The Physics of Word of Mouth Marketing

PROMO Magazine recently published an article I wrote about the natural laws that govern word of mouth marketing. To understand these natural laws, we need to revisit basic physics.

In school we learned about Isaac Newton’s three natural laws of motion. These laws explain how and why objects move. These laws can also explain how and why word of mouth marketing can move brands from being unknown to well known.

Law of Inertia
Newton’s first law of motion tells us an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion. This law of inertia applies directly to word of mouth marketing because conversation at rest tends to stay at rest while conversation in action tends to stay in action. If a company does nothing to encourage people to talk, no one will talk.

Law of Acceleration
With Newton’s first law, we learned a force is required to spark momentum. Newton’s second law, the law of acceleration, explains how much force is required to spark movement. The larger an object is, the more force needed to move the object. Conversely, the smaller the object, the less force needed to move the object.

The correlation to word of mouth marketing is simple. The larger a brand is, the more marketing muscle needed to generate conversations about the brand. On the other hand, the smaller the brand, the less marketing muscle needed to spark conversations about the brand.

The Law of Reaction
Newton’s third law of motion tells us for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is a parallel natural law that governs word of mouth marketing as it relates to delivering great customer service. This marketing law states: for every action by a customer, there should be a genuine and appropriate reaction from a business. These appropriate reactions take the form of a response, a rescue attempt, or a relaying of information from a company to an individual customer.

>> READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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For a deeper dive into how physics principles correlate to marketing, read David Bowman's informative series of posts.

Comments

[Sheila S]

I must admit that why your application of Newton's basic laws to marketing is exeedingly clever in nature, I think you may have missed the mark on a few things:

As for the law of inertia, I understand what you mean when you say that conversation may not begin in motion if not acted upon by an outside force; however, does this mean that once conversation is begun, that it will continue ad infinitum until again acted upon by an outside force?

And isn't the law of acceleration backward? Shouldn't a smaller brand and company need more muscle to spark conversation than a larger, better known company like Coca-Cola or Pepsi? Especially since social media outlets are free. So is this actually a fiscal question? And if so, is it proportional to the multi-billion dollar budgets these companies have?

And as for the law of reaction, not all costumers can be saved or else there would certainly be no such thing as competition as all consumers and businesses would remain perfectly pleased and loyal.

Perhaps I'm simplifying. I intend take another look at the full article, but I'm not sure that I fully grasp your concepts and would appreciate some insight.

[john moore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Sheila ... some quick thoughts to add some clarity.

Law of Inertia:
If a company does nothing interesting, remarkable, etc, then it will never get the conversation ball rolling. A business must continue to do interesting things to keep customer interested and talkative.

Law of Acceleration:
Smaller brands can get conversation into motion with less "expense" than can a mega brand. (Generalized statement, I know.)

Law of Reaction:
This all about delivering great customer service to generate positive word of mouth. Customer service, as the article points out, is about reacting to customers.

[becham]

The word of mouth is two blade sword which works inthe favor as well as in the unfavor of the brands.
This is the simple to understand if there is something wrong then wrong response will be natural on the other hand if there is a service ofr trhe quality in the brand ghas been delivered with the product that delighted the customer then he she will become brand influencer.
The things which are correlated with the behavior of people,must be introduced or managed with high care