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Case Study In Viral Word of Mouth

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Over the past 12 months I’ve been watching the internet for any truly viral marketing successes so I can use it as a word of mouth case study, and I’ve finally found one.

It came out in that classic lull that telemarketers, publicists and online marketers always want to take advantage of,  Christmas Day (apologies to devout Christians.)

Viral marketing means marketing that spreads like a flu epidemic, by passing from one person to many others and from those people to many more again.

It takes planning and skill to make viral marketing explosions happen deliberately.

For example, I’m on the Board of Advisors for the American Association of Business Professionals and Entrepreneurs™ (AABPE™) that launched Jan 1.

But just look at the comparison here…

alexa-aabpeword-webprosperity-com

The webprosperity site has raced up. (Remember this scale is logarithmic, which means on a normal graph it would be shooting up even faster like a stunt motorcyclist hitting the ramp.)

Keys to making something go viral really fast online and offline are…

  • Have an offer that directly matches a market that is just waiting for this
  • Include immense credibility to give people enough trust so they can act immediately
  • Make it really easy for people to join
  • Make it easy, and give incentives, to spread the word (this is where most people go wrong.)

In this case all of this is helped along by 3 other features of a product launch…

  • Signing up is free - okay not my favorite recommendation, but when you want to go viral quickly this is pretty much mandatory.
  • The January 6 noon Deadline, with a countdown clock - that’s a reliably brilliant play on scarcity [and they have gone one better by at the last minute extending the deadline by 7 days to Tues Jan 13! Nice one.]
  • The Social Proof - notice the names of the last 4 people to sign up are listed at the top, often only seconds ago, which makes it much more impactful than most sites where I’ve seen this.

WebProsperity is an internet marketing service I could use if it comes up to scratch, and there are some very, very clever marketers behind this so I’m watching for what they come up with next.

You can’t visit the site without a link so here’s mine so you can check it out…

word.webprosperity.com

Can you go viral too?

-Martin Russell

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Swap & Drop - A Million-Making Networking Tip

Sunday, December 21, 2008

One of the key rules of success has to be ‘copy what works.’

“Swap & Drop” is a little known, face-to-face networking method that actually works.

How do I know?

Because Jordan Adler, entrepreneur, trainer, author, networker, and the originator of the term “Swap & Drop”, used this exact method to make a connection with someone who knew someone, who knew someone, who connected with me.

That’s how I came to know Jordan in the first place.

But that single Swap and the subsequent Drop didn’t just lead Jordan to me. It also made him more than a million dollars in the past 3 years alone - from one connection! That’s the leverage power of networking.

In general Jordan’s networking skills are earning him well over a million dollars a year. He is still Swapping and Dropping, and he is still growing his business and income.

He is also openly generous in sharing what he does.

“Swap & Drop” is as simple as they come, and yet it encapsulates the entire networking mindset.

On the audio below you will hear Jordan say, “My objective is to start a life-long process.”

I managed to find time with Jordan Alder to get you inside the mind of this networking million-maker.

Download and save this audio, and listen over and over again. It may seem too simple, yet it is all you need for networking success, and it’s a mere 10 minutes long…

Swap And Drop - Jordan Adler Interview

-Martin Russell

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Does Your Marketing Compare Well On These 5 Measures?

Sunday, December 14, 2008

I just finished speaking with a woman who runs her own studio. She is generating 90% of her new clients from Google Adwords.

An impressive result, and one that has kept her business going for the last 3 years, but with diminishing returns.

With the economy falling, and people tightening their budgets, she is scared.

She contacted me because she realized one thing. She has lots of happy clients…

…But She Is Getting ZERO Referrals!

How does your current marketing compare to word of mouth referral methods on these 5 measures…

1. How much someone spends the first time they see you (Immediate Profit.)

People who are referred to you automatically trust you to a greater degree, because of the trust they have with the person who referred them.

This is probably why referred customers tend to spend more than clients brought in by any other marketing method. They have less need to test you out with a small sale first, just to be sure.

(How price sensitive do you think your customers are becoming?)

2. How often they come back (Repeat Sales.)

Word of mouth methods automatically include follow-up and client retention with the referral generation.

Clients are much more likely to return to you, even if only because they will often be in contact with the person who referred them to you in the first place.

If their experience with you is positive then the discussion about the referral will be a positive one too, perhaps encouraging both parties to want to come back to you again!

3. How often they refer others (Doing Your Marketing For You.)

Referred clients need much less education on referring others to you. They were referred themselves so they understand a) you accept/want referrals, and b) you will take good care of the person they refer, just like you looked after them.

This measure is so often missed when calculating the value of other forms of marketing, but is absolutely crucial when deciding the lifetime value of what a particular client brings into your business.

4. How effective are the referrals they give you (Quality Customers.)

Word of mouth clients generally complain less, pay on time more often, and are generally more enjoyable to work with, when compared to clients coming from any other method.

With good education of your best customers, word of mouth and referral methods will maintain and even improve the quality of customers you get.  Therefore, when your very finest clients refer people to you, you end up receiving incredible clients as a bonus, and your overall business goes up a level.

5. The overall profit per customer (The Life-Time Value Bottomline.)

Just on the basis of the first 4 measures alone no other method of marketing will produce as good a return on your investment as word of mouth referrals.

And… here’s the extra kicker!

Even though “Word of Mouth Magic” covers many referral marketing methods that require money to get started with, some of them can be done without even spending a single, solitary cent!

At its simplest, you just need to adapt what you are already doing. For instance, add to your written information on letterheads, emails, website and even invoices, something that lets people know that you get, want and appreciate referrals.

Planting the seeds for a harvest of referrals can often be done at no cost at all.

The woman running the studio knew her current marketing wasn’t giving her as good a return as referrals. That’s why she contacted me to discover more.

How well does your current marketing measure up against word of mouth methods?

-Martin Russell

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If You Hate Asking For Referrals…

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Below is a straight cut and paste of a post by legendary word of mouth sage, Seth Godin. I don’t even want you to have to click a further link to get to this, it’s that important.

People often ask me, “How can I ask for referrals?”

Actually they are usually also thinking, and sometimes even adding, “It seems so self-serving because it’s all about what I want. In fact to be honest, business isn’t that good at the moment, so I need all the buyers I can get. I’m getting desperate, and I feel like if I ask people for referrals it’s like begging!”

Welcome, and all hail Seth Godin…

Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

IWantSandy is folding, as are a number of web companies. So is that restaurant you loved down the street. Users are outraged. Outraged!

When you find a service or establishment or product that gives you joy, it’s tempting to keep it to yourself. Perhaps it’s uncomfortable to recommend it to a friend (after all, you might seem silly) and even more uncomfortable to recommend it to a stranger (after all, you might seem like a shill).

Plenty of people hesitate before spreading the word about a political candidate or a business or a medical device. We’re worried that we’ll look silly, or that the place will end up being too crowded and now we won’t be able to get in. Or perhaps we’re concerned about losing our uniqueness…

Anyway, the outcry that accompanies the closing of one of these businesses should be enough to remind you that your hesitation has a cost.

It’s simple, I think. In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

  • If you don’t like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change

and

  • If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.

Courtesy of Seth Godin’s Blog and you can sign up there to get more of his wisdom.

Be what you want others to be - give your own word of mouth, be a networker and a referrer. Live both sides of the referral relationship, and people will end up following your example.

I’ve referred you just now to someone I value, Seth Godin.

Who can you GIVE a referral to - today?

-Martin Russell

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A Cautionary Story Of A Financial Adviser

Monday, November 17, 2008

What would you think of a financial adviser or stockbroker who had told you to get out of the stockmarket and into cash back in June/July of this year?

Would you be just a little bit pleased with that advice?

Well I absolutely would.

This adviser would have steered me away from a huge chunk of the biggest stockmarket meltdown in most people’s lifetimes.

In fact, while everyone else was watching their hard-earned assets evaporate I would have been earning a trickle of money, and now be cashed up to pick and choose.

Now…

What if I told you that there is an adviser who did just that for his clients…

…but he has had to leave the company!?!

Incredible, but true!

By advising his clients to get into cash he lost all the income from commissions he was making by having people in the stockmarket. Therefore, to make ends meet he has gone off to get a job at a bank!

This guy is in Canada where the stock market has fallen around 30% in the quarter.

This means he saved all the clients who followed his advice a whopping 30% of their savings (and remember that if you have suffered a 33% fall, the maths sayd you need a 50% rise just to get back to where you started!)

His clients are now in a position where their cash can buy up stocks that are 30% or more cheaper than they used to be. A double advantage!

And yet in a couple of weeks time he will begin a new job with a bank to get back the income he has been losing.

This a cautionary tale of what can happen when someone doesn’t know how to apply Word of Mouth and referral marketing.

So when I heard of his plight I arranged to give him a call.

Do you think he is pleased to have lost an income because he gave good advice?

No, certainly not.

Do you think his client’s want to lose him as a financial adviser?

Not if they have any interest in their financial future they don’t, but they don’t know this is happening. He hadn’t told them a thing!

Do you think this is an fantastic dinner-table conversation starter that would have word of mouth recommendations flocking to him, if only this story was out there?

I absolutely do!

The tragedy is that this adviser had no idea how to turn this situation into an event that MAKES his career, rather than ends it.

Heck, this would be worthy of a page in a local newspaper…

“Elderly Widow’s Home Saved From Stockmarket Crash”

“My friend’s are all worried about how they are going to survive with bills increasing and their savings way down, let alone whether there will be anything to pass on to the kids.”

“But my financial adviser steered me clear of this and I sleep so much easier at night. I am not having to cut back on prescription medicines, or buying my dog his favorite treats!”

[Okay, so I never wrote for newspapers. Radio was more my thing.]

Let me get personal for a moment.

What are you saying about YOUR financial advisers at the moment?

Where do you think their real interests lie, and what word of mouth are you giving them?

Finally, what would it have been worth to you to have had THIS adviser looking after your money?

What’s your opinion?

Enter a comment on this post, and I will make sure to pass it on to the adviser himself for his learning.

-Martin Russell

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The Worst Mistake Has To Be…

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Many businesses have their busiest time in the November / December period.

Often this is the make or break time of year when earnings have finally passed overheads and taxes, and they are relieved to at last be making money for their own pocket.

Yet perhaps because it is so busy, this is exactly the time most businesses will stumble and drop the ball.

They will get so caught up in servicing customers that they will forget to think about their marketing - and in particular how they will go about following-up.

It happens in one of two ways…

1. You focus on the immediate customers, and forget about building relationships with the past ones who have done business with you throughout the year.

Or even worse…

2. You let all these new customers buy, and then leave - without collecting their contact details and permission to follow-up with them in future!

I was reminded of this just this week when doing a consulting session for a clever businessman about Christmas sales.

I knew he was doing alot of things right because most of the people in his industry have been driven out of business by changes in technology over the past 20 years. Yet he had kept upgrading his marketing and he was kicking along nicely.

He was certainly clever enough to be collecting contact details for his customers.

Much more impressively he had been using those details year-in year-out to recontact people. He was producing excellent repeat holiday business just like clockwork.

But when I asked him how regularly he was contacting these people DURING the year to offer them the rest of his product range, he paused.

“Never”, he said. “I hadn’t considered it.”

Hmmm.

As I say at the top of this blog, there are 3 keys to word of mouth.

By far the easiest to implement is ‘Follow-Up’. Personal, frequent, long-term follow-up.

The easiest sale you will ever make is a repeat sale.

The second easiest sale is a referral.

Both of these are far more likely when you follow-up.

If your follow-up is not bringing you all the results you want (or if it’s just been all too hard) then help is at hand.

Next week I’ll be doing a special-offer webinar specifically on follow-up and Word of Mouth - and demonstrating what I regard as the Ultimate Service to put your follow-up on autopilot. You will also discover…

  • A three step seasonal message that eases people into the next level of the buying relationship with you.
  • Follow-up that is personal, powerful AND, best of all, automatic.
  • How to make your follow-up marketing a profit-centre, not an expense.

Never risk the follow-up mistake again. Click on this link to sign-up and I’ll see you on the webinar Wednesday November 12.

-Martin Russell

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WII-FM… Really.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

In “Word of Mouth Magic” I cover, as many marketers do, tuning in to WII-FM.

That is, tuning in to the ultimate buyer’s question that you must answer, “What’s In It For Me?”

Sometimes I get really frustrated, and I think of it as WTF-III-FM - “What The F*** Is In It For Me?”, also known as “Who cares” or “So what.”

I usually hold back when I feel like this, and sometimes holding back is a good thing. One example of this was a UK guy I came into contact with called Gary Coyle.

Gary calls himself a “Post Office Consultant”.

Cute eh?

The only problem is that I don’t have a post office so I don’t need his services right?

100% wrong!

I found Gary on one of the business networking sites I use and as I read through his profile which explained his history of ups and downs of being in business with Post Offices. I would ask him how the UK postal service worked because of my interest in SendOutCards worldwide.

In actual fact when I spoke to Gary he wasn’t wanting referrals from Post Offices at all.

I became really confused.

I am trying to work out who I could refer to him who would be an ideal referral for him. I’m trying to think of myself as a potential client of Gary’s and asking myself “WTF-III-FM” as I’m listening to Gary.

Then Gary explains it in a way I finally get. What he is actually wanting is products and services to put into those post offices.

His real value is in offering businesses a new way to access the vast retail market of the Post Office.

The penny drops.

His ideal client is someone who already has a product but wants to expand their retail marketing in the UK. There are certainly businesses that want that.

An even better referral is people who have connections with such businesses, eg marketers, business advisers, accountants.

Then I explained to Gary that his profile didn’t make it clear who he was wanting and how they could benefit from what he offers ie WII-FM.

The first thing Gary spontaneously said to me…

I’ll be changing my online profile immediately.

Even better, he actually did what he said he would!

He asked me for feedback on the new profile. I gave it. It was still very feature driven eg “22 years in the post office business”. He responded again with more changes.

If you check out his profile currently, the first section and the final paragraph is new. The with middle history with features and no benefits is the original profile.

His first re-draft profile included this explanation of his work…

If you have an idea, product or service that you would like to introduce into 10,000 Post Offices and 40,000 independent convenience stores in the UK, I have the expertise, contacts and know-how to fast track this process.

With a little more thought he has made it even more punchy…

24 million people visit a post office every week. I will show you how to reach them.

For the right client that certainly gets the WTF-III-FM attention!

It takes time to really understand your buyers & clients, but making the effort is worthwhile.

Oh, and did I mention that Gary had been active on this business network for 6 years without any resulting business. We’ll see how much business his new WII-FM profile attracts.

How well do you communicate your WII-FM?

-Martin Russell

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Really Getting A Buyer’s Point Of View

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Do you really ‘get’ your customer’s needs?

 Moody Cow Florist

Too bad this is actually an ad by, of all things, an Irish online bank.

Sure, understand your customers needs. But do realize that one of their needs might be not to reveal their real needs.

Saving face is an important need too.

-Martin Russell

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Getting The Media To Call You!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Probably the most leveraged area of word of mouth is the media.

With newspapers, articles, books, TV, radio etc the media offers word of mouth opportunities that cost you nothing but your time.

Even better, you instantly become the expert rather than the advertiser. This means people will trust you and respond to you.So even though word of mouth in the media is incredibly powerful, it’s a tricky area.

But who knows how to put together a Media Release? Find a newsworthy angle? Word it so as to catch a journalist’s attention? Format it correctly? Include all your contacts details? Set aside time to be available? Then work out who to send it to en mass, in the hope that it does something?

Not most people in small business that’s for sure!

But…

What if you had a particular area of expertise, and you could just stick up your hand whenever someone in the media needed to interview someone on that topic?

Wouldn’t that be cool?

Especially if it was free!

Well it is free, and first I told those people who connected up with me when I advised readers about the start-up social network www.PerfectNetworker.com, and now I’ve told all my readers via email how to get access to it.

Ryan Coleman of www.TheNextForce.com told me his experience with this service…

Just in the past month… i picked up a radio show, been interviewed for 2 book interviews and sourced 9 hiring managers to interview on my book that I am working on!

Go figure!

I also have heard of people passing on these media opportunities to their clients. What a WOW! of a customer value-add strategy is that!

This media link-up service is so powerful I am including the details for anyone who subscribes to this blog.

Go up to the top right side of the home page of this blog, in the boxes enter your name, your email address, and click the subscribe button.

Then go to your inbox, find the confirmation email from me, and click the link in it. With your subscription you will be sent details on how to access the FREE media link-ups, and future blog goodies too.

-Martin Russell

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What Consitutes Bad Marketing?

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

A couple of weeks back a friend of mine, Don Farnden, did a nice promotion for his coaching work. To get physical addresses for his database, he offered to mail a special “Boosting Business” gift valued at $597 to everyone who replied with their mailing address.

He already had my mailing address, but I was curious so I sent my details in anyway.

A couple of days later I get a small package in the mail.

Inside was a disc with the company name across it, Boost Business Results.

I’m in a rush so I take it with me and stick it in the car as I drive. But it’s not a CD, it’s a DVD. I hadn’t see that on the label.

When I get to the office again I stick it in my computer and watch a seminar room with people sitting at tables and no presenter, just a testimonial video playing  at the front of the room.

I fast forward through and about 8 minutes in the business coaching seminar begins. The video is 6 hours long and is unedited footage.

When I realize this I immediately give up ever finding that much time, and eliminate the problem by throwing the DVD in the bin. Step 1 of Time Management. Elimination.

Question…

Was this bad marketing?

Let’s take the story further.

A week later I phoned Don and he mentioned they had already had 2 big coaching sales from people who HAD watched the DVD all the way through.

This is the power of filtering.

Giving away a whole coaching seminar, unedited, meant that only the really keen were going to respond. But a whole $597 seminar for FREE! That’s a WOW for the right prospect.

So, was it bad marketing?

Answer…

Not based on results. And actual results are the only way to decide. Opinions from non-buyers are simply dangerous.

Maybe however this approach was just a fluke.

Another example…

A few months ago a UK business coach, Eric Sutherland, set up a 7-week series of complete Business Coaching pdfs - once again for free.

He was asking busy business people to set aside consistent time every week to implement the information. Who has that sort of time?

Well, when I spoke to him he told me not only had he already gotten some big coaching contracts from the quality of the information he presented there, but he had also had ZERO unsubscribes.

[If you want to check out this quality of his coaching program go here.]

Rather than go for the big sale, you can use the classic funnel effect as shown in this video here from Ed Rivis where his free course on improving a sales website drew in 1035 subscribers in 35 days and Ed then built the relationship from small sales up medium sales and then to bigger consulting ones.

But if you truly give away quality, the method matters much less.

Getting known is more important than getting it right. Your ideal customer will love you and rave about you, but can NEVER buy from you until they know you exist.

NOTE:-

All 3 of these expert marketers, Don, Eric, and Ed made sure they got contact details up front.

Not all marketing works. That’s not good or bad, it’s just a fact. Even these experts could have produced a dud campaign.

However with contact details they could always try something else instead, let alone go for future sales as well.

Where is your list of people who have already been attracted to you?

Bad marketing is when you don’t capture the list so you can’t try again.

-Martin Russell

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