle? It seems to show remarkable restraint. Weren't you or the people at FedEx ever tempted to make it more obvious with an outline or a different color?”

It's so obvious that I might not have asked the question, but I'm glad the interviewer did:

He replied that the arrow is one of the most mundane graphic devices. There is nothing unique or particularly strategic, from a marketing point of view, in an arrow as a brand identifier.

Then Lindon went on to say,

The power of the hidden arrow is simply that it is a “hidden bonus.” It is a positive-reverse optical kind of thing: either you see it or you don’t. Importantly, not “getting the punch line” by not seeing the arrow, does not reduce the impact of the logo’s essential communication. The power of the logo and the FedEx marketing supporting the logo is strong enough to convey clearly FedEx brand positioning [Speed  & Precision]. On the other hand, if you do see the arrow, or someone points it out to you, you won’t forget it. I can’t tell you how many people have told me how much fun they have asking others “if they can spot ‘something’ in the logo.” To have filled in the arrow, or to somehow make it more “visible” would have been like Henny Youngman saying “Please take my wife” instead of “Take my wife. Please.” Punch lines that need to be explained are neither funny nor memorable. (Emphasis mine).

In other words, it's hidden, surprising, memorable, unusual. It's one of life's little pick-me-ups on an otherwise boring truck, envelope or uniform. So, it causes Word of Mouth. People like to point it out, or ask others to spot it. Like I'm doing now.

(FedEx did not pay for this ad. That's the point.)

I've always said that FedEx didn't succeed, as most business books state, because of its brilliant logistics breakthrough of sending the packages to a central point (Memphis), sorting there, then sending back out. They succeeded because they were beneficially unusual and constructively quirky Federal Express (as it was know in those days) told secretaries they would look good because they would positively, absolutely DELIVER overnight. In those days, it was as unusual as a customer-oriented phone company is today.

(This was the day that an iPhone customer got a 300 page bill, itemizing every text message, from AT&T, delivered in a box. No, not a FedEx box. I looked. Wouldn't that have been perfect?)

See it here:

or here:

YouTube Link

Was played on the network cable channels. How's that for WOM?

Via

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Marketing, Womworthy products

What to focus on

Most companies focus on beating the competition. Apple focuses on ... well, let's let Steve Jobs say it:

Is Apple’s goal to overtake the PC in market share? Jobs said, “Our goal is to make the best personal computers in the world and make products we are proud to sell and recommend to our family and friends. We want to do that at the lowest prices we can.

”But there’s some stuff in our industry that we wouldn’t be proud to ship. And we just can’t do it. We can’t ship junk,“ said Jobs. ”There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are. And we think that there’s a very significant slice of the [market] that wants that too. You’ll find that our products are not premium priced. You price out our competitors’ products, and add features that actually make them useful, and they’re the same or actually more expensive. We don’t offer stripped-down, lousy products.“

This isn't a lot different than the official statements from many companies. The difference is that Jobs means it and lives it.

As quoted in MacWorld today. He was announcing the new ILife and IWork 08 suites.

George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and Consultant
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
main website: www.mnav.com    blog: wordofmouth.typepad.com

Are you making decisions easier for your customers?

Either you’re supporting the customer’s decision making, or you’re creating clutter and obstructing it.

Prospects make dozens of little decisions as they move through the decision process:

• Decisions about entering the marketplace. “Browsing.”
• Decisions about learning about your products and your competitors'. Technical term: it's called “Shopping.”
• Decisions about  initial experiences with the product. Technical term: it's called “Trying.”
• Decisions about  purchase. Buying.
• Decisions about  expanding usage:  Using. committing.
• Decisions about the whole decision and usage experience. Raving, Evangelizing

Different customers have many different ways of doing each of these. Each has its own set of rules.

Your marketing materials and activities are rarely in exact sync with your customers. That's why there are so many browsers and shoppers, but so few raving fans.

People are more in sync with their friends than they ever will be with your advertising and salespeople. That's why word of mouth is so much more powerful than marketing.

The lessons learned from all this is that you need to:

• Lay out all the dozens of little steps that people need to take in order to go from browsing to evangelism.
• Spend a whole lot more time eliminating these steps or making the steps simpler, easier, faster, and more fun.
• Find every large and small block, barrier, impediment and bottleneck and eliminate them. “Disimpedimentation.”
• Focus on the whole decision experience rather than just the user experience with the product interface.
• Put a lot more time, energy and resources into streamlining and funifying the customer decision process from beginning to end. [By the way, there is no end, at least not with on-going customers.]

Conventional marketing complexifies by shoveling information at already overloaded people.

You can use this decision smoothing approach by employing word of mouth and other techniques to smooth out the bumps in your customers' very rough decision process.

More to come. Stay tuned. I feel another book coming on.

Subscribe by feed, or by newsletter. Look in the left column. Speaking of decision smoothing.

George Silverman
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Speaker and Consultant
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
main website: www.mnav.com    blog: wordofmouth.typepad.com

Technorati Tags: Customer Decision Experience, Marketing, WOMM, word of mouth marketing, Word-of-mouth marketing