The builders’ guide to WOM success
By Tim DenyerAnother new poster - hi! I’m 1000heads’ business development director, and I’m basically responsible for selling all the amazing stuff my colleagues do. Easy.
Time in the office is precious to me; it’s when I can actually get down to appearing busy. Of course, once in a while my eyes drift to the window to see what’s going on outside, and the past few weeks in particular have been fascinating viewing. The road outside is being dug up to tend to the water supply (we were told some time ago that the work would be done by August 11th).
The workmen are compelling to watch. They like smoking (two score a day seems par for the course), they like to keep in touch with current affairs (the paper never more than an arm-stretch away) and they enjoy a hearty lunch (always at precisely 11:18). I have no doubt that they aren’t going to reach their deadline. In fact, I’d be willing to bet on it…
Of course, the moral here is that they did. They met that deadline with ease.
But how, and why? We didn’t see them do any work. But they did, of course. And what’s more, they did it well. Extract the old pipes, replace with new ones and all the while, keep the water running. The reason they could appear to do nothing but get the job done is simple. They had a brief, a strategy and an end goal.
For me this brings to mind my time out of the office at new business meetings where I can observe brand managers or Marketing Directors in their quest to crack Word of Mouth and Social Media. Now, these folk are the polar opposite of our workmen - these guys look really busy. ‘I can only give you half an hour’ they tell me as every man, CEO, woman and dog is distracting them with buzzwords around social media, and every agency under the sun offers them a solution: ‘what you need is a viral video‘, ‘you’ve got to build a microsite‘. And the rest. The thing is, very few brands are doing the job well. Why? You’re already there, I suspect; there is no brief, there is no strategy and there is no end goal.
Where 1000heads have had most success is in guiding prospects through each of these questions so we can start off with the end goal in mind. Not only that, but an idea of how to measure our end goal; how to measure our success.
To get there, we have come up with a toolkit: WOMTrak.
Amongst other things, WOMTrak can distinguish the difference between reach metrics and participation metrics, or define the ROI value of a short-term WOM project against the ROI of the long-term impact of WOM on the wider business. With some recent wins, WOMTrak is helping us crack these things and we’re doing more with it every day. If you can sympathise with any of the above then please just drop me a line. We like to talk and we like to get things done, and done well. And we keep up with current affairs and enjoy a hearty lunch, too.
