Buzz Builder

My Three-Year-Old Marketing Guru

The following is the lead article from the November 2011 edition of my Buzz Bulletin eNewsletter (subscribe for free here to get monthly stories, tips and strategies for building your business with word of mouth marketing - I promise that I'll never share your email address)...

It’s wonderful being a father. There’s nothing that compares to the joy that I feel from a hug, kiss and an “I love you” from my three-year-old daughter Anya. To my surprise, I’ve also discovered an unexpected fringe benefit of fatherhood. My daughter provides me with daily reminders of powerful marketing truths.  Here are two recent lessons:

Meet the Needs of Your Market

According to my mother, a longtime preschool teacher and my go-to resource for all things toddler, Anya has highly-developed “play skills” for her age. One of her abilities is observing children before she interacts with them to figure out what they need. Thus, she greatly increases the likelihood of making a positive first impression.

When Anya sees a child digging in a sandbox with his hands, she’ll look for a shovel or tool that will make the task easier. Then, she’ll offer the implement making sure to adjust her presentation style to match the personality of the recipient. For instance, if the child is shy, she’ll present the item gently; however, if the kid has exuberant tendencies like hers, she’ll shriek with delight while sharing her find. Whether Anya engages with an introvert or extrovert, the result is generally the same. She makes a friend.

Too often, businesses fail because they push their products and services without taking the time to observe and understand their customers. Business owners need to spend more time watching and listening to their prospects so they can tailor products and marketing approaches to people’s needs and personalities.

Go for No

My friends and authors Rich Fenton and Andrea Waltz wrote a great book called Go for No that illustrates why it’s unproductive to focus on the word “yes” during the sales process. They suggest just the opposite. By increasing your failure rate, you create more selling opportunities and accelerate your movement toward ultimate success.

While I have to remind myself about the need to pick up the phone and “go for no” in following up with prospects, Anya doesn’t worry about rejection. After spotting a bowl full of multi-colored tortilla chips in the grocery store, here’s how Anya navigated the situation: 

Anya: Daddy, I want a chip.

Me: No sweetie, it’s almost dinner.

Anya: But, I really want a chip.

Me: I said “no.”

Anya: But I need a chip. I’m sooooo hungry.

This conversation continued for about 15 minutes. Finally, worn out from her insistence, I relented and gave her a few chips. While I understand that it’s not good parenting to cave to toddler demands and I usually resist Anya’s plaintive requests, I must confess that they do work at times.

Rich has witnessed many similar scenes involving parents and children. “Kids know that it pays to go for no. They understand that ‘no’ usually means ‘not now’ instead of ‘not ever.’” In contrast, most adults get discouraged by the rejection of their ideas, products or services. In fact, most salespeople give up after hearing four ‘no’s’ from somebody…even though research indicates that most customers will say some form of “no” five times before making a buying decision.

Have you received marketing or business wisdom from children? If so, I would love to hear your examples and possibly share them in a future newsletter or blog post (with your permission).

Bloggers Not Celebrities More Influential for Female Purchasing Decisions According to BlogHer 2011 Social Media Social Matters Study

The lucrative product endorsement deals that celebrities sign are something most peole have heard about so much that they barely notice them. I've always wondered whether companies are justified in paying so much for endorsements. Well, if companies are trying to market to women, there's an intriguing study that indicates blogger endorsements have a far bigger payoff than those coming from stars.

According to the BlogHer 2011 Social Media Social Matters Study, 78 percent of the female American adult populations are active social media users, and of those, nearly twice as many (20 percent) are motivated to consider products promoted by or with a blogger they know, than they are by promotions featuring a celebrity (12 percent).

Before buying a big ticket item like a computer printer or LCD TV, I read blogs - particularly those that review products, and these have influenced my decisionmaking. I can't recall ever having purchased a product because a celebrity endorsed it. But, if you have, I would be interested to know why. Does what celebrities say matter or is the mere fact that they endorse something the most significant?

Video of "Galvanizing Your Business with Word of Mouth Marketing" Keynote Presentation at the Hillsboro (OR) Chamber of Commerce

Last week, I was invited to give a keynote presentation on "Galvanizing Your Business with Word of Mouth Marketing" at the Hillsboro (OR) Chamber of Commerce's monthly Forum Luncheon. I enjoyed the enthusiasm and energy of the audience of business leaders looking for creative ways to build buzz for their companies.

I hope this video provides you with ideas for growing your business. Please keep in mind that audio quality improves after I'm introduced since the microphone is on my lapel. Also, I suggest that you learn from a mistake that I made. If you're ever filmed as speaker, don't forget to take off your nametag.

If you know a company, chamber of commerce, or association looking to educate people about word of mouth marketing, please consider referring me as a speaker.

Special thanks to Karyn Reohr of Black Label Films for shooting this video in challenging lighting conditions and editing it.

Building Your Business with Word of Mouth: A Step by Step Approach

Below is the main article from the February edition of my free monthly Buzz Builder newsletter. If you're interested in having future newsletters sent directly to you inbox, please sign up here.

I recently told a business owner at a chamber of commerce event that I own a word of mouth marketing firm. The response: "That's interesting. Do you hang out in bars whispering why people should buy stuff from your clients?" I've heard variations of this comment so I wasn't surprised, yet it served as a good reminder how misunderstood word of mouth marketing is.

According to the Keller-Fay Group, Americans engage in more than 3.5 billion conversations a day about products, services and companies. Consumer research company ACNielsen found that 78% of all people trust recommendations from friends and colleagues while only 14% say advertising is credible.

Still, many businesses fail to develop a plan for leveraging the value of word of mouth. That's why I'm dedicating each issue of this monthly Buzz Bulletin in 2011 to sharing an actionable idea for turning your customer base into your best source of new business.

Before you kick off a word of mouth marketing campaign, you need to gauge your current level of client satisfaction. It is the biggest determinant to what people are saying about your business.  Sadly, if people are dissatisfied, they have a much greater likelihood of sharing negative impressions with their friends than communicating positive messages about your businesses.

Thus, the starting point of a savvy word of mouth marketing campaign is to monitor and react to what people are saying. These four tools make it easy:

Google Alerts: Enter your company name and you'll get an email whenever it is mentioned in media stories, blogs, discussion groups, etc. Do the same for your biggest competitors and your prospects.

Online Surveys: SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang offer free or low-cost ways to follow up with your customers after a sale. Online surveys not only have much higher response rates than mailed surveys, but also cost much less to administer and provide data that can be easily analyzed. In ten questions or less (I usually recommend five including "Would you recommend our business to a friend?"), you can assess whether somebody is likely to spread positive or negative messages about your company. And remember, a complaint that consistently resurfaces is a clear indicator that something needs correcting.

Phone Follow Up: When negative survey responses outweigh positive ones, forget email and pick up the phone. Call your unsatisfied customers and find a way to satisfy them. From my years in retail, I learned that unhappy customers who've had their problems solved can become your company's best referral sources.

Customer Review Websites: Most customers do online research before buying so you need to know what customers on review websites are saying about you. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to get Google or Yelp to take down a negative review. However, keep in mind the advice of word of mouth marketing pioneer Andy Sernovitz: "The solution to pollution is dilution." In other words, encourage your satisfied and loyal customers to share their thoughts and help boost your overall ratings. And, try not to obsess over bad reviews (I know, it's hard!). But a few negative reviews can actually reinforce the credibility of positive comments since a wide spectrum of opinion breeds greater trust.

So, now you know what people are saying about you (and you've acted upon their recommendations for improvement). The next step is to turn your customers into evangelists. That's what I'll be writing about between now and the end of year.

If you know somebody who might be interested in building their business with word of mouth marketing, I would appreciate your telling them about this blog and my monthly newsletter. Thanks!

Using Social Media to Build Business Buzz: Now It's Just a Question of What Tools to Use

Thanks to my friend Tim Fahndrich of Third River, an Internet marketing solutions company, for bringing this video to my attention. As you consider the best ways to build buzz for your business, this Erik Qualman (the author of the book Socialnomics) video drives home why you need to incorporate social media into your word of mouth marketing campaign. The stats in the video are about nine months old yet they are still worth considering since they demonstrate the incredible growth and impact of social media. Erik's main point, which I agree with completely, is that it's not a question of whether you need to use social media but what social media tools make the most sense for your business.

For Referrals and Reviews, Rewards Come to Those Who Ask

This week, when I was picking up our dog Bella at Dogs in the City in Portland, OR, a dog daycare business that we've been happily using for four years, I noticed a request on the dry erase bulletin board asking for reviews on Yelp, a customer review website. While there is a proliferation of review websites, Yelp is particularly important in Portland for restaurants, retail shops, and many service providers.

I asked the owner about her request, and she sheepishly asked whether I thought she was being too brazen asking for reviews. Definitely not!

One of the biggest laments I hear from business owners is that they don't get as many referrals or positive online reviews as they feel that they deserve based on the quality of their products and services. I puzzled over this for many years until I heard a professor from Northeastern University talk about referrals at a Word of Mouth Marketing Association Conference four years ago. Although I can’t remember his name, one of his statistics was seared into my memory. He said that 50% of all people need to be specifically asked for a referral in order to make one. He said that this occurs for two primary reasons:

• Many are so busy that they simply don’t remember to refer their friends and colleagues to businesses that they like.
• A significant number of people believe that a business that provides a quality product or service doesn’t need referrals because it likely has a good customer base.

If more businesses knew that one of the biggest secrets of getting referrals and mentions on influential customer review websites is simply to ask for them, there would be a lot less frustration. If you’re a skeptic, try it for your business and see what happens. In less than a month of asking for reviews, I’m happy to say that Dogs in the City has gone from having only one review on Yelp to four. And, as long as the owner of Dogs in the City keeps delivering a quality service and asking for referrals, she'll see her word of mouth and business boom.

Do you ask customers for referrals and online reviews? How's that working out for you?

A Critic Speaks "To Do in 2011: Shoot All the Social Media Experts"

Happy New Year! Since I know that many of your are still planning your social media campaigns for 2011, I check out this thought-provoking post from Rich Meyer's New Media and Marketing Blog on why you should take what social media gurus have to say with a huge grain of salt. I appreciate Rich's no-BS stand when it comes to evaluating the advice that you receive. At the end of the day, social media is only as useful as it gets your clients and prospects to take action that helps your business meet specific objectives that you can track. How do you evaluate the quality of advice you get from social media experts?

Wall Street Journal Story about the Demise of Email Misses the Mark

In a fascinating Wall Street Journal article titled "Why Email No Longer Rules... And what that means for the way we commmunicate," Reporter Jessica Vascellaro writes, "Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over. In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.

In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

Without question, social media website like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have received a lot of press coverage this year and have demonstrated phenomenal growth rates. However, the article, which implies that email has lost much of its relevancy, clearly misses the mark. Here are just a few of my reasons why email will continue to thrive:

1) Many people prefer email to social media.

I've tried to discontinue my monthly ezine twice over the last four years figuring my readers would find it easier and more timely to get information via this blog. I heard comments like "I like getting your stuff via email because it's more convenient" and "Sure I could subscribe to your blog via an RSS feed but I don't have the time to do this or don't want to set up an RSS reader."

2) Many check their email more than their social media platforms.

Ok, be honest... how often do you check your Facebook account? In contrast, if you have a corporate email address,you most likely look at it various times throughout the day. The frequency in which people check their email means that it is still a highly-effective way to get in front of them with your messages.

3) Email is easier to screen than social media.

A couple of years ago, I was getting increasingly frustrated with email since so much junk was cluttering my inbox. Then, I downloaded Cloudmark, a robust spam blocking system, and nearly all my junk email was directed to spam folder. More recently, my ISP added an excellent spam blocking filter that works even better than Cloudmark. In contrast, I find that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become so popular that I'm constantly being invited to connect with people and events which don't interest me.

Other compelling reasons for the continued importance of email were aptly pointed out in the Vertical Response blog. What do you think about the future of email as social media usage increases?

Buzz Camp Evolution Reflects Changes in Effective Word of Mouth Marketing Techniques

Yesterday, I presented Buzz Camp for the Oregon Remodelers Association. The dramatic change in Buzz Camp curriculum since I led my first one in October 2004 reflects how successful word of mouth marketing has changed. Five years ago, I spent 60% of Buzz Camp teaching people how to land free publicity in newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. Yesterday,only 10% of the curriculum focused on mainstream media. While traditional PR is still an excellent way to create buzz, there are so many other ways companies can generate attention and sales through customer cultivation, referrals, online tools, and social media. These approaches require more creativity and commitment than dollars.

Some business people are slow to embrace change while others just seem to "get it." My friend Sheri Fitts, Director of Communication and Large Plan Sales at The Standard, is always looking for effective ways to market her company and help the financial advisors who work with her grow their sales. Yesterday, she sent me a link to the below video, which had a YouTube launch on 7/30/09, about the incredible growth of social media. If you've been waiting for the "right time" to jump into social media, this video should convince you that the time is now.

Cable Titan John Malone on the Future of Media & Information Dissemination

What role will mainstream television and newspapers play in the next decade? At The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital Conference in New York last month, cable legend John Malone, the current chairman of Liberty Media and the CEO of Discovery Holding Company, had a lot of interesting things to say about the future of media and information dissemination so I'm including the entire interview below. In the words of Greek philosopher Heraclitus, "the only constant is change."