The Story

I read an article a while back in Time magazine, talking about new word of mouth marketing strategies. Now, it’s not like this is a new concept or anything, but the article got me thinking about how perfectly this relates to experiential brand building.

Word of mouth marketing is completely experience driven…people talk about their experiences, not about products or services. Women tell their friends that their new shampoo makes their hair shiny and bouncy, not about the guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride.

So, sounds easy, then, right? Give your customers a good experience, and they’ll tell their friends, and then their friends will want to become your customers to get that same good experience. But it’s not that easy…as Jeff has pointed out, you’re not looking for a good experience. I have good experiences every day, but I don’t talk about them with my friends and family, because I expect a good experience when I’m shopping, dining out, or banking.

It’s the unexpected experiences that I remember, and the unexpected experiences are the ones that relate to a company’s brand. Those are the experiences I tell my friends about. Or as Seth Godin says, it’s the experiences that make you remarkable–the free prizes–that get talked about.

To harness the power of word of mouth marketing, you have to give consumers an experience worth talking about.

So what about your bank is worth talking about? I doubt it’s the free box of checks…

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 11:27 am and is filed under Other, Bank Branding, Credit Union Branding, Bank Marketing, Experiential Marketing, Credit Union Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.