Start Spreading The News

Welcome back.

Clearly you have nothing better to do with your time this week but thanks for dropping by to keep me company on the blogosphere. And just like the BBC I shall endeavour yet again to educate, inform and entertain with my musings, insight and warm wit

The title of this week’s blog is the opening line from one of Frank Sinatra’s finest songs and the climax of many a party or dance, ‘New York, New York’. Many a time has that song brought to a rousing close a great party……..just before the girl you have spent the whole evening disappears to powder her nose, never to be seen again. C’est la vie.

But what has this got to do with marketing? Please be patient and I will explain.

Last week I introduced you to the concept of peer to peer marketing through the use of testimonials and case studies across the full range of your businesses’ marketing collateral and in particular in your PR strategy. As I said last week marketing like this can be immensely powerful and hugely cost effective. People trust people like themselves. It demonstrates relevance. And it moves your marketing from monologue big brand deference advertising to a more human and personal form of marketing. If you want to know more turn your eyes to the right of these fine words and click on last week’s musings.

Can I continue……?

I want to stay on this theme and develop our thinking on peer to peer marketing and move further into the territory of word of mouth marketing.

As I have already said when a brand, a product or a service is personally recommended, this can be one of the most effective, most powerful and most cost efficient channels of communication there is. Loads of research has been done over the years by fantastically bright people (so not me then) to show the powerful influence friends and family can have on consumers’ purchasing habits.

People trust their friends and family, though they obviously have not met my family, more than they trust claims made in the press and far more than they trust advertising claims. We all listen to the recommendations of our friends and family for everything from holidays to cars to the best place to go for a meal. We trust personal recommendations from people we know and like.

A lot of businesses derive a lot of their business from the word of mouth recommendation of people who have done business with them in the past and who pass their name on. It’s a cheap and effective way to recruit customers.
And it is possible to build a marketing strategy to stimulate word of mouth recommendation, to encourage customers and staff, it is important not to forget staff in this, to become brand and product advocates and to start spreading the news. Staff and customers can be an important distribution and communication channel and should be managed just like any other distribution and communication channel, Managing and monitoring key metrics such as cost of recruitment.

Obviously having a great product and delivering great customer service is key to being talked about and recommended but it’s also possible to incentivise recommendations through the introduction of recommend a friend or customer get customer schemes. Or even by adding an icon on your website allowing customers to send key information and details to a friend.

Some brands, keen to develop a word of mouth marketing strategy, have even been known to employ resting actors and students to talk loudly about their brand in public spaces like buses and trains so that they might be overhead.

I agree this might be a step too far but hopefully you get the point. Getting the advocates among your customer and employee base to talk about you is highly effective and hugely efficient marketing. Get it right and by getting everyone singing from the same hymn sheet to spread the news and everyone ‘will want to be a part of it’. Who would have thought that Ole Blue Eyes was a marketing genius?

Is it me?

You may or not now know that I have spent the best part of my marketing career in banking. I have now quit the industry for pastures new and I am sure it is just coincidence that we have financial meltdown with me out of the way. But one thing about the credit crunch and the banking industry perplexes me. It is often said that one of the reasons for the current downturn is because the banks won’t lend to each other. Now I might be missing something but I don’t want the banks to lend to each other. Surely it would be better for the economy if they were to start lending to the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. Am I missing something here? After all I am pretty sure that Mr Tesco does not lend or sell its carrots to Mr Sainsbury or Mr Marks and Mr Spencer sell its red jumpers to Next just because Next has a shortage that week. Why are banks so different? If Mr Peston is reading this and can explain this to me, or if anyone else out there knows the answer, please do get in touch. It’s easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Have a great big week.

Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.