The ’sweat equity’ of WOM
Just about everyone would agree that word of mouth (WOM) is the best kind of marketing their is. Consequently countless books, blogs, products and presentations have been devoted to taming the elusive WOM.
In a comment to a post on The Society for Word of Mouth blog, Jack Shipley uses a great turn of phrase which says as much about WOM as quite a few books I’ve read. He refers to spending:
“the sweat equity of WOM for greater returns”
It’s a great phrase because it points to one of the keys to generating great WOM - graft.
WOM existed long before Twitter, blogs, social networks and review sites. It existed long before people worried about branding. It existed because some products or services or shops or people or caves or woolly mammoth traps were better than others.
When something is remarkably better than whatever else is available, that’s one really good reason to talk about it.
So, the hard work and graft that people put into building their businesses and creating products and services that will wow their customers is paid back in positive WOM.
It’s sweat equity.
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3 comments
Thanks, Mark.
It’s hard work to promote a business on legitimate word of mouth. It means constant attention to your customer service, product quality, environment, character, passion, mission, change … every aspect of your business.
Making a business that’s worth talking about is a far more sustainable model than one promoted on transactional advertising or viral gimmicks. The latter two don’t affect how you make people feel. How you make people feel is what they will talk about.
Jack
[...] For more thoughts, Mark Nagurski picked up on the phrase “sweat equity of Word of Mouth” on his blog, Really Practical Marketing. [...]
Hi Jack,
I completely agree although I do feel ‘transactional advertising’ and other marketing staples have their place in driving trial as well - specifically in the early stages of a business before WOM has time to gain traction.
Ultimately there’s no shortcut to good WOM - although there are tools and processes you can use to make it easier for that WOM to take place.
Blogs, review sites and social networking are all good examples of those kinds of tools - but they are the mechanism not the message.
Thanks Jack
Mark
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