By Kerryn Le Cordeur
In the marketing and advertising industry, we’re constantly confronted with innovative new ways to engage with consumers and get them to buy into the desired brand, product or service. But what if we go back to good old peer recommendation? This is not to say that word of mouth marketing is a simple process or that it isn’t innovative. On the contrary, speaking to Ryan McFayden of word of mouth marketing agency, HaveYouHeard, I was intrigued to hear that the agency has over 8 000 carefully selected influencers, who can generate up to 600 000 conversations about one product – and this can be measured. Intrigued as I was? Read on …
McFayden began his marketing career working with Adidas, noting that the brand is predominantly about being ‘cool’, so that was his first taste of word of mouth marketing because spreading the word of ‘cool’ takes more than an above-the-line campaign. From there, he moved on to pharmaceutical marketing, which he says forces you to be creative because of the regulations. It was during this time that he met his business partner, Jason Stewart, when they worked together to develop a word-of-mouth campaign for one of the brands McFayden was working on. McFayden says, “We had such success and no-one was really doing word of mouth the way we thought it should be done in South Africa,” and so HaveYouHeard was born.
The pair saw the potential for a word of mouth agency in South Africa because word of mouth marketing is “absolutely massive” globally, but not much has been spent on it in our country. Surprising, considering that the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) in the US has conducted research with Millward Brown, which shows that South Africa is the global leader in the spreading of word of mouth. McFayden explains this, saying: “Looking at the global average, about 69% of the population actively participates in word of mouth marketing globally, but in South Africa we’re the global leader with 86% of the population participating. So you start to see how powerful it is within this environment.” He attributes this to South Africans being particularly social and cynical of the establishment, meaning we are more likely to trust our peers than typical advertising.
This is the essence of word of mouth marketing. In South Africa, we’re exposed to between 3 000 and 8 000 marketing messages each week, and yet only four or five of those actually cause us to take action. On the other hand, the WOMMA/Millward Brown research has shown that one in every three recommendations lead to action.
However, McFayden is quick to point out that while these statistics are impressive, it doesn’t mean that traditional media and marketing channels are dead. Rather, he says that word of mouth marketing and traditional media play two very different roles. “Traditional media is about frequency and reach and about driving awareness … what word of mouth does is it provides the credibility to traditional advertising,” especially because only 15% of the population trusts traditional media, while 92% trusts recommendations made my friends. He adds that traditional media is about driving a certain message to consumers, but this is often different to the conversations taking place among consumers – and it’s easier to tap into those conversations and incorporate those into a through-the-line campaign than trying to get consumers to change their mindset from a distance.
That’s all very well in theory, but how does it all work. McFayden explained, “What it’s really about is finding influencers.” Influencers are people who have a higher than average reach among their peer group, who are well connected, credible and trusted, and are able to motivate people based on their recommendations. Currently, HaveYouHeard has a database of about 8 000 people who have been used as influencers on various campaigns and who can be called upon should they fit a certain consumer base for a future campaign. In addition, there is also a recruitment team who is called upon should a campaign need more suitable influencers than the database offers.
To keep the process ‘clean’, McFayden explains that the influencer has never had exposure to the brand before, because it needs to be exciting and the influencer needs to be free from pre-existing perceptions of the brand. Further to maintaining objectivity in the process, he notes that the benefit for influencers taking part depends on the campaign, but is connected to a value exchange between the brand and the influencers, whereby the influencers have the opportunity to try a new product first or network with their own influencers. McFayden adds that “the coolness factor of being considered an influencer” also plays a role, and emphasises that at the end of the day, “the value exchange for the brand, as well as for the influencer, is always significant enough that the influencer becomes loyal to the brand.”
However, he makes it clear that “we don’t advertise, we create connections with substance, so we get people to engage with the brand, and what they say thereafter is completely up to them.” In this vein, the influencers aren’t paid anything and aren’t ambassadors of any particular brand or product. “Our job is simply to match them up correctly so that the brand does add value to their lives.”
The most important aspect of the process, besides the influencers, is to ensure that the product in the campaign works, especially for the target audience. According to McFayden, there are three ways to drive word of mouth – through education, through “really cool activations” or simply because the product is remarkable, in which case it must deliver. He shares, “Then the secret is to put the product in the influencer’s hands and create a value exchange – the brand has to offer value, and in turn, the influencer, through leveraging his [sic] reputation and recommendations, adds value to the brand.”
So, now that the brand or product has been matched with suitable influencers, how effective is word of mouth marketing? McFayden explains that HaveYouHeard looks at the ‘generational flow’, which is the number of conversations that are initiated by an influencer. The global average is that one influencer drives 60 conversations, which in turn drive another 20 conversations each, resulting in 1 200 conversations from one influencer. This can change depending on the category, with ‘mom’ influencers driving 100 conversations, which result in another 36 conversations each, and even higher in townships, with one influencer initiating 140 conversations, which in turn generate another 70 each. Tallying up these figures, McFayden points out, “If you start with 500 influencers, by the time it’s reached the second generational flow, you’ve developed 600 000 conversations around a specific brand.”
These figures are helpful when measuring the outcomes of a word of mouth campaign. McFayden explains that there are several measurement aspects that HaveYouHeard makes use of, including conversation reach (looking at generational flow and how many conversations were generated); conversational impact (of those conversations, how many were remembered and resulted in action?); product experience or session experience depending on the nature of the campaign; and purchase intention and brand perception before and after the campaign.
However, McFayden regards the Net Promoter Score as “the gold standard in terms of measuring word of mouth”. In this case, consumers are asked to score a brand on a scale of one to 10, with scores of one to six being detractors, seven to eight being neutral and nine to 10 being promoters. The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, resulting in a score between negative 100 and positive 100. A negative score means consumers are talking about the brand negatively, while a positive score means they are recommending the brand.
To give an idea of just how successful word of mouth marketing is, McFayden notes that several brands HaveYouHeard has worked with started off with a negative score, and simply by initiating word of mouth have managed to turn this around into a convincing positive score.
No doubt then that word of mouth should be a consideration as part of the marketing mix – and it doesn’t even all have to be social media based. Of course, it also means brands and marketers need to be more aware than ever of what consumers are saying about them, and be prepared to deliver the best quality and service so that word of mouth works in their favour and a true value exchange can exist between the brand and its consumer base.
Have you had experience with word of mouth marketing? Share your comments on our
blog, where I include McFayden’s insights on what happens when the influencer and the product don’t match, where social media fits in, and the importance of building relationships.