How do you sell a cup of coffee in a world where coffee is everywhere, accessible and relatively inexpensive? For Starbucks Global Creative Director Stanley Hainswort, that’s his main problem. His solution is to sell the experience, not just the product.
‘Baristas at each store memorize up to 200 customer names and what they drink,’ he said. This gives a ‘neighborhood-feel’ to the store, and encourages repeat business and positive word-of-mouth among customers.
Starbucks is a success story because they found their niche, and stuck to it. They’ve made a lot of money doing one thing well, over and over again. Smartly, they’ve realized that their one thing is not making a cup of coffee, but creating an experience that customers not only enjoy, but want to tell others about…
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Sure, a word-of-mouth recommenation is valuable, but would you pay a stranger for it? Angie from www.angieslist.com says absolutely. And she’s right.
Angie’s List started on the supposition that people would be willing to pay for trusted WOM recommendations. Her member’s list, now more than 500,000 strong, proves that for a few dollars a month, people trust a WOM recommendation from a stranger more than any other form of advertisement.
The premise is simple; members of Angie’s list pay to join, then submit reports on services they’ve used, and other members can see it and use it as an un-biased WOM recommendation.
Now, all over the United States, more than half a million members of Angie’s List rely on WOM for services like finding a plumber, gardener, electrician, or painter. Simple jobs, yes, but maybe not so easy to find reliable people.
Check out www.angieslist.com to find out how she fixed that.
Here are some facts and figures from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association that you might find interesting.
-81% of marketers are interested in WOM trends, more so than blogs, RSS, or podcasts
-61% of people who make online videos share them online
-48% of business executives have used direct WOM as the reason they made a technology-related purchase
-Surprise is the strongest emotion that spurs WOM. A recent study correlated the effect between the two; the bigger the surprise, the stronger the WOM
Two major American companies, Sprint and Coca-cola, are putting more and more money into Word of Mouth marketing. But rather than tracking the direct ROI, their marketing executives are keeping an eye on something much simpler; how many people have seen their message.
For Sprint’s latest effort, the results were dramatic. They offered 400 bloggers a free hand phone and 6-months free service. The number? 389,000 hits on Google.
Mel Clements, a brand manager of Coca-Cola, sums it up well. "If you give people a great experience and have a great campaign, they will talk about it. Word of mouth is not a ’send to friend’ button at the bottom of the page. It’s about being great and doing something great."
Full article here.
