Riding the WOM Whirlwind

TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, Online Ads—there’s one advertising medium that beats them all. It’s WOM (Word-of –Mouth). Thanks to the internet, WOM is exponentially stronger these days (because it’s so easy to find). In pre-internet days, you had to either hope someone would mention an experience with a product or service you were curious about, or else you had to come right out and ask people if they had any such experience. Today, you just type in the name of the product or service you are interested in, and you can instantly find dozens (or thousands) of opinions. The internet put WOM on steroids. For example, type “hamburger opinions, Cincinnati” into Google and you will get 288,000 citations, headed by my wife’s favorite, The Burger Guys, at http://cvgburgerguys.blogspot.com.

Internet WOM can grow like a snowball rolling downhill. It may start with one opinion, then people comment on that opinion, and the next thing you know you have a website like www.amexsux.com containing hundreds of experiences and exerting a significant effect on a major corporation.

So your customer’s experience with your product becomes paramount. Bad experiences become bad WOM, and bad WOM becomes particularly damaging when it is so easy to access. Especially since people are much more likely to go public with a bad experience than with a good one.

What can help you ride the WOM whirlwind?

1) Know what is being said about your product or service. Regularly search the internet for mentions. You can do it yourself if your operation is small. If you are a TIDE or FIDELITY, you’ll want to create a robust internal capability or hire a company like Nielsen’s Buzzmetrics to keep a finger on the pulse of WOM.

2) Respond to negative WOM. If it is pointing out something that is wrong about your product or your service, don’t go into denial—get it fixed! If someone has misunderstood or misused something, try to correct the misconception by replying (using the same channel where they published their opinion) in a polite and measured way.

3) Nurture positive WOM. Identify satisfied customers and obtain testimonials from them. Publish those testimonials on your website, and tell all your other customers about them. Help your proponents talk to each other for reinforcement. Think about Harley-Davidson “hog” owners. With considerable help from the company, they have reinforced each others’ positive opinions to the point where if someone says something negative about a Harley, the complainer is likely to get tossed through a window!

Want to talk about your WOM? Give me a call, and maybe we can think of some ways to tilt the buzz in your favor!