IN THE AGE OF THE IPOD YOUR JOB JUST BECAME HARDER

Apple recently put IPODs in Australia’s stores and our job as communicators just got harder.

It’s not that we dislike music. But unplug the earphones long enough to see that the IPOD represents one more step in a 10-year trend towards personalised media.

The IPOD, SMS and the whole raft of new technologies mean that people can get the information they want, when they want it and in the sequence they prefer. While these developments spell great news for consumers potentially they leave PR professionals chasing ever more specialised niche media in our efforts to reach people.

But there may be another way to reach the digital citizen and it is as old as the hills.

Communicators are re-discovering Word of Mouth as a marketing strategy. Word of mouth involves people passing information to other people and even in this informationdense age it remains the most powerful type of communication.

Why? Because we tend to place more credibility on what our family, friends and workmates tell us over what we see, hear and read in the media. Through word of mouth we share our experiences and thereby reduce the risks inherent in trying something different.

Communicators intuitively know that word of mouth works and we all want our campaigns to generate “buzz”. Yet not many deliberately plan to use word of mouth as a strategy that from the outset ties in with media, advertising and sponsorship plans.

A good word of mouth strategy has seven steps:

• Figure out who should be interested in your product, service or issue and why they would be motivated to change their opinions or behaviour.
  
  
• Identify the critical people or “key influencers” who can help you reach each group.
  
  
• Develop simple word of mouth messages these key influencers can confidently pass through their networks.
  
  
• Provide evidence to support your word of mouth messages in the form of statistics, case studies, testimonials etc.
  
  
• Ask your key influencers to distribute your information through every means at their disposal…personal contact, email, blogs, events, text messaging, media coverage etc.
  
  
• Monitor how your messages travel through each network and measure their impact.
  
  
• Continue to recruit and “reward” key influencers so they continue to support your program.

What makes word of mouth so powerful? It is self generating, cheap, inherently honest and customer-controlled.

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