Last week marked the 8th annual WOMMA Summit. The best and brightest marketers gathered in Los Angeles, representing brands, technology providers, and word of mouth leaders from around the world. Brands are finally finding a way to bridge digital to physical, turn social media into social interaction, and transcend the traditional social billboard to instead create true one-to-one relationships; and the WOMMA Summit is proved to be a phenomenal breeding ground for ideas and innovation in these areas.
Read on for the top 6 things you missed but should definitely know after this year’s WOMMA Summit.
- There is a Measurable Return on Word of Mouth
Our friends at WOMMA, put together a great report on the Return of Word of Mouth, one of the only of its kind. There is still a ways to go toward quantifying this, and results will vary by brand and by industry, but the point is, it’s measurable and marketers need to realize it and start measuring. These benchmarks will help immensely in justifying spend on word of mouth initiatives that were previously deemed “unmeasurable.”
KEY FINDINGS:- Offline Word of Mouth produces ⅔ of measured business impact, while Online Word of Mouth drives ⅓. This highlights the importance of bridging on and offline efforts and finding ways to draw a clear line between the two.
- Word of Mouth amplifies the effect of paid media by 15%. Important because as crucial as say TV ads are, without the presence on and offline WOM to help amplify that message, returns start to dwindle quickly. Create better paid promotions and content that will fuel that organic word of mouth and returns will be bountiful.
- 1 offline Word of Mouth impression drives sales at least 5X more than 1 paid. Seems straightforward and almost obvious, but the actions of many brands don’t reflect this because it’s been difficult to quantify (See above). The interesting thing is, this stat is on the low end. Even if there isn’t a direct way to measure this for some brands, it’s clear that making the investment into Word of Mouth will pay dividends.
- Advocates Can be Your Brand Partners and Amplify Your Message if You Tap Into Their Influence
Building a core group, or getting access to an existing group of advocates is a crucial component to building, maintaining, defending, and even transforming your brand image and message. Advocates are an incredibly influential group and just so happen to be a free channel that brands can leverage. During her session “This Isn’t Your Daddy’s GoDaddy (Beyond Social Media (WOM)) – Laura Messerschmitt, Vice President of Social Media and Strategy at GoDaddy spent her session outlining how when they needed to rebuild from a controversial brand image to a value-based organization, advocates played an integral part in that transformation and in amplifying GoDaddy’s message. Notable tweet by Dhara Naik of Ogilvy:
- Authenticity and Personality are “King”
Put down the megaphone and whitewash your billboards. Instead, interact with people, build relationships with people, and show that although you’re a brand, you’re also human. How do you do this? Act like you might in say…real life. Be funny, entertain your audience, show emotion or at least empathy, even make fun of yourself a little bit. Your customers and potential customers will love your for it and trust you for it. Once you’ve build that brand love and brand trust, the word of mouth will flow like never before. See this tweet below which outlines what Patrick Donahue Jr., Director of Digital Media for the L.A. Kings had to say when it comes to how we should be addressing digital “guidelines.” Notable tweet from Erika Brookes from Oracle Social.
- Few Can Influence Many
One of the recurring themes in the presentations this year, from keynote to track session, was the importance of finding and leveraging brand ambassadors. These are a small group in relation to the full footprint of a brand’s community, but a highly influential one. And one thing that rang out again and again was that influence is not defined by things like number of followers or broad reach. It’s defined by who each of these ambassadors impacts and that’s an extremely important distinction. Do these people have reach to other people who actually trust them and care about what they’re saying? If so, you’ve got yourself a brand ambassador and an extremely valuable asset. In their session “Turn Up for WOM,” speakers Montana Triplett, Sr. Director of Digital Marketing at Moët Hennessy USA and Madeline McCaul, Account Director at Ogilvy spoke about how they took a completely new approach during a time where the tactics that had traditionally powered growth were falling short, and empowered a small group of 14 brand ambassadors to fuel huge returns both on and offline. - Even B2B is About P2P (Person to Person)
I particularly liked this session because it held a lot of value and relevance for me as a B2B marketer, marketing to B2C brands. The truth is, we are all people and prefer to be addressed that way. Whether you’re a brand who markets to consumers, or a technology provider who markets to IT folks, you are talking to a person and if you treat them that way and interact at the right time (taking real time marketing one step further), you’ll build trust and word of mouth. B2B organizations have a lot to learn here and there are some leading the way. Deanna Lazzaroni from LinkedIn and Erica Brookes from Oracle Social Cloud led an excellent session that broke down how B2B companies can be very successful using social for lead generation and opportunity creation simply by listening to the conversations that are taking place among brands and the people at those brands, and engaging with them as human beings. Lauren Friedman put it simply:
- Social, Real-time, WOM Can and Should Have an Underlying Strategy
But let’s not confuse strategy with strict tactical business rules. Be strategic and have a core set of underlying principles that drive your word of mouth approach, but be flexible and ready to adapt at a moments notice. Below are some great guidelines I took away from many of the presentations and conversations I had at the WOMMA Summit:- Listen. Engage at the pace of your audience and the conversations taking place.
- Be Creative and think of ways to use digital tools, but don’t just go on tools to use them, be strategic about it.
- Social media is a conversation, spend as much time listening as you do speaking
- Create brand ambassadors by tapping into networks to engage with enthusiasts who will voluntarily promote your brand
- Build key digital relationships with key online ambassadors
- Create an experience that engages fans with wit, humor, and personality
- Tap into emotions, they will get the most engagement and will spark the most word of mouth
- Consider form factor, if it doesn’t work on mobile, it doesn’t work
- And my favorite…Don’t take yourself too seriously
To wrap it up, this conference proved that brands and word of mouth experts all are leaning in the right direction. People no longer respond well to “corporate messaging” and instead want to be treated like human beings where the relationship and conversation is bi-directional. To build trust and engagement, brands need to listen to their audience and respond with relevant, timely interaction that shows they care. This all validates our mantra here at Crowdly…”if you can’t talk to a person, you can’t talk to people.”