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.
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FREE Live Webcast Outlining "The How" To learn "the how" please listen You’ll learn:
Simulcast Webcast and Telecast Monday 17 September, 8PM Eastern Come in early as the lines will be maxed
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Word of mouth advertising IS the best way, however, how effective is it if you want to market it to direct audiences? I say not very, although, word of mouth seems to be given more validity than something that is seen, or heard through mass marketing.
NOTE from MJ: Hey Boyd, great point. The answer is to keep on selling to direct audiences and let WOM bring in more leads to you. (Ideally Inspired WOM leads.) WOM doesn’t mean that the rest of your business stops. It does, however, mean that you get rid of the things that aren’t helping and do more of the things that are. It’s not hard as you’ll learn on the call. It actually makes business *fun*!
Mark,
My first serious venture was to sell t-shirts when I was in High School. When I first went online, I sold many various products in various niches, but my first highly successful initial venture was to sell cutting-edge personal development products. It was only after having some excellent success there that I began teaching people how to market online in 1994 – and only after people bugged me to do so. During that time I also developed several search engines, was involved in quite a few pre-bubble large scale start ups, etc …
How did you get started in business? What was the first thing you ever sold? Just curious… I know some of your story, but not all of it.
NOTE from MJ: John, my first product was lemonade when I was very young
Mark,
Is there really a systematic way of making sure that pure, no-gimmicy WOM can work for you?
What a neat concept! You’re going to show us how to do this, step-by step?
I remember that, in The Irresistible Offer (and if I remember what you wrote properly), you said that we should be excellent. That that was the biggest determiner of our viral success.
I have a few questions
1. Can an affiliate get WOM to work for the product or service they’re promoting, even if they don’t own it?
2. In this post, you talk about gradual change. What if I’m writing my own product (ebook) from the ground up? What advice would you give to an intermediate marketer who wants to take his business to the next level by writing an e-book?
3. These WOM techniques (if I may call them that)–are they something you use in every product or service, or conversely, are they something that every product or service should be a part of?
Hi Mark,
Having experienced how super-informative and fun your conference calls are, how can I miss this one?
3:30 am local time? No problem, I’ll sleep a little less tonight.
See you there!
Ladan
Age gives us a chance to gain some wisdom on one hand . but-
might be resulting a loss in “some” other qualifications on the other end…
my prayer: not only consuming your
wisdom but utilizing it to benefit many.
HI Mark–thank You
A pleasant bike ride? I don’t mind heavy weight lifting, as long as you lead, Mark!
Hi Mark,
The “kaizen” concept is truly a thing of beauty especially when you get to be part of a team making it happen.
I’ve been fortunate to do so several times in my career/s, so I’m eager to see your version of it applied to internet business.
Former Lakers basketball coach Pat Riley talked about using this method to win the NBA title. He got each player on the team to buy into the goal of making a 1% improvement in each category a player is measured in (points scored, assists, rebounds, blocked shots).
So, instead of needing one guy like Kareem or Magic Johnson to have a breakout year, each guy only had to make a small improvement over the previous year.
This resulted in massive improvement for the team as a whole and as you might expect, they won the championship.
Fascinating stuff~
If I ever get the chance to talk to you directly or via email, I’ll give you the details on how we did this at one of the world’s largest aerospace companies to turn our worst performing location into the best performing location and only changing out two employees in the entire process (which only took one year, which was the time frame of the metrics used).
Can’t wait to listen in on the teleseminar.
Michael
Las Vegas, NV
Whoa – great call so far.
interesting teleseminar…
thank you, mark…hopefully i can be part of this endeavor.
peace.
Mark,
Great webinar !
Mark — you are hereby designated a DEGREE in A.B.C.D.s
For merit service…
Known as…
ABOVE and
BEYOND the
CALL of
DUTY
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the amazing webcast tonight.
The information you shared was absolutely powerful. I’m excited to get in this new program tomorrow and start learning from you!
Ladan
Wow Mark… that was an amazing and to-the-point call. I loved how it was very straight forward and short. Very simple, yet applicable and useful info on how to increase WOM.
You won’t believe this… but my internet connection failed just about when (I guess) you were going to tell us where to get the bonus manuscript by Joe Vitale…. talk about bad timing… LOL!
I even picked up the phone and dialed as fast as I could… only to get into the last 5 or so minutes where you said goodbye! Haha!
I was preparing myself to beg for the URL… but fortunately you have made the replay available. Thanks so much
I’m really looking forward to your launch tomorrow… in fact I mailed all 3 of my mailing lists so they could listen to the call!
I used the classical “I’m sorry” subject line… which I really was because I mailed just about 2 hours before the start of the call!
There are at least 3 products (!) launching tomorrow that I know of, and here in Chile it’s a major national holiday (sort of “independence day”)… but most of all I will be looking forward to it for your Word of Mouth Transformation experience!
Can’t wait any longer… Thanks for all!
Kind regards,
Juan Pablo
Great call Mark!
Looking forward to seeing who won their way into the contest. Keeping my fingers, toes and nostrils crossed hoping it’s me…:)
Do I get extra credit for pointing out in your headline that SOMONE should be spelled SOMEONE as in “WOULD SOMEONE JUST FLIPPIN TELL ME IF I WON?”
Gotta do something to get your attention.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s launch!!!
Michael
Thanks for the amazing webcast tonight.
Cristina
Super! Thanks for that!