September 16, 2004
double the conversations
I really, really like Seth Godin’s basic take on marketing. To him, there are only two questions worth asking:
1. Who
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10 Responses to “double the conversations”
Yes, but how do you get the people to talk?
Well, like Seth says, first you create things worth talking about.
Then the rest is easy
If your company can’t create stuff worth talking about, why is it even in business?
But really, you don’t “get people to talk”. All you can do is make it easier for them to talk. A slight semantic diference, but quite considerable a gap in practical terms.
I know a guy who owns a country hotel. He also keeps a beehive in the back garden, which makes THE MOST WONDERFUL honey.
Every year he sends his best customers a wee jar, just to remind them of the hotel, and the wonderful breakfasts they serve there, and all the other associations that go along with the place. And the people share their honey with their friends, so a conversation follows…
It’s wee little things like that… goodwill begets more goodwill, more goodwill begets conversations.
You can’t MAKE them talk, all you really can do is make it as easy as possible to talk about.
http://www.800ceoread.com/blog/archives/000066.html
talked about how easy it is to talk about the Atkin’s diet.
A little bit of jargon but not too much, the jargon gives someone a teaching moment and jumping off point for a longer conversation. Too much and you start sounding like a vocabulary teacher.
As for your rocket science client, it sound like she has the Control bug, she wants to control her company’s image and keep it spotless, I wonder how to explain to someone that they have no control over that?
Hugh,
Enjoying the site very much- thanks for keeping on keeping on.
As for your now former client- you were actually going to increase her sales by 80% (if she had sales of x, .8x from w-o-m, and that you could double w-o-m sales- her intial sales would grow by .8x generating 1.8x in sales: an increase of 80%)- she missed the boat on a couple of levels!
Boy, I couldn’t agree more with your speculation that the client was terrified of “uncontrolled” conversations going on about her product. This is a nightmare for a marketing executive who wants everything to be “brand right,” which they all do; never mide if it’s “brand true,” it’s all got to be “aligned,” “on point” and “on message.”
Those fears are a key characteristic of the control mentality that keeps businesses from hearing what their customers really think about them and their products.
If any of that makes sense, and you’d like to hear more, go vote for my Manifesto Proposal at:
http://www.changethis.com/proposals/182
Thats all very fascinating to me.
I wonder how I can apply these concepts to comic books. To make them better. That’s always on my mind– of course I don’t sit around dumbfounded, I have tons of ideas about this—
I think it’s all about planting that seed. If that makes any sense. Plant the seed that leads to the conversations people crave.
See, now this sort of post makes sense. It’s all the other heartless, cut-you-adrift-if-you-don’t-follow-me, “give me excellence of give me death” bull that I can’t stand.
Note to Hugh: I still haven’t had a conversation with anyone about your site. I’m worried they’ll think I agree with the coked-up ego stuff…
Richard, in the future we won’t have to go through the expensive and stressful job of firing people- we’ll just ban their ISP addresses instead
Someday people will realize that the product IS the experience, and they can’t separate the two, nor can they keep anyone from talking about it. As such, you’d better be doing 100% quality work from the ground up. There is no downtime anymore…
I’d hate to work for a company that DIDN’T want people to talk about their product…
I was just going to say basically the same thing j david said … doubling the 80% would give you 180%, because you’d still have the original 20% that weren’t word of mouth.