Tremor, cognitive science and word-of-mouth

NOT the P&G Tremor

You have to take your hat off to the marketers at P&G – I have just finished looking over a presentation by their Janelle Zurek called “Leveraging Cognitive Science to Create Word-of-Mouth (2009) published by MSI in a conference summary.

Tremor is the P&G agency that offers marketing services related to WOM for P&G and other customers. “Tremor’s (US) database includes 350,000 moms (sic) with higher than average networks and ability to influence others.”

The nuggets of wisdom?

1. Tremor confirmed previous findings – 90% of word-of-mouth happens off-line
2. People talk when their equilibrium is disrupted i.e. they are surprised. Reminds me of a quote (author’s name escapes me) “Most innovation does not start with ‘aha’ it starts with ‘that’s funny’.” She presents the example that 2-in-one shampoos are no longer a surprise, they match our cognitive schemas now. “But waterless shampoo disrupts our equilibrium; it is a surprise. That is a first step for word-of-mouth.”
3. This disruption requires we all get back to equilibrium and we do this by referring to others or by nurturing others, both WOM activities.

Tremor now measure surprise in their concept testing research.

When is the last time your marketing or value proposition surprised your customers? Would you know if it did?

Influencing the Influentials

 

Mr Natural: the original Key Opinion Leader (KOL)

The debate about the effectiveness of marketing through opinion leaders is an important one for us.

We run online communities so that our clients can, among other things, identify their advocates and community opinion leaders and amplify their voice. The objective is higher marketing ROI as marketing-numb customers still listen to their peers even if they have stopped noticing advertising.

The pharmaceutical industry has experimented with this style of marketing for many years, with most large Pharma companies having explicit Key Opinion Leader (KOL) marketing strategies and programs to launch and promote their products. This is easier in the US than in Australia, as individual physician’s prescribing data is available – allowing marketers to promptly measure the impact of their actions on the script-writing behaviour of targeted doctors.

Things were not looking good for the idea that KOL doctors can influence the speed-to-volume for new drugs when a 2001 study around the launch of the antibiotic tetracycline found no evidence of ‘contagion’ (WOM influence) [Van den Bulte & Lilien, AmJSociology, 2001]. Old fashioned marketing explained that product launch on its own.

Things look a lot better for Pharma KOL effects after an  2008 MSI study on ‘Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion’ by Iyengar, Van den Bulte & Valente. They found evidence of contagion working over network ties, after controlling for marketing effort, in a new anti-viral drug launch.

Their findings are really illuminating for Key Opinion Leader marketers; oversimplified they are -

1. Contagion from KOL’s may not always occur. The difference between the 2001 product launch and the 2008 study is that a life-threatening illness was the target of the second drug launch; consequences were much more serious than for tetracycline. Appears that contagion is more likely when the category is a serious one. “Depending on the product, target audience, the amount and effectiveness of traditional marketing communications deployed… contagion is or is not likely to be at work.” Test!
2. The 2008 study distinguished between self-reported and peer-reported opinion leader status. The two turn out to be only moderately correlated. You may think you are influential, chances are your peers do not agree. This is an issue because so much of influentials marketing relies on the self reporting of social connectedness and influence. Both types of opinion leader tend to be early adopters, but the peer-reported are much more likely to be.
3. Doctors who perceived themselves to be opinion leaders (though their peers did not generally agree) responded less to peer behaviour. In network terms this meant that inbound social links facilitated contagion, outbound links did not. There is such a thing as the quiet achiever.
4. Contagion was affected most by the prescription volume of the doctor – ‘Physicians who prescribe a lot are a more credible source of information…’ Heavy users are likely to be more influential than light users when contagion requires evaluation rather than awareness – if there is low risk, awareness through standard marketing is enough to cause adoption – if there is high risk and evaluation is required, volume-enhanced credible WOM causes adoption.

The implications…

• Research/determine if more than awareness is required to cause your target customers to take up your new product. Is your product risky?

If evaluation is required for prospects to become customers…

• Identify the largest volume users of products, in your category, that are already in the market. They are the most likely and the most credible opinion leaders and causes of contagion. (Opinion leaders have the highest lifetime value by the way; they adopt early, and are heavy users). Then,
• Promote to them, recruit them, amplify their voice so other customers can hear them

Online Customer Communities…Be Careful What You Wish For

Setting Objectives for Customer Communities

Embarking on customer engagement online seems overwhelming at first – there are just so many possible ways of proceeding.

Keeping clear about objectives and priorities – as obvious as this might seem – is the best advice from our experience. The objective essentially becomes the conversation and shapes the audience or community.

Possible objectives broadly fall into two categories – insight and engagement. 

Detailed objectives might be as follows:

• Identify new trends in the marketplace 
• Innovate products or services
• Develop new ideas for existing customer programs
• Test new marketing ideas or programs
• Support product launches
• Improve customer processes
• Understand customer segmentation more deeply
• Develop word-of-mouth programs
• Collaborate more effectively with field representatives or channel organisations
• Keep your customer culture consistent  

Note the last two take a broader view of customer – tackling customer facing staff or channel partners.

For some inspiration on objectives and approaches, see Eight great applications win Forrester Groundswell Awards

Once you have identified the objective and the target community - useful reality checks are:

• Is the potential community large enough to achieve the objectives?
• Are there sufficient topics of interest to maintain engagement?    

You may ultimately want to run multiple communities with logical links between them – eg providing opportunities for more engaged members to move into communities with more interactive options or topics that match their profiling.  

Engagement for engagement’s sake is a risky path whatever the longer-term objectives might be. Whilst this might excite the creative urge of your Digital Agency – if you start without an end in mind, chances are that your efforts will flounder.

Any experience with this? Please let us know!  

The Fifth “P”: People

The addition of new places to market online – blogs, forums, social networking sites – has re-focused us on the fact that people talk to each other about the products/services we are marketing.

These conversations are not just another communication channel, the interaction shapes the message and you are not in control. This qualifies as the 5th “P” in our mash-up of Kotler’s Marketing Mix.

Almost without exception, these conversations are more credible, for all parties involved, than messages sent through non-conversational channels – but this does not make it easily accessible to us marketers!

When we start thinking about how to access these conversations, it quickly becomes clear that most of them take place face to face, not keyboard to keyboard. To be successful with the 5th P we have found it wise to accommodate both on and off line conversations in our Word of Mouth programs (WOM, another TLA!).

We prefer to call marketing that joins (or deliberately inspires) conversations “Advocacy” programs, because it is a sad fact that not all consumers are interested in discussing your brand. Those that are willing and positive, we call advocates.

All brands have some well-engaged customers who are interested in the category, are currently discussing the category with their social network and are open to some sort of interaction with you (see #1 of the “Top 10 Things Seasoned Marketers Must Do to Alleviate Marketing Performance Anxiety” here).

This means we have to start by finding the customers who are already advocating your offerings so you can understand why and where.

Knowing why let’s you design tools that can help make them more effective advocates – this is generally information but for one client it was a working model that dramatically showed how their product blasts plaque off teeth!

Knowing where lets you make sure the tools you provide are appropriate for the venue where advocacy generally occurs. (”Venue” is a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) term; their framework is worth a look.

For example, in a program that we are currently designing, the venue is Facebook, and the most effective tools for advocates are applications that they can put on their wall.

We have mashed another set of approaches into  conversing with the 5th P if a more formal program is appropriate. The design framework for classic loyalty programs is useful if advocacy is more effective when it earns rewards and/or recognition for your customers (i.e. why are your customers willing to advocate). The framework is a set of decisions that answer the following questions:

1. How will advocates be enrolled in the program? Generally this requires you to provide a platform where they can talk to you and their peers so they self-identify.
2. How will they earn credit and/or status in the program by advocating for you?
3. How will they redeem or receive this credit and recognition?
4. What will we do to keep their interest in the brand and program fresh and current?
5. Can we leverage the involvement of business partners or related providers to make the relationship richer?