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The Untapped Brand Advocacy Potential of Loyalists

Customer loyalty

Brand advocates are among the most powerful sources of social recommendations, word-of-mouth and sales in this social era. However, businesses ignore or forget many possibilities to enhance brand advocacy tapping into the power of specific groups, including loyal customers. 27.5% of marketers even admit they have not mobilized brand loyalists and loyal customers to become active advocates. Furthermore, there is an untapped brand advocacy potential regarding the 'regular Joe' and even the own workforce. As the infographic below by NBRII shows, 20% of businesses don't even have a strategy for customer loyalty (let alone, brand advocacy). The solutions are simply and the reasons to improve customer loyalty are diverse. However, it requires work and planning. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Infographics, Relationship marketing, Word of mouth marketing Tagged With: ,

Online Communities Are Like Coral: Give Them Space To Grow

community coral

“I told a friend and she told two friends and so on and so on…” Those words come from a famous seventies commercial campaign for a shampoo. It was ingenious in that it not only recognized the power of word-of-mouth advertising, but capitalized on it by promoting the brand had that very power. All the clever advertising in the world doesn’t carry the weight that a friend or trusted personal source has regarding product recommendations. Getting the thumbs up from someone you trust whose opinion comes from experience makes all the difference for most of us. In a report on word-of-mouth advertising, Lithium Technologies looks at its power and how the web and social media has affected it. The report looks at online communities and SNA or Social Network Analysis. For this post, I’ll focus on online communities and address SNA in a follow up post. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Community marketing, Word of mouth marketing Tagged With: , ,

Word-of-Mouth Marketing: The Ostrich Factor

Word-of-Mouth Marketing: The Ostrich Factor

I had an interesting exchange a few days ago regarding social media and the power of word-of-mouth. I was at my car dealership and one of their senior people was looking at a problem with my car. When he asked what I did for a living we started talking about social media. To set this up right, let me point out that this gent is a vet of the business, has seen a lot of changes and has tons of customer interaction and service experience. When I mentioned how word-of-mouth has been turbo charged by social media and too many businesses out there aren’t catching on fast enough, his response was one I’ve heard before. While he acknowledged the impact of social media and the reach it provides consumers, he felt that impact was lessened by the fact that most people will take any critical information on these channels with a grain of salt, assuming there are two sides to every story. This perspective can only be described as the “ostrich syndrome”, but even ostriches don’t … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social media marketing, Word of mouth marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Six Tips for Viral Marketing Success

digital earth

Viral marketing is one of the most applied methods in online marketing. The arrival of social media and the integration with other interactive marketing methods like email marketing and video, gives every campaign the potential to rapidly spread across the world wide web. Viral marketing has similarities with word-of-mouth and referral marketing, but is not quite the same. With viral marketing the focus lies more on wide spreading. In the first place, a viral marketing campaign's success depends on the willingness of people to share the story. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Viral marketing Tagged With: , ,

Why Women Own Social Networking

Women and Social Networks

Has the male gender's seeming inability to interact beyond "road rage" and taunting at sports events finally caught up with us? Is my gender doomed to obscurity on social networks because we just don’t know how to communicate? Let’s face it, guys have issues when it comes to really communicating emotions and needs effectively. Oh sure, we’ll talk about how our local sports team sucks or maybe brag about that fish we caught, but do we really know how to share our lives in a social sense? I have to wonder when it appears our opposite gender is beginning to dominate social networking. Is this due perhaps to some kind of genetic shortcoming on our part? Soon men will be driven back to the garage where we will huddle around broken down, rusted muscle cars, drink beer and lament our relegation in grunted musings. I’m doomed. The only thing in my garage is a baby carriage and an electric mower. I’ve been reading comScore’s “2010 US Digital Year in Review” and one bit … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social media marketing, Word of mouth marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Five Major Marketing and Communication Changes In The Social Media Age

social networking media business concept

The usage of social networks is increasing daily. Clearly, the whole social phenomenon is still far from over. Its impact for marketers and companies is huge. A whole new range of channels has joined existing interaction channels and have shifted the focus from communicating as in messaging to communication as a balanced mix of cross-channel dialogues where listening, and thus customer data, preferences and behaviour, are key. For marketers, this evolution constitutes an enormous opportunity, but also a major challenge. The attention of modern individuals is fragmented, and in this hectic communication reality they want to decide for themselves how and when and with whom they speak, both in private and with regard to business communication. Moreover, people can also disseminate information themselves via social channels, which can very quickly send messages all around the world. The social media (r)evolution has five major consequences for marketers. Note that this … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cross-channel, Social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,