How to master word-of-mouth marketing? Do these things well!

Word of mouth, one of the oldest forms of communication, is the future of communication. Because in the future, whoever’s consumers are the best at storytelling will own the strongest brand .

In today’s business environment, where competition is intensifying, having an attractive-looking website isn’t enough to make your product stand out. In today's environment, success requires squeezing every opportunity to the fullest. Whoever has consumers who are the best storytellers will have the strongest brand.

“Good things should be shared with good friends!”

This sentence comes from Wang Nien-chi, the creative director of Ogilvy (Taiwan) at the time. It was the slogan of Maxwell House Coffee 30 years ago. It was voted by the public for five consecutive years and won the Advertising Buzzword Award. In order to make the new slogan stand out, the organizer "Dongnao/Advertising Club" awarded this sentence a "Permanent Golden Sentence Award", and from then on this sentence no longer had to participate in the competition.

This slogan spread through word of mouth through television commercials, became popular among the people, and was even widely used in publicity for all walks of life.

"Good doctors should share with good patients", "Good candidates should share with good voters". Until recently, I read a translated bestseller published by Times Press and I saw the sentence "Good things should be shared with good friends".

In the past, word-of-mouth communication was mostly carried out by word of mouth. In form, it was often a popular advertising slogan that was used in relevant life scenarios and became a daily expression.

Thirty years later, a video clip titled “Love Should Be Expressed Properly” produced by FarEasTone Telecommunications was transmitted to the mainland and received 360 million hits and views. In mainland China, there is certainly no business like FarEasTone Telecommunications, but people always say the most direct and inconsiderate words to those closest to them, and this is a common phenomenon among the people in mainland China. Therefore, this video touched many people. It was shared through computers, mobile phones and online platforms and was viewed by 360 million people.

Many parents forwarded this video to their children, asking them to learn from it. Modern word-of-mouth communication is not only real-time, fast, wide-ranging and large-scale, but also involves not just copying a slogan, but copying the entire advertising video, sharing it 100% completely without any omission of information. Some word-of-mouth content can even be the output of a complete set of successful cases.

The evolution of word-of-mouth marketing

Word of mouth, one of the oldest forms of communication, is the future of communication. Because in the future, whoever’s consumers are the best at storytelling will own the strongest brand.

In the past, communication marketing was a one-way communication. Whether it was advertising or public relations, it used mass media as a platform and different communication technologies as tools (strictly speaking, direct sales were no exception) to carry out purposeful publicity to the target audience. The purpose of publicity is to establish the value of the brand and the relationship with consumers.

In the past, word of mouth has long been the most sincere evaluation standard for testing the success of these promotional activities. When people talk about your ad at dinner parties and the media rush to report your news, you have achieved real success.

The key point is: "word of mouth" proves that you have been here, instead of like most promotional activities - spring has passed without a trace.

However, the process of building word of mouth is different now than it was in the past. The modernization of the Internet allows people to copy information within a second and spread it to countless people through social platforms that almost everyone has. The platforms on the Internet are full of venues for discussion, whether it is an official website, a blog, or any event website, allowing people to share and discuss anytime and anywhere. Such large-scale, convenient and fast sharing results in interactive communication between consumers that is far more effective than manufacturer-to-consumer communication.

Therefore, the formation of word of mouth has evolved from being passive in the past to being active today. Passive word-of-mouth communication is the response of consumers to the stimulation of marketing communication, while active word-of-mouth communication is the result of consumers' active participation. Therefore, when we think about communication strategies, we start to change “target audience” to “participants”.

In addition to progressing with the advancement of digital life, these "participants" can also more freely and openly demonstrate the diverse aspects of human nature. Remember, human nature tends to "promote evil and hide good". Originally, 3 out of 4 rumors were bad news, but now they are automatically magnified to 300,000 out of 400,000 rumors are gossip and malicious talk. Coupled with the awakening of awareness of protecting the earth and consumer rights, the proportion of "bad words spread far and wide" has become more exaggerated than before.

Although this can reasonably eliminate bad goods and services from the market more quickly, it also often causes small mistakes to be magnified into unreasonable disasters. Currently, most companies’ word-of-mouth management efforts are in response to market demands, with the goal of improving relationships and ensuring customer satisfaction. The future word-of-mouth marketing will shift to active participation, that is, actively creating community interactions and providing a platform that is beneficial to the brand and has sufficient influence.

The importance of word-of-mouth marketing

I believe that the amount of information disseminated through online forwarding and offline word-of-mouth has exceeded half of the total amount of information disseminated. In other words, the total amount of information or knowledge people obtain on multiple platforms has exceeded the sum of advertising, public relations, direct sales, and promotions. Among them, those commodities with high unit prices and high transaction risks are more obvious. For example: hotels, finance, automobiles , computers, pharmaceuticals, etc., more than 80% of people’s preference for restaurants comes from the influence of word of mouth.

In 2017, a report showed that online word-of-mouth accounted for only (very surprisingly) 7% of the total word-of-mouth. This is because, although people’s social activities on the Internet have become extremely common and frequent, such communication is limited to people, and people do not welcome the implantation of products.

By the way, I think this 7% market share is very important. It should be the key to launching word-of-mouth marketing in today's digital age. It is the detonator of the word-of-mouth atomic bomb, where excellent products or moving brand stories are discovered by discerning internet experts. So it is forwarded to offline fans, who then share it with their friends, and friends pass it on to friends, and it becomes a hot topic in offline social activities.

In fact, people spend much more time living and talking in the real world than in the virtual online world. While we amplify the online word-of-mouth effect, we should not ignore the authenticity of the real world.

The biggest advantage of word-of-mouth communication on the Internet is that it can be shared quickly with many people at one time. As for the creation of word-of-mouth content, the closer it is to real-world life scenes, the better. At the same time, films with sound, light and electricity are always more appealing than pages filled with text.

How to plan word-of-mouth marketing

Planning word-of-mouth marketing is like preaching. The following are some items to consider and plan:

1. "Miracle" is the brand's great ideal.
2. The "Bible", the story outline of the brand and product.
3. "Ritual", language of communication, body language, mascots, and visual art.
4. "Church", discussion area, blog, messenger, community, upgraded from text to video sharing platform.
5. "Missionaries" are loyal users, fans of brands, experts in categories... In fact, without "missionaries", none of the above will be true.

You must find "missionaries" who are willing to talk about you, provide them with reasons to talk, and help them build platforms and tools to spread the word. The characteristics of these potential "missionaries" are that they are avid sharers who like to post (even if they may be shy and taciturn people in the real world), and they are usually heavy users of social networks . The so-called “Buzz=word of mouth+word of mouse” (buzz=word of mouth+online word of mouth).

How to find them?

Find a bar, and you’ll find a drunk. In addition to analyzing the traffic to your website and tracking people who make comments, you should also frequently search for places where your brand or company name appears. When you have data about a new customer, remember to ask him or her: How did you know about us? Who introduced you?

Sometimes, they will come to you on their own, usually those who are "disappointed with the goods", that is, the buyers. Never lose those who truly care about you.

How to help them?

In addition to building platforms and tools that allow participants to easily share and quickly transfer, the next step is to develop story prototypes. After the prototype of the story is formed, it will be transformed by the "missionaries" and processed by the "believers" before it can finally form the content that is digested and absorbed. It is worth noting that although most of the content is provided by the majority of consumers, the most moving part is still provided by a small number of elites.

Before designing the prototype of this brand story, we must first learn about a term: meme .

Similar to biological genes, memes are a type of cultural genetic gene, spread through replication (or imitation ) and formed through a process of mutation and selection. That is, the concepts of a certain human brain can be replicated in another person's brain through imitation or learning. Although the copied idea will not be exactly the same as the original and may produce mutations, it will be very similar. These memes, which are similar yet different, will compete with each other during the process of spreading, resulting in a phenomenon similar to the survival of the fittest.

In the story prototype we planned, the brand meme will be the core, and this core is designed to create the appeal of the story and ensure that the information is contagious.

How to conceive?

The infectiousness of this infectious source usually comes from the release of human nature. Some factors have been proven to be the best ingredients for making infectious sources:

1. Taboo: It’s no wonder that sex continues to attract attention on the Internet.
2. Extreme Entertainment: General entertainment simply cannot cross the threshold of “3 seconds of patience” in Internet usage. It must be extremely entertaining! ! !
3. Secrets: This is why the newspapers and magazines with the highest readership rates are always those that specialize in uncovering hidden secrets and reporting secret stories.
4. Fighting against authority: a small knight slaying a giant dragon, a small soldier performing a great deed, and Harry Potter defeating Voldemort are always the ultimate moves in novels and movies .
5. New invention: This is an eternal advertising dogma. When you have a benefit point that others do not have but is meaningful to consumers, don’t be polite and say it out loud!
6. The truth: A 90-second commercial or a 4-minute short film is already the upper limit of digital content. At present, netizens still mostly have rational purposes when accessing digital platforms, or read in a hurry. Therefore, emotion alone is not enough, what is needed is the true expression of feelings.

How to strengthen?

Outstanding designers always have the ability to blend two or more different emotions into a brand new feeling that makes people feel fresh.

At the same time, he can cleverly extract the "side effects" brought about by an absolute advantage based on the brand's interests. This side effect may seem like a weakness in persuasion, but it is actually the most contagious sweet spot.

Word-of-mouth marketing is more important in the digital age

Digital communication is now mainstream. The best part of digital marketing is that it can identify marketing issues at any time based on big data analysis and immediately formulate solutions. In terms of communication effects, real-time feedback can also be obtained , so real-time optimization of communication content can be achieved.

The biggest benefit of using big data as the basis for digital marketing is accuracy, which allows the correct information to be accurately and effectively delivered to the most correct target objects at the right time and contact point. But on the other hand, I personally prefer to work on the infectiousness of information in the digital environment, and create word-of-mouth works that can be passed on and shared in the digital ecosystem, because an atomic bomb is always more lethal than a rifle.