The best way to grow any company is for its customers to help you grow. Word of mouth is the most powerful (and cost-effective) method of customer acquisition and growth.
In B2B, word of mouth is especially important :
91% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Click to Tweet
Why is word of mouth so important for B2B companies? The relative cost of most B2B purchases is higher than B2C purchases. Therefore, there is greater risk involved in B2B decision making. And when the risk is higher, the client seeks to avoid mistakes. And one major way buyers avoid making mistakes is to seek the opinions of existing customers, through online and offline word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals.
But the fascinating thing for me is that we know this to be true, in our guts. OF THE COURSE, word of mouth is important for B2B. However, very few companies have a realistic strategy for creating conversations with customers.
Word of mouth may be the most important factor of B2B success, but very little attention is really paid to it. Remarkable!
Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a half-day workshop on Talk Trigger and B2B word of mouth marketing, in partnership with our friends at Desantis Breindel, a B2B brand agency. great located in New York City.
They've put together an exciting collection of B2B marketing leaders from a variety of industries, including healthcare, law, finance, and more.
I won't go through the whole workshop here, as that would be quite lengthy. (If you are interested a workshop of your own let us know.) In the meantime, here are 7 key principles of B2B word of mouth marketing.
1. B2B word of mouth Must have a purpose
Most (almost all) companies use a confusing word-of-mouth approach to word of mouth. They just assumption that customers will use about the business. But will they? And if so, what are they saying?
Given the importance of word of mouth in B2B (see 91% of the numbers above), is it wise to let go of word of mouth strategy?
Our philosophy at Convince & Convert is all brands can (and should) do word-of-mouth on purpose, by finding an effective Talk Trigger . A Talk Trigger is a strategic differentiator that works to drive word of mouth, Reliably generates customer conversation on an ongoing basis.
2. Chat Triggers Aren't Really Marketing
Enabling chat is something you DO differently in your business, not something you SAY differently in your business.
Talk Trigger is not the classic way of marketing. It is not a price or promotion. It is not a contest or a coupon. It's an option that works then creates a marketing advantage by turning customers into volunteer marketers.
For example, Freshbooks is a B2B accounting software company. Their Talk Trigger is a free series of events called I Make A Living . These events help connect their freelancers with the wider community and with Freshbooks. They create a lot of conversation.
Big Kudos @ Freshbooks for an outstanding and thought-provoking event about how we create the future (with @ monikabielskyte ) in Toronto tonight! # immakealliving
– Anne Kavanagh (@anne_kavanagh) October 31, 2018
The speech was utterly poignant, engaging and thought provoking @ monikabielskyte in @ Freshbooks # immakealliving . Thank you pic.twitter.com/3Y2sH46 y6M
– TorontoDiana (@ToscapeDiana) October 30, 2018
3. Similar to Lame
Many B2B companies play by the leader. They analyze and evaluate which companies are thriving in their category or market, then try to mimic that brand's best characteristics. This makes sense, as it reduces risk. If it's not broken, don't fix it, etc.
But the problem with that approach is that it doesn't generate any small talk.
Competence does not create conversations. You've never called a friend and said to them, “Guess what? I flipped the switch and… the light came on! ”
Capability to reduce disruption and prevent customer defection. But it doesn't prompt customers to tell a story about the business, which is a word-of-mouth trend.
If you want your customers to tell stories about your business credibly. company, the company has to do something that the customer does NOT expect. The best B2B organizations just choose to do one thing differently in their company operations, and when they make that choice, they end up with a Talk Trigger support their word-of-mouth strategy.
Think about Uberconference . This free conference calling service is essentially the same as any other company in its category. Except Talk Trigger, a fun soundtrack, written and performed by their CEO, generates tons of conversations about the company, online and offline.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh9h4KZpnJU[/embed]
my most listened song of 2018: the @ uberconference keep the song.
– Kelly Burns (@kellyaburns) February 12, 2018
The Song hold @ uberconference literally a country song called “On Hold” written just for the sake of keeping. this is the best ever. # uberconference
– TK (@createbytk) November 22, 2017
I'm waiting for a @ uberconference Calls and music are very enjoyable. I must know who came up with this idea.
– Todd Budin (@budin_todd) January 17, 2018
4. Consistency is key in B2B word of mouth
Aside from the curse of following the leader, one of the other traps of B2B companies they believe, because competition for attention is so fierce, they have to do something really BIG to break through.
This is why you see so many brands trying their hand at “ surprised and delighted " these days. Surprise and delight is when you approach a customer, in a particular situation, and you treat that customer much differently than the rest. Hotels do this a lot. Some guy walked into the Hyatt and found a live panda bear sitting on the bed, with a bamboo tree nearby.
The premise is that this one customer will be so surprised and delighted by this unexpected encounter that he will talk about it on social media. It would then go viral and eventually move from Reddit (or some such) to traditional journalism, garnering plenty of hotel attention along the way.
This can work.
Or, you just end up with a nasty customer and a stray raccoon in your hotel.
As I mentioned at this workshop, my team and I are not against surprise and amusement as a tactic. But let's call it what: a publicity stunt. It is NOT a word of mouth strategy, as it is not reliable or repeatable or scalable.
Surprise and delight and “going viral” are lottery tickets, not a strategic plan for B2B word of mouth.
5. Worst way to create conversation triggers
The least effective approach to word of mouth strategy is the one that most people try:
Asking everyone in the room to brainstorm to find the difference will generate customer chatter.
If it was that easy, Talk Trigger already exists. If effective word of mouth strategy was simply a matter of attracting some smart people along with some donuts and riffing until the gold came out, EVERY company would have a word of mouth strategy instead of NO companies. You have a word of mouth strategy.
The best way to create a Talk Trigger is the hard way: research, process, interview customers, test and optimize.
We use a six-step process when creating word of mouth strategy for customers. It's the same process that we document in Talk Trigger Book .
The most important component of that process is the customer interview. B2B companies simply have to talk to their customers (we recommend 15 interviews across three customer segments) to determine what buyers expect today at every step of the way. customer journey .
Once you know what people expect, then you know what they do NOT expect. And that's where Talk Trigger lives: in the land of the unexpected.
6. The B2B Word of Mouth is a 50/50 Clause (best)
One of my favorite research projects we did for the book looked at customer attitudes about word of mouth factors and company differentiation.
We found that in the case scenario, 47% of customers could envision a Chat Trigger.
These are originality seekers (25% of the population) and Experience Mentors (22% of popu lation). These two groups who are particularly interested in something unusual or disproportionate tend to recommend things to others.
The remaining two customer segments are Joy damentals fans and skeptics. These two groups are unlikely to be volunteer marketers and tell someone about a business that does something different. The first group was not at all fascinated by people who were different, and the latter believed that anything different could be a gimmick or trick.
This means that word-of-mouth expectations in B2B should be reasonable and realistic. The most successful program in the world will find about half of the total customers talking about it. That in no way diminishes the importance of word of mouth, and in fact highlights the critical nature of creating small talk in it 47%.
Relevant parcels: 3 Types of Customers Will Talk About Your Business
7. Measure B2B word of mouth
As with anything that happens at least partially offline, it can be difficult to attribute specific sales to the word of mouth, unless the company has a defined referral program.
Ask every customer (or every nth customer, if you must) three questions. Ask these questions after they've made a purchase and have certainly experienced whatever Talk Trigger has to offer the company. If possible, ask every customer these questions with roughly the same amount of time after activation, to eliminate bias about recent visits.
In many cases, B2B companies will ask these questions by tagging them to an existing Net Advertiser Score Survey or other customer satisfaction measure.
Question 1: Online or offline, how many people have you told about your experience with our company?
Here, you are trying to gauge the actual communication and whether this customer is likely to engage in word of mouth or already has.
Question 2: What did you say?
Here, you are looking for Chat Trigger mentions. This would be an unsupported mention.
Question 3: Do you talk about any of these?
Here you present a list of company characteristics, each with a checkbox. Seven characteristics should be listed, one of which is a Chat Trigger. You are looking for Talk Trigger mentions in a reminder and support list.
There's SO MUCH more successful B2B word of mouth than what I've covered here, but I wanted to give you a good summary of some of the key takeaways, drawn from my workshop with Desantis Breindel .
If you have questions, or we can help you, find me on social media or Contact us here .
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