Have You Heard | Tag Archive | Word-of-mouth marketing

Using Customers as your Prime Media Channel

Published on 05. Aug, 2009 by haveyouheardblog in Blog, Word-of-mouth marketing

John Goodman wrote a great paper, based on Case Studies, on why your existing base of customers should be your focus for generating new business. Have a look at the 3 pages paper or read the highlight below.

Referral based new business ranges from 20% to 70% of all new business - depending on the industry.

A customers opinion of a Financial Institution is impacted between 21% and 29% through personal interaction, and only 1% by advertising!

When Financial Institutions offered proactive education, they increased Customer Retention by 12%, whilst decreasing customer complaints considerably.

Customers said that 1 in every 4 referrals they gave for Motor Financing, led to action.

If you have happy customers, rather spend money on leveraging their passion and recommendations than on advertising - as it is very much more effective. Also so some sums on your expected Return-on-Investment - what is the cost of a new customer through leveraging your happy customers versus launching new ad campaigns. This may shock you!

Case Study: Using scissors to build Communities

Published on 29. Jul, 2009 by haveyouheardblog in Blog, General, Word-of-mouth marketing

HaveYouHeard came across a great case study that many of you will find interesting, as you should be able to relate it directly to your brand. You can click on the image go to the full post, or read the snippet below:

Fiskars started its WOM initiatives in 2006 and has achieved almost transformational success in building strong and supportive relationships with a devoted following of scrapbook enthusiasts. It first recrutied four part-time Fiskars “ambassadors” and brought them to its headquarters in Madison, WI, for an intense educational briefing about the company, its products and its values. The goal was to empower the ambassadors to start blogging, attend trade shows, give scrapbooking classes at retail stores, and pursue other activities on their own to spread good will from Fiskars. They also recruited other scrapbookers, called Fiskateers, nationwide. New Fiskateers receive welcoming kits with engraved scissors, a booklet on what it means to be a Fiskateer and tips for recruiting more to their ranks. The recruiting effort has created a powerful and influential community.

Fiskateers organize local gatherings for scrapbookers called “crops” where participants talk, crop and build relationships. The events are organized online by Fiskateers but are intended to achieve face-to-face interaction. This is an excellent example of how Fiskars leverages both online and offline WOM. So far, Fiskars has enlisted more than 4,800 Fiskateers in 50 states and 47 countries compared with its original goal of 200. That’s impressive, but how did it help the brand?

As the Fiskars product development managers reviewed passionate and insightful comments from their evangelists and fans, they realized this community could be a valuable focus group. Until then, new products were conceived and developed in a vacuum. Fiskars began to survey the Fiskateers and quickly learned from the feedback that customers are a great source for product evaluations and ideas.

WOM changed the culture at Fiskars Brands. Cultivating a relationship with its evangelists inspired Fiskars to change its scrapbooking product development process. Clearly that success, brought about by skillful use of online and offline WOM, has favorably increased brand awareness as measured by conversation frequency and tone.