Inspiring vs. Motivating Word-of-Mouth

As Word-of-Mouth Marketing receives more attention as the most powerful hidden marketing medium, it is not to suprising to see the number of marketing consultants and agencies jumping on the bandwagon, ready to launch Word-of-Mouth Marketing Campaigns for their clients. What IS suprising is how organizations are falling for this, without thinking through the diference between Inspiring Word-of-Mouth and Motivating Word-of-Mouth.
What's the difference?
Well, organizations that Inpsire Word-of-Mouth place meeting and exceeding customer expecations first and foremost, while companies that Motivate Word-of-Mouth put the cart before the horse and expect Word-of-Mouth to simply take off if they throw enough Word-of-Mouth Marketing vehicles at the market (The Perfume on a Pig Syndrome).
Well, the timing could not be better for Customer Expectation Innovation (tm), a method measuring customer expectations so that they may be efficiently, effectively and consistently met - creating the greatest possible amount of organic Word-of-Mouth and Customer Activism. More on our newly developed breakthrough Customer Expectation Innovation (tm) coming soon...

Word-of-Mouth Linking Customer Feedback to Business Results

Wow. My head has finally stopped throbbing (I mean this as a compliment) from IIR's Linking Customer Feedback to Business Results Conference a little over a week ago, were I was priviledged to present my topic Word-of-Mouth Marketing Innovation: Elevating Customer Feedback for Exponential Growth. Kudos to IIR for planning and assembling some of the top corporate speakers on the subject and delivering a knowledge-packed 3 day program.

Some Big Takeaways were:
1. How serious these leading organizations were in strategically capturing, classifying, analyzing, linking and acting on customer feedback as they understood the strong correlations to customer loyalty and revenue.
2. The many different ways these organizations apply customer feedback to help drive their business, and from a new school "Sense & Respond" perspective rather than the old school "Command & Control" perspective.

Some Big Surprises were:
1. How these organizations weren't including or integrating customer Word-of-Mouth into their Voice-of-the-Customer or Customer Feedback initiatives, although when I asked they indicated that it was something were considering doing in the future.
2. The many voiced issues with Fred Reichheld's Net Promoter Score. We shared several of these concerns which led to us developing our Recommendation Intention System (tm) and Buzz Influence Power Score (tm) as a more comprehensive solution to measuring Word-of-Mouth.

I had a well-attended session with great feedback. Jennifer Hurley, Director, Commercial Analysis of GlazoSmithKline emailed me afterwards commenting, "I really enjoyed your presentation - very energetic and engaging." Thank you Jennifer, I appreciate your feedback and your spreading the word. For a limited time, I will email the slides of my presentation upon request when you click here and help spread the word about UNLEASH Buzz to your colleagues.