Word of Love(TM) Marketing
Today at Brandcurve, I’m happy to publish a guest post by Herbert Ong of Genuosity Inc. Herbert is an expert in word of mouth marketing. You can read more about Herbert at the end of this post. Without further ado, following is Herbert’s post, “Word of Love(TM) Marketing.”
Our team at KudosWorks has known and has evangelized for a while now that the most ideal word of mouth unit is the testimonial. When you think about it, testimonials from your customers are really the “positive word of mouth units” that are then spread from friend to friend. If you as a company can sufficiently delight your customers, you will no doubt be able to get your customers to provide you with testimonials. But what is even more interesting is that testimonials are really “words of love”TM. As such, your goal is NOT to just get any kind of “word of mouth” happening but rather “words of love” marketing. Passion is contagious, passion is appealing and passion is compelling.
What it means: Ask for testimonials and you shall receive. Word-of-mouth marketing is good but “word-of-love” marketing is even more powerful.
It’s 1% Inspiration, 99% Testimonials
In my opinion, testimonials are at the heart of what makes a great brand as well as the key driver for word of mouth marketing. To go even further, I might even state that testimonials are the most important and most undervalued opportunity area for businesses.
In my presentation at the WOMMA conference, I focused specifically on practical ways that businesses can harness testimonials to not only build a reputation showcase but to also accelerate customer-to-friend referrals. As far as I am concerned, capturing testimonials is bar-none the most effective method to build, manage and utilize your reputation showcase and accelerate customer-to-friend referrals.
As part of my talk, I outlined some Word (of Mouth) of Wisdoms. See below…
Make All Roads Lead To Testimonials.
Why testimonials? Because testimonials are the ideal positive word of mouth unit.
Are you doing everything you can to get as many testimonials as you could possibly get? Are you asking for testimonials with every opportunity you have? Do you have a testimonial capture page?
Sometimes A Customer Can Change His Spots.
For most businesses, only a small group of your customers are true Evangelists. It’s critical that you engage the majority of your customers, the Passive Amiables to action. This is the group that is happy with your service but is not necessarily inclined to act. This is the group that rated you a 7 or 8 on the scale when asked likelihood of recommendation. That is “highly likely to recommend”. Unless you ask that is. It makes sense then to take advantage of every opportunity you might have to ask for testimonials. Always include a link in your email signatures to a testimonial capture page. If you’re an online retailer, consider adding a note requesting testimonials and referrals in your packages. If you’re a day spa or service provider, hand out cards with a request for action.
A Rolling Testimonial Gathers No Moss.
Once you capture a testimonial, give your customers the tools they need to share their testimonial regarding your company with their friends. Make it easy for them to forward that testimonial, blog that testimonial, export it to their favorite social networking site etc…
With the right tools, every testimonial can be a potential referral. So don’t just collect ten testimonials and stop. Get a testimonial from EVERY customer - each one has the potential to be forwarded and shared with his or her friends.
You Are What Search Engines Eat.
Search engines eat content. In fact, they devour content. So, don’t just showcase 10-20 testimonials on your Reputation Showcase, show 100, show 500 or show all 1000, whatever you can collect. Every testimonial is yet another web page that can be found by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc). Every word written by a customer is yet another keyword that can direct customers to your company!
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Testimonials.
Every business understands the power of showcasing your testimonials. But go a step further, and consider engaging your customers to self-upload images, audiomonials and videomonials! If pictures are worth a thousand words, then hearing your customer’s voices or seeing a video must be a million words!
Herbert Ong is the CEO and Founder of Genuosity Inc - a company dedicated to the development of word of mouth marketing solutions. Genuosity Inc. operates KudosWorks for businesses - a testimonial collector, customer referral and word of mouth marketing tool.
Photo source: Herbert Ong
Tags: brand loyalty, brand referrals, customer testimonials, Genuosity, Herbert Ong, KudosWorks, WOMMA, word-of-mouth-marketingRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Guest Post, brand loyalty
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