The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines word of mouth marketing as “giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place.”

That sounds simple enough, right?

Well, if you think you’re ready, let’s answer three (or more) questions:

1. Do you have remarkable products/services? And if you say yes, are you sure? What do your customers say about your products or services today? What motivates them to talk about your organization?

2. Do you have ways to engage with your customers? This question includes ensuring direct lines of communication — speedy replies to customer emails, etc — but also concerns whether suggestions and complaints improve what you deliver to customers. Do you provide ways for customers to connect with each other? Who do they talk to and where?

3. Will all employees support word of mouth? Is your company ready to act on what it learns from conversations with customers and other stakeholders? Is everyone — from the frontline on up — prepared to listen and act?

These questions are the framework for “readiness” — the first phase we undertake when developing a word of mouth program.

Companies that have answers can move quicker in creating a word of mouth program. For others, we’ll need to fill in the gaps together.

But the need for readiness cannot be overstated. The company needs to be open to the voice of its stakeholders and have a set of tools available to manage the program across time.

When a company is ready for conversations and their effects, we begin to identify the people and groups who can shape an amplified conversation that creates expanding benefits over time.

In the next post, we’ll describe this “identification” phase — discovering the people and groups that influence and build communities where your organization can enable conversation.

This is the first of a four-part series describing a our Word of Mouth methodology developed with our Pinnacle Worldwide partners in 2005. We encourage you to read the whole series and then call us to harness the power of word of mouth in Des Moines, Iowa or wherever you need help.

Posted: January 19, 2010 at 4:57 pm by Ryan Hanser