Word of Mouth Part 5: “Would Somone Just Flippin’ Tell Me What to Do?”

(If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 read them now. In fact, you really need to start with the post “What is the Single Most Powerful Force in Marketing?”)

I hear you.

And that’s what I’m about to do.

First, a re-cap of the salient points:

1. Word of Mouth is the most powerful force in marketing …

2. … because it can make someone bypass the sales process and go right to the
order, and …

3. … this happens without having to pay for direct advertising, but …

4. … it doesn’t come from Incentivized Word of Mouth or pseudo-viral gimmicks,
it …

5. … must be Inspired Word of Mouth, and …

6. … that type of WOM can be controlled by you.

Now, two posts ago I told you about C-Rate and why it almost doesn’t matter.

If you have the time and resources to measure it, it’s a helpful idea, but when
you learn what I’m about to show you about Inspired Word of Mouth, you’ll soon
see that it might not be the figure you should be watching.

See, inspired Word of Mouth is a natural process that only comes from making
gradual and steady improvement to what I call "The 4 W.O.M.K.A.I.s"

That may sound technical, but it’s not at all. When you hear it you’ll get an
instant "blinding flash of the obvious." Everything will start to make sense.

More about The 4 WOMKAIs in a moment.

First, let’s talk about "gradual and steady."

Fast movement is a powerful weapon. Indeed, on today’s military battlefield many
theorize that speed is the ultimate weapon.

Think about it – if you can quickly get to your opponent with a great big stick,
it won’t matter if he has slow access to a nuclear warhead. He’ll never have
time to get to it.

But that only makes sense when we’re talking about dispatching an enemy.

See – business, at it’s best, is less about DEstruction than it is about
CONstruction.

We’re building – not destroying.

And building is about stability.

This is why the followers of the Japanese business theory of "Kaizen" talk about
avoiding radical shifts in your business.

If you make radical shifts in your business you tend to shut down production in
the process.

Radical changes to affect Word of Mouth could have the same effect. If you
"re-invent" your marketing from the ground up, you could re-invent your way into
the poor house.

The business battlefield is littered with the corpses created by consultants who
go into a business and "change everything."

Every now and then a radical shift in someone’s business hits – and hits big.
Unfortunately, when we hear those stories we erroneously think "that’s the way
it’s done."

But it’s like people who make quick dividends in the stock market, or win the
lottery. It sounds great, but what are the odds?

To make it worse, radical shifts in your business or in your marketing are
painful.

So, what are we saying?

We slug it out through the painful changes in our business that the "experts"
tell us are necessary for rapid growth and those very same changes actually end
up killing off the business?

Sounds almost like a sick joke, and that is in fact the reality.

But here’s the really good news.

The right changes – the healthy changes – don’t take painful struggle.

What it takes is knowing what small gradual changes to make, how to change them,
and getting on a clear steady plan to make them.

It’s not rocket science, and it’s not heavy weight lifting.

It’s more like a simple pleasant bike ride through the woods.

There is a bit of effort there, but you’re on a clear and pleasant path -
knowing exactly where the road is taking you.

The only difference is, your "destination" is a booming healthy business.