WOMM: WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING by Andy Sernovitz

According to the WOMM book by Andy Sernovitz, WOMM is generally the marketing strategy that the companies or individuals try to encourage people to talk about them and their products. WOMM is one of the most effective marketing strategy that people have applied to the business for a long time, but nobody realizes how important of WOMM until the technology is developed. The technology accommodates people to express their ideas and talk about particular topics with other people, not only their friends and family, but also people who have common interests through different channels, so it makes people have opportunities to gather information before making decisions, for example, people usually go to check the reviews before buying a new gadget. Even though WOMM is effective and easy to implement to the business, the marketers should be aware of the negative impact when they are not able to apply WOMM appropriately. Therefore, the WOMM will be effective when it is implemented with proper 5Ts.

The 5Ts are Talkers, Topics, Tools, Taking part, and Tracking. These following are some important thoughts about each T.

Talkers

There are many different talkers mentioned in the WOMM book. The best way to find the proper talkers is to create the persona to describe who should be your talkers and why they want to talk about you and your products, as well as how to reach them. In addition, it is important to feed your talkers about the up-to-date and insightful information in order to motivate them to talk constantly. Finally, you should say “Thank You” publicly and personally to appreciate their actions.

Topics

Good topics are simple, organic, portable, and unexpected. They also need to be tested and up-to-dated to make sure that they are relevant and effective. To make continuously talks, there are three different topics that need to be created along with the WOMM campaign, which are immediate topics, worthy topics, buzzworthy topics.

Tools

WOMM cannot be a powerful marketing plan if you are not able to spread the messages out to other people. There are many tools to let people share their thoughts. The book focuses on the Internet that is the most effective multiple sharing tools, including blogs, social media and online communities, as well as testimonial and customers reviews.

Taking part

Since WOMM is dialogue, it needs to be interacted by initiators and respondents. Taking part is your and your peoples’ roles to engage in the conversations and keep the conversation alive. The most important manner to keep in mind is to make people happy whether you are dealing with positive or negative WOM.

Tracking

It is not only the step that you can use WOMM as a research tool to understand what people in the real world think about you and your products, but also the step that you can see how effective the WOMM plan you implemented by listening to what people talking about you and your products publicly and privately.