800-CEO-READ Blog

Caught my eye.

A few posts on the art of word of mouth in the last week have caught my eye.

First is Guy Kawasaki's early review of Andy Sernovitz's (CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association) book Word of Mouth Marketing due out this November. Guy posted on some of the highlights:

The most powerful word-of-mouth advocates might be the customers who have only done business with you once so far.

First impressions are important. What are you doing to encourage this w-o-m?

Two interesting examples, also from Andy, are:

The Prostate Net, a not-for-profit educational organization, contacted 50,000 barbers to talk to their clients about prostate cancer detection and prevention.

The Wynn Las Vegas resort gave free rooms to cabbies to generate word-of-mouth advertising via this very influential part of the transportation infrastructure.

Wynn and the Prostate Net both gave their possible advocates the tools (some would call experience) to talk about.

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Next along the same lines...

Why companies should make prettier user manuals. Customers are attracted by pretty brochures and advertisements but what about user manuals? How many times have you actually enjoyed picking up the DVD manual or reading how to build an IKEA item?

How J. Crew remembered Jackie. It's hard to believe that a chain like J.Crew would remember someone's favorite sports team. I'm amazed. There's always more to learn about customers.