In our last post, we described what it takes to get your company ready for word of mouth marketing: remarkable products/services and the means to engage customers and support from employees.

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

The ‘identification’ phase—discovering the people and groups that influence and build communities where your company can enable conversation—is important because word of mouth is most effective when spread with customers who are engaged with your company, enjoy sharing opinions and are trusted by people they know.

Work within Pinnacle Worldwide and elsewhere reinforces that efficient word of mouth marketing needs to start by identifying these influential people. We have a body of research supporting the notion that certain people are twice as likely to make recommendations—and be sought for these recommendations—as the general public. Selecting these influential people from among your customers, employees, business partners and others is good fuel for creating word of mouth.

The good news is that most of these influential people and groups are visible to you today. Mainly, they are your best customers. However, a thorough identification process will reveal others with qualities, expertise, advocacy, etc. that make some even more important.

In the next post,  we’ll talk about the opportunities presented by completing the ‘identification’ phase —how the foundation of amplified word of mouth can take root for your company with the help of those you’ve identified.

This is the second of a four-part series describing a our Word of Mouth methodology developed with our Pinnacle Worldwide partners. 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 5:04 pm by Ryan Hanser