Buzz Builder

Free "Growing Your Business with Buzz" Teleconference Recording

Last month, Jacqueline Whitmore, a leading etiquette expert and colleague in the National Speakers Association, asked me to address a mastermind group that she meets with monthly via teleconference. I spoke about "Growing Your Business with Buzz Marketing" and covered a wide array of topics from how I broke the Guinness World Record for hammock swinging to create publicity for my father's hammock stores when I was in college to how to use social networking for business purposes. You can listen to this 40-minute teleconference for free on my website.

Snapfish Snaps to Attention When It Comes to Customer Complaints

Yesterday, I attended Forward '08, an excellent conference that the Oregon Chapter of the American Marketing Association organized. The event focused on non-tradtional marketing approaches. The keynote speaker was Andy Sernovitz, one of my favorite word of mouth experts. In his presentation, Andy stressed that companies need to be much more cognizant of what bloggers are saying about their products and service and react quickly when necessary.

I've seen firsthand that Snapfish gets the importance of the monitoring the blogsphere and reacting appropriately. On 5/14, I posted a critique about a customer service experience that my wife had. If you scroll down in that post, you'll see that Dean Cookson, Director of Systems and Support Operations for Snapfish (a division of hp), provided a detailed response to my wife's complaint. I like the tone and content of Dean's message. It's not defensive. Instead, he simply explained what happened and how the company is working to compensate customers who experienced a similar situation and what they're doing to avoid future problems. He also pointed out how the company is working with an interesting new platform called Get Satisfaction to address customer complaints. I'll be checking out that service soon and reporting back to you.

Toro Bravo in Portland - Great Tapas But Waiting Policy Needs a Buzz Makeover

Usually, my wife and I avoid trendy restaurants on Friday and Saturday nights since waiting and crowds are just not our thing. However, last Saturday night, we wanted to treat some friends to a special dinner so we proposed uber-popular Toro Bravo in Portland. Unfortunately, the restaurant has a no reservations policy and we knew that we would be in for a wait. Much to our chagrin, when we arrived at 6 PM, the hostess told us that the wait would be about 1-1/2 hours. Lesson #1, never try to "out-early" Portlanders - I'm convinced this town could give retirement communities in Florida a run for the money when it comes to people who dine early. Usually, we don't wait anywhere for more than an hour but our friends were excited about trying Toro Bravo and they had trekked over from the food wasteland of Vancouver, Washington.

We put our name on the reservation list and the hostess told us to check back in 30 minutes to see "where things stood." I asked whether they had a pager that they could give us to let us know when our table would be ready since Toro Bravo has no bar and the waiting area is miniscule for weekend crowds. While there are a couple of nice bars nearby, it's hard to enjoy them when you feel that you might miss being called for a table. When I asked if they could call my cell, the hostess sniffed and said, "We don't usually do that. But, if your wait lasts more than an hour we might take your number." Gee, thank you very much.

After more than an hour, the hostess didn't take my number and we kept having to send somebody in our party rushing out the bar up the street from Toro Bravo to inquire about our reservation status. Ultimately, after nearly two hours, we were seated. We proceeded to have a fantastic meal. You really can't go wrong with any of the creative tapas at Toro Bravo. Even a Spanish friend says that it has some of the best tapas he has had in the U.S.

Yet, leaving Toro Bravo, I wondered whether it or any restaurant with an extremely inconvenient waiting system will sustain its devout following. With technology prices dropping, it would be fairly inexpensive to implement a buzzer system. Surely, Toro Bravo could make up the cost for such a system with the increased goodwill and repeat visits that it would generate. Or, for no expensive, Toro Bravo could train its hostesses to always offer to call patrons on their cell phones when tables become available.

It's alway worth making the lives of your customers easier to keep your buzz growing.

Zagat Survey's New Owner Will Have Much Catching Up to Do Online

In The New York Times Deal Book Blog on 1/14/08, there's a post  that Zagat is trying to sell its travel guide book and website business. They might be disappointed with the price that they fetch since online only travel and restaurant websites seem to be growing rapidly as this article indicates. In contrast, the Zagat website has a relative sparse number of reviews and appears to get relatively little traffic. It seemed like Zagat had a lot of buzz about five years ago before the importance of online reviews soared. The company should have jumped aboard the Internet bandwagon earlier since it had such a prestigious name.  The new owner of Zagat will have a lot of catching up to do online.

Brandweek Says Future of Word of Mouth Marketing Is Bright But Watch Out for Excess

Eric Newman at Brandweek has an interesting article about the growth of word of mouth marketing. In 2007, he noted that companies will spend $1.3 billion on WOM marketing, up almost 33% from $981 million in 2006. He quotes various pundits who anticipate that spending will continue growing at a rapid pace in 2008.

As a word of mouth marketing practitioner, I'm satisfied that my field is doing well. However, I  have some concerns that the power of word of mouth marketing might be negatively impacted if marketers try to control it so closely that consumers doubt the credibility of the messages that they hear.  Rather than obsessing about messages to communicate, all companies should realize that their best way to manage buzz is to ensure that their products and services are of the highest quality. Then, it makes sense to reach out to existing customers creatively to let them know that their buzz is both appreciated and necessary for the company's continued success.

Word of Mouth is Growing Exponentially as a Marketing Activity and Consumer Influence

Recently, a friend sent me me a few interesting stats regarding word of mouth marketing that I found quite enlightening. According to PQ Media, word of mouth marketing jumped 35.9% in 2006 to $981 million, and its expected to climb at a compound annual rate of 30.4% in the 2006-2011 period to $3.7 billion. Keller Fay Group found  that Americans engage in nearly 3.5 billion (!) brand-related conversations (that is, people talking about specific companies, products or services) per day, and 80% of all people trust recommendations from family, friends, and "influential" persons over all other forms of marketing and advertising.

In other words, you can be certain that people are talking about your company and what they have to say has a huge impact on your success. What are you doing to make sure that that customer buzz is positive?