When my grandfather needed to buy a new horse, he went down to the end of his fence on the farm and started talking to Bob next door. He said, “Bob, who do you ‘trust’ to sell you a great horse for a fair price?” Bob told him Sam was the guy to see and could be trusted to give you a great horse and stand by his word. So my grandfather went to Sam and bought his horse…because Bob was and “Advocate” for Sam and “proactively” told people about him via word-of-mouth. We live in that same world today.
Sure, it happens much faster and with many more options but this is still how business gets done. Social media simply allows this to happen faster, cheaper, and in a deeper way because of its reach than in my grandfathers day, but it still happens the same way nonetheless. People think the way we do business changed with social media. I argue it didn’t change, it just accelerated the same WORD-OF-MOUTH and leveraged your ADVOCATES in a different way – but the same solution.
This is why I whole heartily believe that the companies that can create “exponential word-of-mouth” with their audience are the ones that develop deeper, more sustainable, and more trusted relationships WIN. That is what WOM10 is all about, helping businesses create more ADVOCATES and significantly more WORD-OF-MOUTH using Social Media than in any other way. We simply help you “make it happen” using a “STRATEGIC APPROACH” rather than simply throwing “Social Media Tools” at the problem.
To give you a little more background on how I came up with this approach, I need to give you a bit of history.
For the past 10 years I have been watching the explosive change happening in how customers are gaining more and more control in every business. The changes in the past 5 years alone have eclipsed anything we have seen for the previous 50+ and the speed at which this trend is continuing is frightening and opportunistic. Today, your CUSTOMER IS IN CHARGE – and they are “armed with a microphone and the tools to “self-publish”, called SOCIAL MEDIA.
When my brother, Gary, and I wrote our book on how companies can build a “consistent and repeatable customer experiences, the world was changing right in front of us. Another great book confirmed this “new world” and was also well ahead of its time called, “The Experience Economy“, by Pine and Gilmore. Their concept was simple, companies will only be able to differentiate themselves through the experience they offer their customers – how true that is today.
So here is where everything CHANGED. Social Media came into the picture and gave everyone the “tools” to create Word-of-Mouth exponentially! The “customers” voice is now highly leveraged and when they speak, thousands are listening. Control has been taken over by the customer. I won’t belabor the point that traditional is all but buried and gone in most cases so if you are still hanging on to that coveted direct mail piece or newspaper advertisement, get over it and move on. The return is dropping daily while the costs keep rising – not a good business model. We now have new, and more powerful, ways to communicate, connect with customers, share information, differentiate ourselves, market, interact, engage, and spread word-of-mouth.
Today, the HOLY GRAIL is ADVOCACY. The bottom line is simple, if you have a farm of advocates out there “proactively” singing your praises, then you will WIN. It’s that simple. I am so passionate about businesses creating more Advocates, that I created a new blog, THE NEW ADVOCATE, to focus exclusively on this topic – I hope you check it out and let me know what you think.
I hope you find value and insights from these stories, experiences, and recommendations on create more Word-of-Mouth among your audience and how to build your business stronger than it has ever been. That is my goal and my passion. Please let me know what you think, your ideas, suggestions, and of course feel free to add your comments to any post you like. I know this is a new world, but if we all share our experiences and learnings, we can move ahead faster and be more customer focused. At the end of the day, that will always win out!
Thank you for listening and sharing…
Blaine