We’ve described what it takes to get your company ready for word of mouth marketing and walked through the process of identifying people and groups that can create and influence important conversations.

Now lets take the next step: activation of amplified word of mouth to transform your organization.

Word of Mouth is happening organically. Amplifying Word of Mouth takes activation.

What is activation? Think of it as encouragement. It is the program that get people talking — demonstrating knowledge, providing recommendations, offering suggestions, making referrals — and sustains the conversation.

Word of Mouth programs can meet multiple goals and there are so many methods available to benefit your organization. It is probably more productive to describe what, in our view, is not an activation program.

Activation is not an emergency. Just because you’re reading about trendy online tools doesn’t mean you have to dive in today. Activation must be strategic — an extension of your business strategy.

Activation is not a media buy. You must deliver the value that earns you the recommendations, referrals, suggestions, etc. It must be an authentic exchange, and you must provide the emotional rewards.

And activation is not solely a marketing function. Conversations you want to create among your customers should be an explicit part of how to develop and deliver your products and services. Word of Mouth is an enterprise responsibility and a social investment.

Indeed, Word of Mouth activation enables and enpowers. It connects. It builds.

And we witness this connection and construction. So, we’re insistent that measurement devices are woven throughout these activation programs — incremental and bottom-line metrics that help us adjust to the conversation. With so many marketers seeking engagement and efficiency, we know that measurement of Word of Mouth is required.

We’ll write in detail on measurement in the next post.

This is the third in a four-post 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 anywhere else in the world.

Posted: January 19, 2010 at 5:04 pm by Ryan Hanser