Key findings:

• average consumer on their favorite brands
• Brand advocates are a small, but very involved segment
• Brand advocates are important as influencers, yet are open to influence
• Brand advocates are hard to win over, but worth the effort
• Once a brand advocate, not always a brand advocate

The analysis suggests that in each of these product categories, a modest increase in the number of brand advocates is likely to result in a significant increase in revenue.

Read the full study:

New course dates available now!

September in Auckland, New Zealand

The Village Square offers Meeting Tree: custom advice on the process of creating a self generating customer referral grapevine. Meeting Tree offers the following three areas of advice within this creation process:

Meeting Tree Explore
Meeting Tree Develop
Meeting Tree Implement

“The rewards of pursuing excellence in word of mouth marketing are quite huge, and it can deliver a sustainable and significant competitive edge few other marketing approaches can match.”

“In the mobile phone market…we have observed that the pass-on rates for key positive and negative messages can increase a company’s market share by as much as 10% or reduce it by 20% over a two-year period, all other things being equal.”

“Experiential word of mouth is the most common and powerful form, typically accounting for 50 to 80 percent of word of mouth activity in any given product category.”

Click on the image below to download the fulll article:

Spike explains how to launch a movement, how to involve your fans early, and how to make it something that can last forever (even after your budget runs out).

During this hour long webinar, Jake Pearce and Cornelis Boertjens from The Village Square will explain how you can use powerful yet simple WOM Marketing strategies to transform your business. You will learn how to implement WOM Marketing using a smart system. This will dramatically increase the efficient use of your marketing resources and dramatically increase your bottom line!

You will also see the results of an interesting poll we did during the webinar

“How to use Word of Mouth Marketing to dramatically increase your profits”

What will you learn?

During this hour long FREE webinar, Jake Pearce and Cornelis Boertjens from The Village Square will explain how you can use powerful yet simple WOM Marketing strategies to transform your business. You will learn how to implement WOM Marketing using a smart system. This will dramatically increase the efficient use of your marketing resources and dramatically increase your bottom line!

When: Tuesday 23 February 9 am – 10 am AEST, 10 am – 11 am AEDST, 12 pm – 1 pm NZT

Registration: Limited spots available by invitation only. Secure your spot now by registering online: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/386505512

Oh no; homework:

Choose a branded product or service you want to max out using WOM Marketing before you come on the webinar. It has to be an existing product/service or a new one you would like to market to your existing database. By the end of the call, you’ll have great insights into how to use the WOM Marketing as a system to dramatically increase your bottom line!

And in case you want to chat beforehand:
Get in touch with Damien Stone via damien@thevillagsq.com or +61 404 094205

The intention of this short piece is to communicate the key facts which demonstrate unequivocally that Referral Marketing is a subject corporations should know more about.

We have three objectives:
1. To ensure our Top Referrers have this information readily available first
2. To allow internal champions a simple way of learning about the key issues fast
3. To provide the key facts for Senior Management and place Referral Marketing firmly on the agenda.

It is quite deliberately punchy, fact based and dry – we want to allow the reader to feel the rigour of the business case. We will be providing a full white paper on the subject forthwith where the content will be provided in a more ‘leisurely’ vs ‘soundbite’ style.

Click here to read the full study in PDF format

“Women don’t buy brands, they join them.” Tom Peters

Summary

1. Trust in ‘The Corporate’ is in crisis – corporations are spending more than ever in history saying ‘trust us’ but we don’t.¹
2. There is evidence that a protracted ‘Brand Valuation Bubble’ is likely due to overvaluation of brands as this ‘trust’ erosion makes itself evident.^1,2,3
3. The recent recession has seen all but IBM and Coca-Cola’s brand valuations drop.²
4. Why? Marketing is one contributor to this failure – Marketing is less effective at persuading people in general and specifically around trust.
5. TV advertising, the traditional driver of both trust, awareness and conversion is being asked to do too many things at once and we need to change our approach.^6,7,8,9
6. We need a truly integrated model where traditional channels drive awareness and conversion is driven through other channels, specifically Referral channels from peer groups, the trouble is most marketers don’t know how to do that.⁶
7. The key Referral Channels are Word of Mouth, (WOM) Word of Web, (WOW) Word of E-mail (WOE) and Word of Cell (WOC).
8. 80-90% of all Brand Conversations happen through face to face conversation (WOM) – only 10% through other channels.⁴
9. Most corporates are using the 10% of channels as essentially a ‘push’ medium – pushing messages just as messages were pushed through traditional media – this approach is effectively adding to distrust as it is inauthentic and leading companies to be ‘caught out’.⁹
10. Word of Mouth is the most trusted Communication Channel there is and it is also the most trusted messaging medium there is.⁴
11. Why isn’t “Word of Mouth Marketing” (WOM) higher up the corporate and marketing agenda? We suggest it is a lack of knowledge and education in this area.
12. This issue has entered the agenda of TEC – the largest global CEO organisation for Better Leadership Worldwide.
13. Referral Marketing is a ‘trend’ not a fad according to a) International surveys from the US, NL ¹¹ and b) the recent establishment of Referral Membership organisations globally.^10,11
14. Referral Marketing can be applied in three ways to an organisation – as a WOM pulse, as a marketing approach or at an organisational level.
15. In all cases TVS emphasise introducing it to your organisation through a series of low risk, low investment managed projects to allow your organisation to understand its value and fit.
16. TVS is the only company with a specialist system to magnify Referrals positively – and give you better financial efficiency for your marketing dollar.

Bibliography

¹ Yankelovich Report 2006
² The Brand Bubble, Gerzema and Ledbar 2008
³ Interbrand ‘Best Global Brands 2009’
⁴ AC Nielsen – “Trust in Advertising” & Kellar Fay Group
⁵ The 2009 Barkley Cause Survey/PR Week
⁶ McKinsey – Boosting Returns on Marketing Investment 2005
⁷ iCrossing “connected brands scorecard” October 2009
⁸ Seth Godin “Meat Ball Sunday”
⁹ Joseph Jaffe – Join the Conversation
¹⁰ www.womma.org
¹¹ DM Barometer – DDMA The Nethelands