Affinitive’s Social Media Playground

With consumer brands increasingly moving from monitoring conversations to executing word of mouth marketing programs there is a growing need for clarification of the various options available to a brand marketer when executing a WOMM initiative.

Most everyone we talk to understands the need and importance for word of mouth but since it’s still a relatively new marketing tactic there is a learning curve to tackle. Some of the first issues a marketer is faced with are:

• Should it be a long-term or short-term strategy?
• Should it involve influencers or average consumers from an internal database?
• Should the execution occur online, offline or both?
• How should success be measured? (Sales, conversations, conversation reach, change in Net Promoter Score?)

A recent Forrester report does a good job in helping brands understand what tactics and metrics are best utilized by individual departments (marketing, sales, research, etc.). Approaching it from the brand’s point of view makes it much easier to digest and see the opportunities.

In the same vein I wanted to share my view of the WOM industry, specific to the agencies segment. WOM agencies typically follow one of the following models:

• WOM Agency – Media Model: Brand leases access to the agency’s network of influencers, delivers quick hit, typically short term duration.
• WOM Agency – Influencer Model: Agency specializes in identifying and sourcing influencers, typically short term duration.
• WOM Agency – CRM Model: Agency specializes in sourcing participants from client database, delivers more organic word of mouth, typically long term duration.

One of the tenets of facilitating WOM with consumers is to ‘make it easy’; we in the industry should take that same principal in helping brands understand the various options available within WOM marketing.