 | The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth |
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Product Description
The first edition of The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing provided readers with step-by-step guidance for constructing a word-of-mouth marketing campaign that would penetrate successive audience tiers and build sales exponentially. Extensively revised to reflect the profound changes in the marketplace, from new attitudes and communication methods, to new ways of relating to increasingly wary Web 2.0 customers, the second edition of this groundbreaking book shows readers how they can move beyond traditional approaches to inspire the kind of word of mouth that catches fire and generates revenue. Featuring enlightening case studies and examples, as well as an updated version of the author's innovative Decision Matrix for identifying potential buyers and deter mining and crafting the right kind of message, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing simplifies the process of choosing the delivery method, harnessing the power of influencers, and measuring results. From how to navigate the latest digital media to what Malcolm Gladwell got wrong, this is still the last word on word of mouth.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #168278 in Books
- Published on: 2011-02-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A fabulous road map to highly effective, very inexpensive marketing." -- Alan Weiss, Ph.D., author, The Ultimate Consultant
"In this thorough, useful book, Silverman tells you what matters. Buy it now...before your competition does." -- Seth Godin, author, Unleashing the Ideavirus
From the Back Cover
Praise for the First Edition of The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing:
"In this thorough, useful book, Silverman tells you what matters. Buy it now . . . before your competition does." — Seth Godin, author, Unleashing the Ideavirus
"A fabulous road map to highly effective, very inexpensive marketing." — Alan Weiss, Ph.D., author, The Ultimate Consultant
Nothing moves sales more powerfully than word of mouth. This seemingly mysterious, unstoppable force doesn't merely happen by chance, though—and the good news is that you can systematically create a smart, effective word-of-mouth campaign without the gigantic budgets associated with traditional, "old school" marketing efforts—if you know the "Secrets."
But a lot has changed since the first edition of The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing introduced the world to the groundbreaking marketing strategy that would come to be looked on as simple common sense. In the world of Web 2.0, social networking, blogs, YouTube, review sites, and more, the only way you can stay ahead of the curve—and prevent overload—is to uncover and understand the secrets behind what makes WOM work.
With step-by-step guidance for constructing a word-of-mouth marketing campaign, as well as enlightening case studies and examples, the extensively updated second edition of The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing shows you how to manage the "New Marketing" methods and connect with increasingly wary Web-savvy customers.
You'll learn how to construct the message, choose the right delivery method, and harness the power of influencers and peers. You'll discover how to multiply your sales explosively by crafting different messages to target early, middle, and late-stage adopters; shorten the customer's decision-making cycle; and design a WOM-worthy story that will spark the kind of conversation that will catch fire.
No one denies it anymore: The most powerful force in the marketplace is word of mouth. And this influential guide, now brought fully up-to-date, shows you how to unleash the true power of WOM and push your sales into the stratosphere.
GEORGE SILVERMAN, an acknowledged expert in word-of-mouth marketing, has been designing successful campaigns since 1971. He is founder and CEO of Market Navigation, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in simplifying customers' decision steps through word of mouth.
About the Author
GEORGE SILVERMAN, an acknowledged expert in word-of-mouth marketing, has been designing successful campaigns since 1971. He is founder and CEO of Market Navigation, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in simplifying customers' decision steps through word of mouth.
Customer Reviews
Finally marketing that's systematic!
I'm a graduate from Wharton and a professional marketing consultant. When I first began doing marketing professionally, I longed for an integrated theory to guide me in whatever marketing challenge I would encounter. I started by turning to some very general marketing books ("The Portable MBA in Marketing" was one), but was quickly turned off by the stodgy tone of these books and the excess of information that beared almost no relevancy to everday marketing challenges! It seems the only thing classical marketing was albe to suggest was to find out as much as you can about the customer and then profile him, segment him, test out concepts on him, and keep doing this until you've found something that works.
That approach seemed too brute force to me, so I continued looking around for my grand unified theory. Not at all thinking I'd found my golden chalice, I noticed George Silverman's "Word-of-Mouth Advertising" in the bookstore and was intrigued by the prospect of sysmetically generating word of mouth.
After reading it, I realized I'd finally found my theory. In fact, what I considered my ultimate marketing theory was only the foundation for this book! Silverman then went on to use these ideas to discuss how to create systematic word-of-mouth campaigns! The grand theory, by the way, is simply modeling the customer buying process--not a huge innovation at first glance, but when presented by Silverman it becomes clear just how overlooked an idea it is. I've seen the customer buying process in marketing textbooks before, but it was never presented as the foundation for all marketing everything as, in my opinion now, it should have been.
The remainder of the book discusses how word of mouth works, the different levels of word of mouth, and plenty of other ideas. It tells you why people spread word-of-mouth (basically being so over-satisfied with a product/service that they feel compelled to talk about it) and how to help them do it (give them tools to quickly contact their friends).
In the end, this book makes me feel like a better professional because now I have an intellectual basis for approaching all my projects, rather than just "instints", "intuition" or other pools of ideas whose reliability and accuracy is somewhat flimsy.
I hate to say it since I'm basically talking to competitors here, but if you're in marketing, you pretty much need to buy this book.
Why this is the forefront in how to cause word-of-mouth
There are several good books on word of mouth and viral marketing (and I read everything on the topic), but none like this - written by a master implementer. Silverman reveals previously secret techniques he personally implemented for his clients in dozens of competitive wars. And because he's done it all first hand, he's able to illustrate every principle with fascinating real-world marketing examples. No one knows where word of mouth fits into the sales and advertising cycle better than Silverman. He's at the forefront of turning the whole field into a technology and a new media - treating word of mouth as something you can massively cause, not just a side-effect of a great product or PR. He spells out the principles, strategies, and specific techniques - many of which he invented - and how they relate to each other and to other media. The book is full of checklists of do's and don'ts, many of which aren't at all obvious. He explains how to maximize the leverage, getting 5-10 times more per promotional dollar spent. (Was there ever a better time for that?!) Heaven help your competitors who haven't read this book after you have.
How you can make words of mouth work for you
I have 10+ years of experience marketing and launching high tech (and non high tech yet innovative) products of various sort and i found this information both accurate, invaluably concise and making good business sense. I find it an excellent complement to more theory oriented books like the "tipping point" and the "anatomy of buzz".
These last two books will explain you how words of mouth works but will not give you any really in depth insight about how you can make words of mouth work for you. "The secrets of words of mouth marketing" does.
To give just and example: the "decision matrix" described in chapter 5 is an extremely concise and rich tool for anticipating the concrete information that customers need to hear in order to decide about a product. For instance if you are currently targeting early adopters kind of customers then the matrix will tell you the exact content of what they need to hear in order to help them "decide to decide", "weigh information in your favor", "engage in a trial" etc. The decision matrix will also tell you what middle majority/pragmatist customers will need to hear to make the same kind of decisions and of course it's not at all the same (those of you wondering what I mean by early adopters, middle majority etc will find the info in the book -- this belongs to the diffusion of innovation theory of Everett Rogers something that any person seriously interested about words-of-mouth need to know about anyway by reading the two other books or this one).
You might have notice that in the previous paragraph I have been speaking about what customer "need to hear" and not what your company "needs to tell them". I think it's one of the great success of the book in helping us to really see the difference between the two, to understand that what you company say is less important than what your cstomer say and think and to understand how words-of-mouth can be "organized" in order for the two to match better.
Great book!!
Bruno Levy
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