Energizing the groundswell means tapping into the power of word of mouth by connecting with, and turning on, your most committed customers, like Jim Noble with his improved laptop bag.
Word of mouth is a powerful amplifier of brand marketing, achieving results no media campaign can achieve. Word of mouth succeeds because:
- It’s believable. Testimonials from customers are far more credible than any media source.
- It’s self-reinforcing. Hear it from one person, and it’s intriguing. Hear it from five or ten, even if you didn’t know them before, and it has to be true.
- It’s self-spreading. Just as Heather Locklear said, if a product is worth using, its word of mouth generates more word of mouth in a cascade that’s literally exponential.
- From figure 7-1, people believe other people more than media.
7-1
One example of Word of mouth is the Steam, my favorite online game retail platform, which was released on September 12, 2003. Since its release, its user evaluation function has been continuously improved.
After the developer publishes their work on Steam, they can find out the inadequacies of their work in the customer reviews, communicate with the customer as soon as possible, and analysis the customer's taste.
On the other hand, Steam has innovated customer analysis in recent years, and they have added a statistical system to help developers and customers identify product quality more specific. For example, 3DMark is a hardware test software, which has been released for a long time.
In the long update history, customers may be disappointed or disgusted with an certain update, and this version may drag the overall ratings down. So Steam has launched a bar chart statistical system based on time(-X) with positive and negative reviews(-Y). If the customer is controversial about the update of a certain period of time, you can clearly see the problems on the chart.
========================================================================
Chapter 8, the author found that 'People are far more willing to trust each other than a company, as we described in chapter 7. And amazingly, people are willing to spend lots of time helping each other, if you just get out of the way.' The company is now focusing save cost on after-sales expenses because they found 'Supporting customers is a burden.'
Chapter 9 is about finding practical ways to tap into customers to help the company innovate now— 'to increase the chances of developing something customers want.'
There are two reasons:
For example, Steam has created a community to help developers energize their customers. This works best if customers are truly passionate about the product and have an affinity for each other.
Chapter 9 is about finding practical ways to tap into customers to help the company innovate now— 'to increase the chances of developing something customers want.'
There are two reasons:
- Customers don’t take long to tell you what they want.
- With customers in the loop, innovation happens more quickly because you can iterate—make continuous improvements.
For example, Steam has created a community to help developers energize their customers. This works best if customers are truly passionate about the product and have an affinity for each other.
Destiny 2-Community Hub
3dMark-Community Hub
========================================================================
Chapter 10 is about how to use Twitter to build connections with customers.
Twitter has six major elements to build a social media ecosystem:
- Followers
- Hashtags and searches.
- Mentions and retweets.
- Links.
- Lists
- Apps and tools.
Today, most companies will set up their social media accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and etc.
For example, Steam uses its official twitter to attract customers by tweet daily deals. Steam is not like a normal company only discounted at a certain time. Because there are so much software on Steam, thus it has discounted software every day. In addition, there are publisher's discounts every weekend, seasonal promotions every season, and holiday promotions for holidays across the world. In the case of such a number and frequent discounts, it is essential to inform the customer of a twitter account. After the customer's retweets, the company's reputation and appeal will inevitably continue to expand.
In the end, I have some questions for you. In your view, what other activities the company can do with Twitter? Except for Steam, are their other companies uses such groundswell strategies?
No comments:
Post a Comment