[Welcome back to our Word of Mouth Marketing Lessons newsletter. This is text from the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using this handy form.]
Your product is great, you’ve got plenty of fans, and no problem with visibility. But like chocolate, everyone already knows about your stuff, and they already know it’s good. So why talk about it anymore? At some point, every company faces the “chocolate problem,” or a lull in word of mouth, not because no one likes you, but just the opposite.
Here are four ways companies are avoiding the chocolate problem with clever word of mouth marketing:
1. Cards Against Humanity does something weird
2. Monopoly does something surprising
3. MailChimp does something useful
4. Google and Amazon do something good
1. Cards Against Humanity does something weird
Cards Against Humanity is a product with word of mouth built in. It’s shocking, it’s different, and it’s more fun to play with a bunch of people. But after you’ve already played a couple rounds with every friend you know, the word of mouth sort of dies. To keep it up, Cards Against Humanity has pulled off a variety of stunts to keep their customers engaged. This year, for example, they sent their customers ridiculous stuff in the mail for the 10 days leading up to Christmas. That’s not just a marketing stunt, it’s 10 physical word of mouth tools they put in their customers hands. It’s also a great way to make people feel more connected to the brand.
2. Monopoly does something surprising
Monopoly has the same problem as Cards Against Humanity, except worse. They’re not this new, controversial game with raving fans. Monopoly’s been around forever. In fact, there’s probably one in your closet that you haven’t played in years. But this year, for their 80th anniversary, 80 Monopoly games sold in France will have real money in them. The kind of bills so large that they look like “Monopoly money.” That’s a stunt big enough to get people talking about (and buying) the game again. Maybe you can’t stuff money in random packages of your products, but you can do something unexpected and fun to surprise and delight your customers and get them talking about your stuff again.
3. MailChimp does something useful
If you read our newsletters, (which are sent by MailChimp, by the way) you know they’re great at word of mouth. But as an email marketing service, it’s the kind of tool that becomes second nature — certainly not something that just comes up in conversation. So to give their customers something new to talk about, MailChimp sends annual reports. The “Year in Review” uses your email marketing data to create a beautiful infographic. It highlights stuff like your most opened email from that year, where your audience comes from, and your most engaged readers from that year. They even give you the opportunity to share your results with an anonymized version that removes email addresses and personal information.
4. Google and Amazon do something good
What hasn’t been said already for giant, well-known companies like Google and Amazon? Everyone knows who they are, what they do, and what they stand for. So to start new conversations, these companies innovate and experiment with new stuff, like drone delivery and self-driving cars. But did you know they also do a lot for charities? For example, Amazon Smile is a version of Amazon that’s exactly like the original, except they will donate five percent of your purchase to a charity of your choice. Google also does amazing things with their tools for disaster relief and building up communities. People feel good about supporting companies that do good — and that’s a big word of mouth motivator for any business.
