A new addition to my Bloglines feed is Andy Sernovitz’s “Damn I Wish I'd Thought of That” blog. Andy is a networker’s networker. He’s also an experienced business professional, college teacher, past CEO of WOMMA, and an unfailing evangelist for Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
Andy contends the best marketing is marketing that earns the respect and recommendation of customers. For his blog, he’s asked a slew of marketers for their answers to a few seemingly simple questions. Andy wants to know …
What is your advice for any company that wants to ... (a) Make people happy? ; (b) Earn respect? ; (c) Get a word of mouth recommendation?
So far, Andy has received advice from the likes of Seth Godin, Geoff Ramsey, Peter Kim, and many other marketing-types (including me).
Here are more thoughts:
1. Make people happy? Surprise people with a brilliant way to solve a problem they have. Something simple and cost effective they haven't thought about.
2. Earn respect? Behind that "brilliant way to solve problems" should be an actual service/ product that can deliver the promise!
3. Wom? Be creative enough to justify a good gossip.
One example is www.magicwandresearch.com
1. They made our agency very happy when we were looking for talented planners. They offered a simple, but brilliant idea - unbelievable planning with secondary research only. Brilliant + cost effective = happy.
2. They DID deliver outstanding service and earned our respect.
3. They are so creative, we refer colleagues when they need planners.
Posted by: Alex Promislo | June 14, 2007 at 11:15 AM
I absolutely agree with the benefits of marketing generating respect. It's hard to drill that into some business owners' heads sometimes, when everyone's so busy focusing on SEO and social media, but really starting to neglect general image-building and real word-of-mouth marketing (and not the kind of supposed "referrals" just generated by "digg groups" and bookmarking groups). This is essentially just basic online PR (my specialty), and it's nice to see it getting some backing. :)
Posted by: Jenn | June 15, 2007 at 10:58 AM