[Here's a recent post I did for the SmartBlog on Social Media. You can follow the blog here or subscribe to the newsletter here.]
With the economy still sputtering, now is the time to build your army of fans and start some momentum for when the things turn around. While everyone is focused on pulling back and waiting out the storm, you’ve got a huge opportunity to go out and earn a bunch of new talkers.
What to remember:
WOM works regardless of the economy. In boom or bust, people will continue to tell their friends about fantastic products and experiences.
Leadership’s focus is on cost-effectiveness. While your executives are focused on cutting expenses, now is the perfect time to sell them on the inexpensive, effective, and fun word-of-mouth stuff you’ve always wanted to try.
Free advertising will always beat someone who’s paying for it. If you can get really good at word of mouth now, while everything is down, you’ll be unstoppable once the economy picks up again and your customer acquisition costs are a fraction of that of your competitors.
Check out my interview with Lindy Dreyer as the cover story for the January issue of Associations Now. In Lindy's feature, Talking About the Word-of-Mouth Revolution, I share some thoughts on how associations can use word of mouth to grow their memberships and make their events more successful.
Here's an excerpt:
Lindy: Aren't associations already doing enough by our very nature as membership organizations?
Me: There's always more. There's no conference that couldn't be bigger. There's no membership that couldn't grow. There's no situation where you couldn't have a little bit more with less spending and less work if you had a few more people talking for you.
Think about it. You do an email campaign or direct-mail campaign and it goes to a certain number of people. What if 20 percent of them would hand it to a friend? You get one plus 20 percent. Everything works a little bit better.
In the down economy, with our marketing budgets taking a hit, what kind of resources will we need to invest in WOM in order to accomplish that extra 20 percent?
Just a little bit of time. Word-of-mouth marketing isn't about a new campaign; you hear the phrase "word-of-mouth campaign" a lot. It's not really a campaign. It's a way of doing things. It's a way of thinking about what you do so that you build forwardability and viralness into everything you do.
So, when you're creating a direct-mail piece, are you making sure it's the kind of thing that people will share? When you do an event invitation, are you doing it in a way that people are dying to show it to their friends?
Who within the association should be responsible for word of mouth? Is it a marketing function? A membership function? An event-planning function?
Really, one person in each department should at least have their eye on it. Someone doing events should be thinking about, "How can we make our events more buzz worthy?" Someone who's doing member services, someone who's doing member recruitment, and so on. For each program there are different word-of-mouth tactics that apply.
See the full article here.
Procter & Gamble: Swan dive… into Old Spice’s remarkable social media campaign
Alberto Culver: Managing promotions on Facebook
UnitedHealth Group: Success in social recruiting
BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media
