This is a very good (& funny) video depicting the pitfalls of print media and other traditional forms of advertising… pair it with the earlier post, “The Big Drop Off” by Seth Godin, and hopefully it will all come together for you.

Successful Pro Lumberyards that we’ve dealt with have all had one thing in common: a very loyal “first circle.” The question then becomes, “How do we get the first circle to keep talking about us?” Now we’re getting into the effectiveness of WOMM.

Lumberyards might want to re-think that “next $5,000” they spend on advertising. A couple of good quotes we frequently reference:

(1) “Advertising is the cost of being boring. If your customers won’t talk about your stuff, you have to pay newspapers to get people to talk about you.” –Andy Sernovitz, Word of Mouth Marketing Book

(2) “Advertising…can work for MegaBrands like Coke…for the rest of us, traditional advertising is so wide and broad that it is ineffective.” –DM Scott, The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Instead of advertising to the masses, wouldn’t it be a more effective to get your loyal customers (first circle) TALKing, and telling their colleagues about your exceptional service and products?

Rally your fans! They’re often your best salespeople…

Do we work this hard to get new customers?  (And if you think about it, none of what they did really even cost them that much $$…)

[post by Andy Sernovitz]

An excellent post this morning from Seth Godin; try and relate it to your WOMM campaigns and strategy!

“The big drop off

We try so hard to build the first circle.

This is the circle of followers, friends, subscribers, customers, media outlets and others willing to hear our pitch. This is the group we tell about our new product, our new record, our upcoming big sale. We want more of their attention and more people on the list.

Which takes our attention away from the circle that matters, which is the second circle.

The second circle are the people who hear about us from the first circle.

If the first circle is excited about what we do and it’s remarkable enough to talk about, they’ll tell two or six or ten friends each. And if we’re really good, the second circle, the people we don’t even know–they’ll tell the third circle. And it’s the third circle that makes you a hit, gets you elected and tips your idea.

The big drop off is the natural state of affairs. The big drop off is the huge decline that occurs between our enthusiasm (HEY! BUY THIS!) and the tepid actions of the first circle (yawn). Great marketers don’t spend their time making the first circle bigger. They spend all their time crafting services, products and stories that don’t drop off.”

The original Post can be found here.

Post from Seth Godon’s Blog:

“The purpose of a book cover

(and I think it works for lots of products)

Is the purpose of the cover to sell books, to accurately describe what’s in the book, or to tee up the reader so the book has maximum impact?

The third.

It’s the third because if the book has maximum impact, then word of mouth is created, and word of mouth is what sells your product, not the cover.

Tactically, the cover sells the back cover, the back cover sells the flap and by then you’ve sold the book. If those steps end up selling a book that the purchaser doesn’t like, game over. So you have to be consistent all the way through and end up creating a conversation after the purchase. Books are better at creating conversations than most products (when was the last time you talked about a pool cue), but there’s lots of opportunity here, no matter what you make.

Some ways that a book cover can accomplish its mission:

• Iconic (because iconic items tend to signal ‘important’)
• Noticeable across the room (you see that lots of other people own it, thus making it likely that you’ll want to know why)
• Sophisticated (because this helps reinforce that the ideas inside are worthy of your time)
• Original (why bother reading a book you already know)
• Clever
• Funny
• Generic (reminding you of a genre or another book you liked, not generic as in boring)

I don’t know about you, but I judge books by their cover every day.”