We’re often led to believe that word of mouth marketing is the very best kind. Reliable, effectives and free, it spreads like wildfire and costs the company nothing. But marketers often miss out on two vital components of word of mouth marketing: it must first be believable, and everyone needs to be saying it.
We live in a cynical age, where integrity appears to be lacking and even the most well meaning claims are subject to scrutiny.
Several months ago I switched supermarkets. I ditched the weekly Tesco shop in favour of “luxury” food market Marks & Spencer. In one simple move I saved time, money and improved the quality of the food we eat.
But, and here’s the interesting part, everyone I’ve told about this amazing money and time saving move hasn’t believed me. They’re just not convinced. It’s not just any food, it’s Marks and Spencer food. Surely it must be more expensive.
The cost of my weekly shop has dropped by almost 40%. The time I have to spend shopping has been halved. I can’t argue much with figures like that. But everyone seems doubtful that my information is correct.
“Try it for yourself!” I suggest.
My suggestions fall on deaf ears. I’m the only crazy woman I know making these claims. Remember: word of mouth only works if everyone else is saying it too. This is one of the indisputable laws of marketing. A demand curve that first demands that there is a slow burn of early adopters.
This is true for almost every product or service ever launched. Unless you are Google+ that is.
When I consider the number Facebook or Dropbox requests I suspiciously ignored before I finally gave in (mainly to the sheer volume) then I guess it’s reasonable to assume I’m not one of the world’s early, early adopters.
In the early adoption stakes, Google+ has played a blinder launching as an “invitation only” – there’s nothing more alluring to word of mouth early adopters than something they can’t get access to. Claiming the fastest social network launch in history, and well on its way to 20 million members, the sheer volume of people talking about Google+ is enough to guarantee initial success.
By jumping the demand curve, and putting early adoption above everything else, Google+ may have missed one crucial thing: if all the early adopters abandon the network after failing to find anything interesting in it, they’ll have to work twice as hard to continue to grow. After all, who wants 20million early adopters saying it’s not worth it? Better to have a smaller number of early adopters giving you useful feedback on how to improve. and develop. That’s what’s behind the success of Facebook. And Marks & Spencer.
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