I had an interesting meeting yesterday with a firm that is very interested in launching a word of mouth campaign. During the meeting, I told the group of senior leaders to “slow down” and showed them something that reinforced the need to have a well planned word-of-mouth marketing campaign in place: increasing negative keyword phrase counts.
Negative word of mouth is still a back burner issue.
If you use a keyword research tool to evaluate what terms are being searched, you’ll often find brand names, competitor names as well as generic phrases at the top of the list. However, if you scroll down any list you’ll often find phrases people use to uncover information related to negative word-of-mouth. NOTE TO ADVERTISERS: When you launch a WOM campaign, those negative searches are likely to increase and, potentially index well against your brand name. So what do you do? Here are a few tips:
1. Planning. We need to take of the pink sunglasses. Be prepared. Get your advocates, advisory council members or beta testers ready to step in to share their experience. Formulate a process and tier the types of responses and be ready to respond. It doesn’t mean scripted responses but it does mean having a shared understanding with all internal teams and executive leadership concerning how you’ll address posts, comments, and content — both good as well as bad.
2. Be Honest. There is always a cost/benefit evaluation that individuals will go through once they hit “consideration” for your product or service. Tell the truth.
3. Don’t waste time by entertaining ongoing free loaders. There’s no margin. Move on…
4. Archive “comment complainers” to disarm these trouble makers. The point is NOT to be reactive. Do a little research and find out who, where and what this individual is saying on other sites.
5. Ask for Help. This doesn’t mean bringing in the legal team, but it does mean reaching out to members of your community or individuals who have a recognized interest in your product and, ask them to contribute to the conversation.
Here’s a nice piece written by Tom Taulli for Forbes.
Enjoy
TAGS: Negative word of mouth, keyword searches, Tom Taulli, Forbes
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