George Silverman's Word-of-Mouth Marketing Blog

What Should Marketing Be All About These Days?

Marketing isn’t about the product anymore (actually, it never was).

In the current Information Age, marketing’s former role of giving customers information and persuading them to buy products is diminishing. They get info and recommendations on independent web sites. The days of controlling information are long gone.

The current cliché says it’s about the customer (too vague), or about the “customer experience” (still vague), or about the “relationship” (even closer).

So, what then is the central function of marketing these days?

The ultimate purpose of marketing is to get people to buy more of your product. That’s obvious. Not so obvious: this is best achieved in this overloaded environment by helping customers make better decisions more easily.

The Central Function of Marketing

Making the whole experience of the decision process easy, simple and time-saving

How customers first hear about the product and get interested.

How they experience learning about the product. (Hard, easy, makes me feel smart, dumb, confused.)

How they experience choosing between the products. (Am I being pushed or helped?)

The trial experiences

The purchase experiences

The initial usage experiences

The “learning to master” experiences

The rewards

The teaching to others

The support

The continuing relationship

How they feel about themselves using the product

How they feel about telling others about it.

It is not the “best” product that wins in the marketplace. It is the product that makes it easiest for the customer to get through the entire process fastest to arrive at:

The Ultimate Decision

“Do I feel enthusiastic about actively recommending this product to others?”

The marketer who makes the path to this ultimate decision easier, simpler, faster and more fun wins.

A Great Word-of-Mouth Campaign makes it easy, simple & fun for the customer

Here’s an excellent example of making decisions easy for the customer, mostly through Word-of-Mouth Marketing.

I just got this email from an architect friend who also has a Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology, so I paid attention.

I haven't made up my mind yet. But I sure love bold problem-solving and a guy who will put his money where his mouth is. Regardless of where you stand on this, you've got to admire a really well-done WOM campaign!

Study this campaign, and follow it as it progresses. if it works, it will change the world and compress what would have taken 50 years into only a few. Can you incorporate these elements into your campaign? Don’t be so quick to say that you aren’t a famous billionaire. There are elements here that you can use.

- - - - - - - - -

George:

I encourage you to watch the video and join the "Pickens Plan Army" (no costs).
This guy has the clout and ambition to make alternative energy a real option for the US in the near future.
We all need to support this and every effort to get away from foreign oil ASAP.
Please help!
[Initials redacted]

To: [redacted] Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:49:03 -0700 Subject: 60 Minutes and the Pickens Plan From: [email protected] Boone here, Last night 60 Minutes did a segment on our plan. If you didn't see it, click here to watch. Be sure to send the link to your friends. I think it does a good job of describing the plan and will help us get more members in the army. - Boone

• Pickens obviously did something right to capture the email addresses of high-level people like my friend and got his permission to send emails.

• He had a vision, something different, something lofty.
• He became the face of it.
• He invested emotionally as much as financially, and shows it.
• That passion is contagious.
• They motivated high level people to send it out to their friends.
• They made their product/product category into a “cause.”
• They got the implied endorsement of 60 Minutes.
• He sends short, personal emails, asking for pass-along.
• He asks for specific actions, but keeps it simple and easy.
• In fact, at every step he makes the complex simple, easy and interesting.

The list goes on and on.

Assuming that the technology is sound, this is a winning campaign.

WOM gone wild

This is the first crisis mediated by Internet Word of Mouth

The current financial crisis provides a rare opportunity to study Word of Mouth under crisis conditions. It turns out that Word of Mouth works differently during a crisis, paradoxically providing both powerful resources and dangerous pitfalls. It can be a powerful tool to solve problems, but can also BE the problem. At such times, WOM appears in its extremes -- at its best and worst. It can rear its head in its ugliest forms: rumor, smear campaigns, political correctness, dogmatic suppression of questions, and -- at its extreme -- self-feeding panic and mob rule. It can also provide access to leaders and experts who emerge in times of crisis to lead us to rise to the occasion.

It's interesting to watch almost everyone get the current financial crisis wrong, watching the spread of misinformation, the lessening of the ability to listen, the growing list of “That Which Must Not be Questioned” and the elevation of nonsense into dogma in a crisis, i.e. a perceived necessity to act immediately. Fascinating. Instructive. Scary.

WOM more important, yet quality lowers

In periods of extreme uncertainty coupled with an urgent necessity to act, WOM becomes more important, but of much lower quality. False information spreads. Simple questions don't get asked by our designated questioners (the press). Simple questions like, “yes, but what made THAT possible, encouraged it, blinded people to the problems, etc.” Simple explanations are very appealing in a crisis. We have to act NOW. No one wants to ask the deeper questions out of fear of delaying necessary action, looking stupid or getting overwhelmed with too much confusing information.

Word of mouth saves time, which is just what we need in a crisis. One of the functions of WOM is to piggyback on others' knowledge and experience, thereby saving us time, effort, uncertainty and risk. That may be fine for buying a product, but it's not so good when the matter at hand is extremely important, urgent and complex, needing careful examination.

The good news

However, there is a silver lining to this. Dissenting opinions and evidence are getting passed around. For instance, I've seen a NY Times article predicting the crisis in 1999 being passed around and laying it at the feet of Fannie Mae's -- and other GSEs -- granting of more mortgages to people who obviously couldn't repay. Some people are questioning why people would do such a thing, and not accepting “greed” as the “obvious” answer. (Wouldn't a greedy person do the opposite?) There have been many mentions of the Community Reinvestment Act and the “mark to market” requirements (regulation, not deregulation) that are also at the root of the situation.

Anyone who wants to access WOM from knowledgeable people can now do so, unlike in previous crises. Wikipedia, perhaps the most amazing result of the WOM revolution, is surprisingly accurate, clear and concise in describing these controversial issues, objectively. For instance, the “mark to market” issue, while the TV pundits say it's too difficult for us to understand, is a simple concept that Wikipedia easily explains.

While most people are analyzing the symptoms of the problem, some wiser people are asking, "What are the root causes and what really allowed these causes to happen?" "Yes, mortgage lenders gave bad mortgages for immediate gain. But, was it deregulation or regulation and government interference in the economy (such as the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie, lowering interest rates, etc.) that made it all possible?" Actively seek the right WOM.

Never before has the meritocracy of ideas – its present form is the blogosphere – been put to such an extreme test.

Lessons:

• When the conventional WOM is saying that something is too complicated for you to understand and that we have to act now on the “obvious,” run for the hills holding your wallet. Actually, run for Google and read, read, read -- not just the first few entries. You will eventually find entries that are crystal clear and easily understandable.
• We can now question what we hear, and get answers. In other words, we can actively seek WOM. It is no longer rare for us to run into a knowledgeable person. Our problem is now the opposite: an overabundance of them to choose from.
• This causes initial overload, due to the dramatically increased access to word of mouth from a variety of media.
• As James Thurber said, "It's more important to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
• Inconvenient Questions, coupled with the ability to shop for the right word of mouth, might just save us.
• We can -- and should -- shop for our Word of Mouth carefully, critically and thoughtfully.
• The age of being able to manipulate and control information is over, but is still operative in the short run when people suspend their critical faculties and abandon reason during an emergency..
• WOM should never replace thinking -- except when we allow it to, which is sometimes desirable, as in, "What laundry detergent works best for you?"
• Professional Word of Mouthers, such as TV pundits, are often pushing a hidden agenda or hiding the fact that they don't have a clue. This is particularly true of reporters. Reporters report, that is, they repeat what at least two people say. They call this corroboration. Criminals are found guilty on the basis of corroborating witnesses. But so did “witches” get burned at the stake with the same corroboration. Reporters hunt with the pack, and in is only a very small handful of members that set the direction of a herd.
• WOM is inherently self-correcting under conditions of transparency, high feedback, reward for success and/or penalty for failure and a high standard for evidence. Wikipedia is a shining example. But this self-correction can be shut down by “The Sky is Falling” urgency and desperation, by telling us that the situation is too arcane for us to understand, by PC dogma that forbids questioning, by intimidation, by distraction (such as the real unfairness of things that don't make a difference, such as executive salaries and immunizing people from their poor judgement), by illusions masquerading as facts, by wishful thinking and by Political Correctness and other dogma (unquestionable beliefs).
• WOM can accelerate the spreading of speculation, misinformation and panic -- and make it more credible before it makes it less credible.
• WOM in this Information Age increases the chances that the small number of people who correctly understand the situation can eventually be heard.
• Beware of WOM that attempts to complicate.
• Beware of WOM that oversimplifies.
• People can sell almost anything in a neatly packaged story. President Bush's story about the necessity for the bailout was almost identical in structure to his speech about the necessity for invading Iraq, which I suspectei at the time, but which was frighteningly driven home in a split screen episode on The Daily Show.

Eventually, even under conditions toxic to the truth, some kid will step forward and say “The Emperor has no Clothes.” That kid is invariably a pain in the ass who increases our discomfort and who should therefore be encouraged and treasured.

Word of Mouth -- without words and without mouths!

Implied WOM -- Here's a case where it's more important than explicit WOM

The Olympic swimming competition is providing a great example of what I call “Implied Word of Mouth.”
The current flurry of Olympic gold medals and world records in swimming is being attributed in large part to the new Speedo LZR swimsuits.

— 38 world records have been broken since its introduction in February until June, before the Olympic qualifiers and Olympics, not counting all the Olympic trial and Olympic records.
In fact, as of this writing, here’s some information that Speedo has on its website:

They have an endorsement deal with Michael Phelps. That’s an obvious use of paid word of mouth.
More importantly — and often neglected by people who are thinking about word of mouth — is the implied endorsement by all of the swimmers, many of them previously non-contenders, as they win medals and smash world records.

Adding to the situation is the controversy around whether the suits constitute “technological doping.” Swimmers and Speedo are being accused of using technology — rather than athletic ability and training — to give athletes an artificial edge, much like using performance-enhancing drugs.

It is just about the ideal word of mouth situation:

1. A wildly superior, unusual product.
2. Easy to talk about the product as a whole.
3. A technology story that is easy to describe, thereby giving a “reason to believe.”
4. An overall story that is easy to tell, even in headline form. (“New Kind of Swimsuit Shatters World Records” Better for the Company: “New Kind of Swimsuit Makes Even Mediocre Swimmers Win Races.”
5. Celebrity endorsements. Some paid, others spontaneous.
6. Implied endorsements by everyone who is seen on the Olympics wearing one, especially medalists and world-record breakers. [Note: This is the original meaning of “viral marketing”: a product whose very use is an implied recommendation by those who use it. It was originally used for HotMail, which had at the bottom something like: “Sent by HotMail. Want a free email account? Go to Hotmail.com”)]
7. Controversy, generating buzz, that reflects well on them. After all, if the suits were not effective, there would be no accusations of unfairness.
8. An amazing website (Speedousa.com). It is simple, uncluttered, fun, and allows you to find anything you want on a very information-packed website with only an obvious click or two. Their explanations are simple, yet informative. There are a few problems: they have a fun “Virtual Model” section in which you can construct someone who looks like you, and then try on various kinds of swimwear (when did “bathing suits” become “swimwear”?). Unfortunately, all of the avatars are under 30.
More importantly, they have so many fabrics and lines that they need a comparison chart or a decision tool where you can enter info, such as whether you are a competitive swimmer, where you will use the swimwear, etc. and it makes recommendations. Like many of the sites that help you pick a camera or a television set.
9. A product that is not yet available to the public, but will be soon, thereby building desire for something you can’t have. By the way, a full swimsuit will cost around $550, with leggings costing just $350, and trunks just $290. But don’t worry, they have models that are almost as good, especially for the non-competitive swimmer. By the time you check out other models, their $100 and $50 swim trunks begin to look cheap.
10. There are dozens of other little and large issues around their product lines, website, attitudes, innovative spirit, etc. that make this a marketing situation well worth studying. I’ve barely begun to look into this company, and already I’m bowled over.

Yes, but...

Note to any companies that are tempted to say, “Yes, but we are not Speedo,” or, “Yes, but we have a mundane product,” let me respectfully remind you of several things: First of all, stop saying “Yes, but…” Then, remember that they were a swim trunk manufacturer. There is nothing more mundane than that. Then, they were the first to use Lycra® in swimwear in 1972. Then, a series of innovations in all areas of sportswear followed that. To get WOM, you have to be EXTRA-ordinary.

The REALLY important lesson here:

Okay, here is your reward for reading this far: All of the above is an example of a much more important and broader concept: Decision Simplification. Speedo has made the brand choice decision into that Holy Grail of marketing: a no-brainer. If you want to buy a swimsuit and want the very best, the decision is now simple — a decision so simple that no time or effort has to be spent on it by busy people (everybody!). If you are an affluent and aspirational buyer of sportswear, what are you going to buy yourself or your kids? Simple. The suit that Michael Phelps and every other medalist and world record holder wears.

Many people have gone from only a dim awareness of the brand to the belief that Speedo makes the best swimwear. When they go to their website, they find out that they make a broad line of sportswear and accessories.

It doesn’t make a bit of difference if Speedo doesn’t make any money on the new swimsuits. They have, after all, put a huge amount of R&D into its development. They have now out-Niked Nike, the masters of the actual and implied endorsement. They have demonstrated in the most rigorous environment that their particular clothes actually enhance performance. I’m not aware that anyone else has done that, at least so convincingly and so publicly.

This particular formula for Decision Simplicity is simple to understand, but hard to do: Make a smashingly superior, astonishing product and get everybody to use it visibly because of the edge that it gives them. They don’t actually have to say a word about it, although they will. Of course, you might have to put in some R&D that will make the bean counters go crazy.

What this means to you

If you can make a product that actually enhances the performance of something your customers do (why make it if it doesn’t?), you are making your customers into a personal champion and making them feel better about themselves. They will brag about it. They will wear your logo.

Also, get the leaders in your customers’ line of work to visibly use it. Get them involved in its development, get their continual feedback, stir up the good kind of controversy and competition, make it something whose name and logo they are proud to display. It’s worked for Speedo, Nike, Canon, Nikon, Leica, Apple and many, many other brands that you’ve never heard of because they are in obscure and technical areas. But, I could name plenty of other brands in windsurfing, magic, photography, surgery and medical devices. There is room in your area, even if you’re getting clobbered by a Nike at the moment.

Here's another idea: Maybe you should run an “Olympics” in your category. For instance, if I made voice dictation software and it was the fastest on the market, I would run a contest for the fastest “typist” (sounds better than “dictator”) in the world. They could type or use voice dictation. Since the fastest typist in the world types about 160 words per minute, and I can easily hit that with my present voice dictation system, the champion would be widely acknowledged to be the fastest in the world, using my software. My guess is it would be over 200 words a minute, using my software. This would be a real contest that actually demonstrates the superiority of my product dramatically, instead of the stupid, artificial contests that are usually run.

How can you take advantage of implied word of mouth?

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

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

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