Effective Word Of Mouth Tactics – Part IX

24-hour cable news channels, social media websites and office breakrooms around the country have all been home to practically non-stop discussions about American soldiers over the past couple of weeks, from the VA scandal to the five-mass-murderer-terrorists-for-one-deserter deal we completed with the Taliban over the weekend.

Now, of course political scandals quickly generate a ton of buzz. But our current series is concerned with how YOU can generate powerful (and POSITIVE!) Word Of Mouth about you and your business.

In today’s post, I’ll start to teach you Viral Marketing strategies. But first, I want you to recognize the two distinct phases of the Product (or Service) Adoption Cycle:

1. The “Investigation” stage is where your prospects are just starting the buying process. That’s where you need to offer them information so that they investigate their options based on your materials. This can be done in any (and as many) forms that you want, including websites, videos, brochures, emails, reports, etc.

2. Once your prospects have all the information they believe they need, they will then go through the “Verification” stage, where they analyze whether or not purchasing your particular product or service will be a good decision. There are several ways prospects can “verify” what a purchase of your product or service will mean for them, including:

• Direct experience with the product or service
• Interaction with peers using the same product or service
• Experts’ experience with the product or service
• Scientific journals and other resources
• Independent reviews and opinions

You can accelerate this Verification process by:

• Providing your own product demonstrations and free trials
• Offering indirect experience through the experience of others
• Sharing compelling success stories that can be passed around or “go viral”

And speaking of “going viral”…

As an introduction to the concept of Viral Marketing, you should first become familiar with some of the science around the study of “memes” and how humans spread ideas around and through society. That way you can understand what types of ideas spread the fastest through society, why they spread fast and how that affects consumerism. Thanks to the internet in general and social media in particular, memes now spread much faster and further than ever before.

We all know that videos about cute kids and crazy cats can amass millions of views, but the question we care about as marketers is:

How can I use this concept of Viral Marketing to create a lasting positive impression about myself and my company, products and services?

People are more likely to try a new product or service when they feel protected and reassured by the masses. This is the concept Professor Robert Cialdini called “Social Proof” in his must-read book for all marketers, “The Psychology Of Influence.”

As an example of this “safety in numbers” concept: We are more likely to eat in a restaurant if it’s already busy. In other words, we assume that if lots of other people are doing something, then it must be okay for us to do, too.

People are particularly susceptible to this principle when they’re feeling uncertain, which is why you should especially use social proof when you’re marketing your products or services to prospects who have never done business with you before. Viral Marketing is one form of social proof, where people eagerly and freely consume and spread messages, partially because so many other people have already done so.

Social scientists have determined that spreading ideas is essential to the survival of a society, and have identified Five Main Situations where this occurs:

1. Crisis
2. Mission
3. Problem
4. Danger
5. Opportunity

One important and powerful exercise for you to do when you set out to produce Viral Marketing is to create several messages for each of the five above categories.

Then, to give your Viral Marketing messages even more pop, make sure to include at least one of these 7 Key Elements that have the most viral potential of all:

1. Sex
2. News
3. Unique Results
4. The Unusual
5. Celebrity
6. Helping Others
7. Secrets

I’ll conclude this lesson on Viral Marketing in next week’s post, where I share the precise steps to take to create Viral Marketing, as well as some key places where your messages can spread extremely quickly.

And I might also talk about the next political scandal that erupts – we seem to get a new one every single week these days…