Know Your Fans: Using Word-of-Mouth Marketing to Sell Your Products by Spector Jon

Author:Spector, Jon...
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-21T23:11:36.938000+00:00

Circuit City, Overstock.com, Macy’s, Sears, and More

The list of companies that have opened their Web pages to customer product reviews grows daily—and, on the face of it, that’s pretty strange. Question: Since when have business leaders been willing to countenance, much less sponsor, the appearance of negative as well as positive comments about their products in public? Answer: Since they began to recognize that their customers wanted to speak their minds about products they care about. And since they learned that authentic customer reviews lure serious spenders to their sites and increase sales.

One 2006 study found that 77 percent of Internet shoppers depended upon customer reviews, and half described the reviews as “critical” to their purchases. In other words, members of the communities of customers at these stores are telling other customers which products to buy, and the other customers are buying them—a prime instance of crowdsourcing as marketing tool.

Along with the proliferation of customer product reviews on merchant Web sites has come a variety of independent third-party sites that offer the same service. Each provides a somewhat different spin.

Angieslist.com, based in Indianapolis, charges its 500,000 members $10 to join and $6 a month for the privilege of reading other members’ reviews of local service businesses, from plumbers and electricians to nail parlors and dogwalkers. It has chapters in more than 100 cities.

Other privileges of Angie’s List membership include a local monthly magazine (which evolved from a newsletter), discounts at some companies, and a call-in service to help find the right provider in an emergency, such as with a broken water pipe. On the basis of their individual experience, members rate a service provider from A to F on such factors as price, quality, punctuality, and responsiveness. They also fill out reports describing the particular job, which can be most revealing. One comment by a member who hired someone to prepare a home for sale, including painting, plaster work, and new flooring: “What was to be a 3- to 5-day job turned into a 37-day nightmare.”

The founder of the site, Angie Hicks, has spent more than a decade organizing what she calls a homeowners’ grapevine online. When members are looking for, say, a roofer, they can click on that category for a list of local roofers that have been rated, along with such data as their current grade and whether they offer any Angie’s List discounts. Clicking the individual company name opens a full profile.

The growth and public popularity of customer reviews and the other examples of crowdsource marketing speak directly to a basic change in the nature of the relationship between you and your customer. The old commercial model in which you presented the products for sale and the customer simply chose among them is fast eroding. Today the customer is increasingly calling the shots. She’s telling the world whether she likes or hates particular products she’s tried. If you invite her, she’s also up for making a few suggestions on how you might improve a product. Tomorrow she

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