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Olivier Blanchard over at Corante’s Marketing Hub wrote a great piece a few days back that you’ll want to read about the cultural and competitive influences that define business and how enterprises are being to morph their definition of success in terms of:

Their focus: Making customers happy to do business with them.

Their new measure of success: their freakishly high rate of WOM-driven new business.

What really resonated with me in Olivier’s piece was how he touched on a trend – yes a trend — of how businesses are focusing on “being the best in the business” and not simply #1 in their field.

The tipping point for organizations considering “WOM-driven new business” is likely to be case studies showing return-on-investment (ROI) gains published by competitor firms pursuing this innovative approach to business growth. These ROI endorsements of WOM will serve as competitive catalysts to drive more businesses to focus on making customers happy.

Based on our study data – Perceptions, Practices and Ethics in Word-of-Mouth (WOM) Marketing – it’s probable that WOM will be increasingly considered during the marketing planning phase when organizations hit a “we need to do that too” strategic moment.

I believe many businesses will seek to amplify and accelerate positive WOM by tapping into the “authenticity of voice” from numerous sources, whether current or potential customers, media or bloggers. And, these spontaneous and honest referrals do not follow straight lines. Savvy businesses, and the marketers who will help create their WOM plans, need to take this into account. WOM occurs as a result of communications that come from advertisers, as well as those that originate from individuals. As marketers, our role is to create opportunities for participation and, perhaps specifically to make customers happy to do business with us.

I believe that, in a WOM context, “authenticity of voice” comes from the genuine and spontaneous referrals that can only be made by individuals with an overt interest in sharing their own experience and honest assessments with others.

Our survey data support the conclusion that most marketers grasp as the chief principle behind successful WOM marketing: namely, that satisfied customers or advocates represent their most important source of referrals.

Providing an open and honest framework to drive business growth via happy customers is just good for business.

TAGS: Olivier Blanchard, Corante, WOM, Word of Mouth, BoldMouth, Word Spreads Quickly