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[W951]Word Of Mouth Band

by Women About Biz, Wom

However, many of the biggest businesses choose to use word of mouth marketing instead of a pricey campaign. Google (gmail) and Amazon are two prime examples that I will explain later.

Expensive research has taught these companies that people believe their friends more than they believe billboards or commercials and so it has been proven to be one of the best marketing methods around.

Word of mouth is probably both the most successful kind of advertising and the most profitable. People naturally talk to each other and spread ideas, names and opinions. This article aims to show you how to use this to your advantage, how to make money from word of mouth.

1. Business Cards

There are many places online where you can order large quantities of business cards. If you use them to introduce yourself with people who aren't already friends and family then you are already spreading your businesses name.

It may feel contrived and a little cheesy but it works. Few people rip up business cards. They usually end up deposited on a kitchen table ready to be picked up when someone who runs your kind of business is needed.

Also, they bring your business into conversation. You don't need to promote it, just give them the card and you are increasing your brand recognition.

2. Tell-A-Friend Scripts

Online you often see on the side of websites a link called "tell a friend". This makes it so much easier to tell a friend about a website and therefore far more people do.

BY adding one of these links to the side of your website you are immediately increasing your ability to market though word of mouth. You are making your website word-of-mouth friendly and so you are likely to be talked about more, become better known and make more money.

A free "tell a friend" script can be found here:

http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/tellafriend.shtml

All you have to do is copy and paste the script from that site somewhere in your websites html. Maybe at the bottom of the page. Try and pick somewhere near the rest of your links so that it isn't ignored. There we have it! Instantly better marketing.

3) Invite a Friend Offers

This is a strategy that many of the most profitable websites with the best marketing strategies online have used and I am about to explain it to you for free.

All you do is that you offer a discount for every person who invites a certain number of friends to your website. This is a bit like an affiliate program only you pay them with a discount that does not affect your profits much rather than actual money.

This however is harder to set up. If your website runs a "membership" sign-in system then it will be easy to just get your web engineer to add this script.

If however you plan to run a more basic website set-up (like me) then this still is fairly easy. When you are setting up your shopping cart software (if you read my guide on it then you will be using the free one offered by Paypal) then just customize it to allow "comments" while ordering.

Tell people that if 5 people "comment" or mention their name and email address while ordering products then you will give them a 40% discount on their next purchase. This will form an incentive for people to use word of mouth to grow your business and thereby increase your customer base and potential profits.

4) Email, bulletin board and other signatures

Whenever you write anything online, sign it with your website address if you have one. This includes emails.

A prime example of how this has worked for one company is hotmail. At the end of every hotmail email it advertises the free service that they provide and so the y had to do less marketing because word of mouth gave them free advertising.

5) Buzz

Buzz is the modern term for when you do something exciting, edgy or different and people begin to talk about it - a lot.

While it is very difficult to tell you how to create a buzz for your product or website, I can tell you that you always need to be thinking out of the box.

Again, many very large and profitable businesses use this technique simply by doing something strange as seen in Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" campaign. To promote their new chicken sandwiches they created a website with a man in a chicken suit that would obey the commands that you typed. This was unusual, unique and interesting and so created "Buzz."

I wouldn't recommend doing things like that all of the time but when you are thinking of how to grow your business it is definitely something worth considering.

This is a question I am asked frequently, and therefore have given considerable thought to. Ultimately, whatever it is, it has to compensate for the weaknesses of search though right? So, what are the weaknesses of search relative to the ideal search solution (he says knowing that we'll never stop searching for things we need, so search itself will never die, only transform into something more efficient)?

a) the potential to be gamed by people - and we all know this is a tremendous issue for search b) poorer conversion rates than word of mouth, meaning a better solution is possible c) too many irrelevant results "people need a means to cut through the crap" to reveal the most relevant results d) local search results are questionable - too many small local business have no representation, or do not appear at all in localized search results

This then begs the question; what if a solution could be found that would minimize all these weaknesses?

As it happens, I think I have found the solution, or at least what I believe Yahoo is working towards (and if Yahoo is, I'm assuming Google is too) - integrating word-of-mouth (WOM) into search. Let me elaborate.

Intuitively I've known for sometime that search engines would use what they could glean from social media to help improve their algorithms. For eg.; when Yahoo bought Del.icio.us, I gave them full marks for the purchase because it made perfect sense to me that Yahoo could then integrate bookmarks into their algorithms to reduce reliance on the much abused linking elements. In fact, both Dave Harry (Google Bookmarks the New Ranking Signal) and Bill Slawski (Google Bookmarks and Personalization) have written about this method of personalization extensively.

What I couldn't fathom though - was how search engines could possibly integrate word of mouth into their results, to dramatically improve results. Everything found so far in Google, Yahoo, and MSN patents seems to suggest personalization based on your own behaviour. Our behaviour though is often based on the knowledge of friends. As individuals, we are experts at very little, and tend to rely greatly on our networks of friends and acquaintances for advice aka word-of-mouth. This WOM element is completely abscent from present day search results - and as searchers we're currently forced to gather friends - thoughts and recommendations from elsewhere, and they're certainly not integrated or woven into the algorithms.

Then - came the AHA moment!

The AHA: Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us, Google Bookmarks (when shared), and a few others, are forms of word-of-mouth. They enable the passing of information amongst friends online. WOW! HOMERUN! TOUCHDOWN! GOAL!

How Can Search and WOM Be Joined?: Its simple really! If you begin to look at each of the social media for their strengths, you'll start to get glimpses of the jigsaw puzzle Yahoo is constructing (my understanding of Google's vision is less clear). Stumbleupon and Del.icio.us are essentially opinion sites. You voice your opinions (word of mouth knowledge) about web sites, pages of specific web sites, products, and even services. Thumbs ups and associated comments on Stumbleupon and saves on Del.icio.us could be viewed as recommendations. This is a form of word of mouth! - Search Engine Optimization

Now, lets take it to the next level, and start to reorganize the search results based on the cummulative opinions (thumbs ups and downs, and saves) of your "friends" - as identified by their (ie. the search companies) summarizing your friends on various networks (including Yahoo mail I might add). Relevant pages (as determined by in-page and off-page factors) can then be reordered to show those liked by the most friends first, followed by those favoured by sequentially fewer friends. Those with a negative friend score - completely buried. In the middle - all those results not yet scored by friends. Where insufficient friend input exists (eg. how many of your friends will have given a thumbs up to a 2007 Nissan X-Terra), possibilities include:

a) searchers seeking out more knowledgeable friends in the space b) the engines themselves could layer feedback from the masses on top of standard search results c) the engines can merely revert to the algorithm as it would otherwise exist at that time

This means your friends opinions have a tremendous impact on the results you see!

Interesting eh? Might even be a solution to the local results problem search engines face. Will you be happier with the search results? ABSOLUTELY, and if not, merely modify the "trusted friends" in your networks, and your results will change. In essence;

"you are responsible for the quality of your own search results"!

Now, I can hear a collective "whooooooah" from all readers. How you ask can the major search engines do this if all searchers aren't on Stumble or Del.icio.us? You first need user critical mass on Stumbleupon, Delicious, Google Bookmarks et al for this to work! Well, consider; if you're not on Stumbleupon or Del.icio.us, then the search engines would merely revert to their algorithms they would otherwise be using. How convenient!

It also means much less gaming of search engines, and social media sites. Wow - a win-win all around!

Conclusions: In the end, its the ultimate solution and a win-win all around:

1) Searchers are given information they can make much better decisions with - when they need it. Searchers become responsible for their own results, and have the power to constantly improve them. Noone else to blame but themselves if they don't like the results.

2) Search engines themselves are happy, because well, searchers are happy. Also, with the integration of WOM into search, search plays an even bigger role in the purchase decision - meaning more searches, and higher revenues.

Article Source : Pg. 83

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