The value of WOM, or Are you making people happy enough to say nice things about you?

I apologize if you have been waiting breathlessly for your first StraightTalk e- Blast. I’m happy to report that I’ve been engaged by a bunch of foundation and nonprofit clients since leaving The Rhode Island Foundation at the end of 2006, and they’ve kept me pretty darn busy. (Thank goodness.)

I didn’t buy any advertising to announce Rick Schwartz/StraightTalk. Just sent out a lot of goodbye e-mails to colleagues and friends. What’s funny is, many people who offered me work weren’t on my “hope to hear from you” goodbye list. Inevitably, they got my name from someone else.

Thus the wonders of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing, today’s topic. So incredibly powerful, so underused. Or should I say underutilized, because people are talking about you whether you promote yourself or not.

Consider this. How did you choose your family dentist, lawyer, accountant, insurance agent, or auto mechanic? The latest book you read or movie you saw? The neighborhood you live in? The mutual funds you invested in? The college you attended or a private school for your children? Where to get services for your elderly parents? Almost definitely from a friend, relative, or workmate, or from a trusted columnist, magazine, or review.

You’ve made a lot of important decisions in your life based on the advice of others – professionals and laypeople alike – without benefit of a single advertisement. In fact, we’re trusting ads less and less. The book Marketing Without Advertising by Michael Phillips & Salli Rasberry cites a Harvard University study that reported “43% of Americans think that most advertising insults the intelligence of the average customer. And 53% of Americans disagree that most advertisements present a true picture of the product advertised.”

The result? Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The Tipping Point, “There are plenty of advertising executives who think that precisely because of the sheer ubiquity of marketing efforts these days, word-of-mouth appeals have become the only kind of persuasion that most of us respond to anymore.(emphasis added)"

No surprise, word-of-mouth marketing has become a business itself. There’s even a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). One of the more intriguing players is BzzAgent, which puts products in the hands of a cadre of volunteers to talk up among their friends. Though the company hasn’t yet embraced the world of nonprofits, its book Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing is definitely worth reading (see a book review and publisher’s information at www.SchwartzTalk.com under “Great Resources”). The authors say that people love to share their opinions about almost anything.

Why? For six reasons:

• to be helpful
• to show off our knowledge
• to find common ground
• to test and validate our own opinions
• for pride and elitism
• because sharing is a human tendency.

A new study by the Keller Fay Group says that 32 million WOM “leaders” among consumers are each involved in 184 word-of-mouth conversations every week! Their tongues must hurt!
 

Don’t just wait around for good WOM about your organization:

1. Be a joiner and do-er. Maximize the number of people who see you in the communities where you work. Join the Chamber of Commerce and local service group (and actually go to the meetings). That’s why I’ve added “membership in service clubs” to the criteria I list in my communications audits. Are you out there hobnobbing with people who might use you?
2. Make sure your reception desk is friendly and inviting. It’s generally the first and last place that sees your visitors. That’s on my Communications Audit list too.
3. Host discussion groups on topics you specialize in. Don’t worry if the audience is only 10 people; each of them will be an ambassador for you.
4. Issue frequent e-mails that carry interesting tidbits. You can even do them weekly as long as they’re very short and very interesting. They’re easy to do and free! You want your work to stay on people’s tongues.
5. Keep your donors happy! It’s less expensive to keep a happy donor than to find a new one. Annual meetings, once-a-year one-on-one lunches, a quarterly phone call, a birthday card. This is work?
6. Organize donor committees for any of your supporters who are willing to come to hear the inside scoop about your organization (and will go out and share it). Don’t be miserly and only invite your favorite five or 10 for tea and cookies. What’s wrong with a hundred donors out there singing your praises?
7. Offer get-togethers for prospective givers. Have members of the Board or very happy donors invite friends over to their homes for a casual cocktail party with the agency’s president.  Emphasize in the invitation that there will be no solicitation. As Seth Godin says in Permission Marketing, it's like dating, with the eventual hope of marriage.
8. Publish donor stories in your newsletter or annual report. Show prospective givers that others have chosen you. Testimonials are an indirect form of WOM.
9. Don’t forget to operate an active media office, with press releases, OpEds, and editorial meetings so the media are always saying nice things about you.
10. Offer “Advisory” gatherings of like-minded groups. Certain universes may be essential to your work; keep them close. At my foundation, we needed the good will of professional advisors (estate planners, lawyers, accountants, etc.) to sell their clients on endowments. We offered them classes with CEUs, special trainings on charitable giving, their own newsletter, and their very own in-house advisory committee. Now they’re responsible for nearly 70% of the foundation's new business.