Old Navy gives us a great example of a simple word of mouth promotion you can produce in less that 2 hours with zero budget.
1. Create a simple offer. Old Navy offers 20% off you say the secret code word ("BFF"). They created a single graphic that explains everything.
2. Make it a group activity. The code is good for you and a friend. All the copy encourages you to bring someone else.
3. Make it easy to share. They put up a quicky Facebook event page. At least 10,000 people have received the invitation. (Link)
Lesson: Word of mouth is really easy. Don’t let politics, budgets, or technology get in your way.
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This sounds like it was very practical to carry out — I’m curious to hear from Old Navy themselves as to how effective they found this promotion.
Glad you mentioned not letting “politics” get in the way, because I’ve seen times where a budding “word of mouth” campaign was quashed because it wasn’t considered “professional” enough. I guess that translates to, “Apparently didn’t fit the company image, for whatever malarky-ridden reason.”
Andy:
Can you clarify what you mean by not letting budgets get in the way? We’re talking about businesses. They exist to make money. Budgets are not some mythical beast, they are a reflection of how the company is performing relative to it’s money-making raison d’etre.
Also, the above campaign was not done on a zero budget. When they offer 20% off, that is a direct hit to their bottom line.
I’m not saying the campaign isn’t brilliant, I’m just saying that we need to be a bit more clear about the reasons for doing these things and we need to have the right metrics in place. And the only metric that really counts at the end is the bottom line.
A lot of marketers feel they need to spend $100,000 on some super-complex viral/social media project. The point was you can do it without a major up-front cash investment or time investment.
Of course there is a cost to offer a discount, but they could have spent $1 million on a media buy to promote it, instead of this efficient viral campaign.
To piggyback on Andy’s clarification, variable-cost marketing programs are almost always profitable, because they don’t have the negative cash-flow upfront.
It seems that agencies always push for the big media buy to promote a sale, which compounds the discount offered to get people in the store. Your margins are lower because of the sale, and the added cost to distribute the message, not to mention the upfront negative cash flow.
A little creativity can drive traffic (to a store, Web site, blog, etc.) without having to fork over large amounts of money to buy attention through the media.
If the offer is relevant, significant, and delivered in a compelling way, people will act no matter the medium — and are probably more likely to act if they hear it from a friend.
Thanks for the great examples.
The Old Navy secret code promotion is perfect for the store’s main demographic of teens. Teens want to be in the know. They want to be in on the secret. They want to feel they are special. Giving them a secret code to use to get something that not everyone else is getting should have great appeal to their market. What a simple but clever idea.
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