By Word of Mouth

Gone are the days when "word of mouth" was simply a free benefit to deserving brands. Word of mouth marketing has grown into an increasing operational expense designed to maximize online tools and the reach of digitally skilled consumers.Evidence of the sea change comes out of attendance figures from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's annual Summit. In 2007, fewer than 200 attended, mostly from agencies and service providers. In 2010, 500 people attended, with nearly 40% representing consumer products manufacturers.The association defines word of mouth marketing as "any business action that earns a customer recommendation." Many of these types of campaigns use brand ambassadors – people who online and offline boost products, promotions and in-store activations. Some are paid, while others are compensated with the product they are endorsing."Brand ambassadors are an overlap between objectives for both consumer marketing and shopper marketing," says Matthew Egol, vice president, consumer, media and digital practice for New York-based Booz & Co., a global consulting firm. "Consumer marketing and shopper marketing haven't always been well-coordinated. There often are still substantial pinpoints to align: your trade promotions, your consumer promotions, your advertising, your website – all these silos."Using the services of agencies that specialize in consumer engagement, brands and retailers are using bloggers, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and their own websites to incentivize and enable consumers to promote their products and services.What follows are four examples of effective word of mouth marketing:Creating Collective HypeNestlé USA, wanting to create enthusiasm for its Edy's, Dreyer's and Drumstick ice cream brands – and for two weekends (Memorial Day and Fourth of July) when the brands would be featured in Walmart's Ice Cream Social sampling event – partnered with social shopper marketing company Collective Bias, Bentonville, Ark., to create advance hype and drive visits to the 3,000 participating Walmart locations.Using Social Fabric – a proprietary community of more than 1,200 shopping-focused influencers through whom the company claims to reach over 40 million people and create 110 million monthly measured impressions – Collective Bias screened members in the "ice cream lovers" category to work on the campaign. Of the 110 bloggers chosen, 10 were "showcase" bloggers, those with a larger reach; and 50 bloggers went to the events, 25 to each. Those compensated included a disclaimer at the end of their blog posts, indicating compensation as well as freedom of opinion. "In between all that, we had an additional 50 bloggers who created conversation around these brands, so they went to the store, bought these products, showed us their path to purchase, and then also blogged about usage," says Mailena Vo, Collective Bias product manager.Collective Bias also staged an hour-long Twitter party, with the hashtag "#icecreamsocial," that included discussion, questions and giveaways.Just two days before the sampling event, Walmart approved the Nestlé promotion, and the results was a 37% sales lift over the six weeks from Memorial Day to Fourth of July.Andi Pratt, shopper marketing manager for Nestlé USA, says user-generated content is what sets word of mouth/brand ambassador tools apart from traditional marketing. "Shoppers are more and more engaged in user-generated content, whether it be from people they know or people they don't. Those are heavily weighted in the decisions they are making every day. It doesn't feel as forced, doesn't feel like a singular brand message or retailer message is being forced upon a shopper. It's more of a dialogue, an engagement that feels more wholesome and genuine than a lot of the marketing tactics that we do. Brands that are able to do social in a genuine way will start to stand out."Training Brand AmbassadorsAidan Tracey, chief executive officer at Mosaic Sales Solutions, Irving, Texas, says his company is "positioned around people changing the way brands connect with consumers one experience at a time." Experiential marketing is Mosaic's meal ticket, backed by social media support. The company's work with Dell Inc. in 2010 won a 2011 Ex Award from Red 7 Media's Event Marketer in the best buzz marketing/influencer category.The campaign, now in its third year, uses more than 100 paid brand ambassadors in college towns across the United States to present Dell products and manage Dell's Facebook page and Twitter presence. Mosaic created a website (Delluniversity.com) to centralize the effort and showcase student-centric promotions, products, events and discounts, as well as content from Dell partners like Microsoft and McAfee. Click traffic to Dell.com was over 24,000 in the campaign's first year, while 135,549 people became Facebook Fans and 388,827 followed on Twitter.Tracey says such a visible brand ambassador program does not work unless the ambassadors are the right fit. For Dell, Mosaic wanted current students or recent graduates who knew all about the town and campus. Mosaic trains the ambassadors, monitors their online content, and coordinates monthly brand and product messaging. Using trackable codes and specific URLs, Mosaic can tell if sales are related to the brand ambassadors' work.Tracey says marketing is moving ever more local, and that a business cannot hope to make a meaningful connection with a community unless it is of and in that community. He cites Walmart's recent partnership with Facebook to develop a Facebook page for each Walmart location. "I think a lot of leading brands are figuring out [that social media is] just a great way to connect to consumers. But inevitably, once your consumer comes to you, they usually want you to give them a message that is tailored at a very local level. There's a physicality to what's happening on local marketing, especially at the retail level right now."In-store activations, like celebrity appearances or sampling, are by definition local, but many times staged by the retailer. What's needed is not brand ambassadors to run the demonstration or man the sample area, but a way to get people excited about the activation and product being promoted.Speaking About the ProductAliza Freud, founder and chief executive officer of New York-based SheSpeaks, an online community of 200,000 women who want to influence others and provide text and video feedback to brands, says her site is less about events and promotions and more about products. Clients come to SheSpeaks with a goal, and then bloggers and influencers sign up for products they are interested in, product is shared, instructions are given, parties are held online and off, and results tracked."It ultimately starts with a brand coming to us interested in sparking a conversation and a dialogue with their consumers," says Freud, a former vice president of global marketing and brand management at American Express. "We find the right people, introduce them to a product, and it might be a product they've seen walking through the aisles 20, 30, 40 times and one they didn't think to pick up off the shelf. And because we're introducing it to them in a way that is interesting – there's a story behind it, we're focused on benefit – we're able to engage that consumer in a way the brand couldn't do through traditional advertising and marketing."A good example is when San Francisco-based Torani, a manufacturer of syrups for use in coffee and tea, wanted to increase awareness in late 2011. SheSpeaks bloggers and coffee lovers signed up to help, and they received two bottles of Torani and five coupons. A Twitter party with hashtags "#SSTorani" and "#HolidayFlavors" generated 877 RSVPs, inspired 8,590 Tweets reaching 622,856 people, and resulted in over 15 million user-generated earned media impressions.The overall results: 370 posts reaching 350,000 people; 10,500 Tweets with a reach of 2 million people and over 18 million earned media impressions using the hashtag "#SSTorani"; 500 member reviews on the SheSpeaks website; and a 100% increase in fans of Torani's Facebook page."We really wanted to engage the audience with Torani, get them thinking about Torani," Freud says. "We asked them to get creative, and we gave them a fun assignment. We asked them to whip up their favorite recipe with it. We ended up getting this amazing content that was not just all about me using it to make hot cocoa, or making coffee, but they were using it to make dessert recipes, and the brand found that as a nice surprise, people were not just using it as it was initially intended for, for coffee, but also recipes to bring out an added dimension."Launching a ContestShoppers Drug Mart, a Toronto-based Canadian drugstore chain, used word of mouth and a contest to update profiles of members in its Shoppers Optimum Rewards Program, gather email addresses for e-mail marketing, grow its membership base and expand its social media engagement with its shoppers.Ottawa, Ontario-based Launchfire, an interactive promotions company specializing in contests and sweepstakes, advergames, user-generated content and viral marketing, set up the "Spin To Win" contest on a microsite, receiving 173,000 participants from Jan. 15-30. Contestants could share game pieces with friends with a unique link given to them upon registration. The link could be posted on Facebook or in a blog, or Tweeted, and if a friend registered after clicking the link, the original contestant received an additional entry. To increase engagement beyond mere posting, the contestant received yet another entry when a game piece was claimed by someone with whom the contestant shared.According to Launchfire, more than 1.2 million shares were attempted, and 670,000 pieces were claimed. Shoppers Drug Mart Facebook "Likes" went from 200 to 74,000 over the two weeks. Additionally, the contest included a question of the day, and a correct answer would gain a spin; a hint button at the bottom of the page sent users to the chain's website to find the answer. Launchfire says 2.12 million questions were answered over the two weeks. Of the 173,000 contestants, 30% were generated virally.Part of the success of the contest was use of what Launchfire calls an "allowgate." Simply put, when users want to register for a game, quiz or contest through Facebook, they are asked for information to gain entry. Many stop there, unsure if sharing the information is worth the access. Allowgate lets users see what they would be getting before sharing the information.Unexpectedly, and organically, Facebook groups were formed to help players amass game pieces they were missing. Tammy Smitham, director of communications and corporate affairs for Shoppers Drug Mart, says the chain drove awareness of the contest through its website, emails, Facebook page and media buys with Facebook, Yahoo, Kijiji, Google and WomenFreebies.ca.The user-created Facebook groups enabling sharing and trading of game pieces was a revelation to Launchfire founder John Findlay. "We've run collection promotions before but not quite like this one. We've had the question that drives traffic to targeted pages on the advertiser's site, that sort of thing. The key learning for us was the user enthusiasm about iconography. That was something we really didn't anticipate – the spawning of Facebook groups to share collection pieces. We had seen an interest from consumers in collecting, but this really leveraged the collection mentality."

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