#15 Conversation Marketing: A Tactic to ace ‘Word of Mouth’ Marketing
Next-Generation 'Word of Mouth' strategy. The Author has given ideas on how to integrate the marketing, promotion, and PR functions of an organization to reap the benefits.
I recently came across this book on Marketing “Beyond Buzz” by Lois Kelly, where she beautifully discussed the ‘Word Of Mouth’ as a way of marketing and how organizations can use them to connect back to customers. Conversational Marketing is essential to get your customers to recognize you amid competitive brands. Here are some key takeaways from that book:
The purpose of marketing is to involve customers, helping them to understand the value of an organization or the products to their wants and needs
Marketing goes beyond just advertisements and creating brochures; the real goal is to engage the audience in a dialogue, which leads people to discoveries of their own. The talks should be exciting, and companies need to focus on building discussions through new and traditional channels
Promotions have become the heart of marketing and communications, but conversations remain the soul. The story you weave the customer with even through your communication channels (advertisements, billboards, social media platforms) is what binds him to you and your brand. It helps the customer to understand better what your company is all about
The conversation should be meaningful and not just to create a buzz in the market. The four crucial ingredients in such talks should be Relevancy, emotion, context, and pattern making. The brain innately seeks meaning by looking for and connecting with patterns of information. The pattern helps in deriving value in the data, to help them connect with the real ideas
Another critical aspect is ‘Trust’ from our side to a consumer to assure them that we can fulfill ‘what they want.’ Trust will create a cycle, ensuring that we make our customers feel listened to, and we work upon their ideas, which we gather through researches and surveys. Three factors to consider for ‘What to Listen’ are Intent, Content, and Language
Intent helps in understanding the emotions, feelings, and sentiment behind the words. The tone/ language provides a clue to what the person feels about what is being said. Content helps in gathering the facts and information
Conversational Marketing should not be one-way communication, It is about building a ‘Talk Culture’ by providing the point of view, anecdotes, and stories to sales reps. It should be a meaning-making style that is relevant, frames ideas within existing contexts show patterns and the most important creates an emotional connection with the people
This book reminds me of a classic example: David & Goliath is an evergreen theme that taps into our deep-seated love for the underdog. We believe that a sector is run by market leaders and first movers but fail to see an underdog coming out and play when he creates a niche in the same segment. Malcolm Gladwell has also written a book on this theme.
Jack Welch has mentioned another interesting point in his book ‘Winning’ that people lack honesty more often than not, which makes communication tough. Diplomacy makes them refrain from expressing their ideas, which can stimulate real discussion. He has said that when candor is there, everything just operates in a faster and better manner