Category: Curated Content

My new book is called Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers With Word of Mouth.

Written with Daniel Lemin, it gives any and every business a reliable framework they can use to do word of mouth on purpose, not on accident.

The book includes:

results from four separate research studies,
case histories from more than 25 companies from around the world,
interviews with dozens of authors and word of mouth experts
a quick reference guide
a six-step process for how to create your own talk trigger

I hope you buy the book because I know it will help your business grow.

Further, the book is 100% no risk. You see, if you don’t like it I’ll buy you ANY OTHER BOOK you choose. Just let me know.

To give you a dose of what’s inside Talk Triggers, we whipped up this nifty infographic. The book is available everywhere books can be procured, in all formats.

Go to TalkTriggers.com to get access to a ton of free bonus materials too. Our gift to you.

Pop quiz: If Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was paid $20-plus million for 2018’s “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” and his presence in that movie helped it gross more than $950.8 million worldwide at the box office, what is the likelihood your customers will trust him if he recommends your products or services?

That’s right. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

Despite the fact that the biggest and most well-known brands continuously hire the latest and greatest celebrities to hawk their products and services, it turns out this approach may not be all that effective. That’s because consumers trust a very specific group of people, and celebrities are not one of them.

In fact, of those polled for the latest Chatter Matters report, 25 percent said they trust no celebrity or famous person to make recommendations.

25% of Americans trust no celebrity or famous person to make recommendations, according to the 2018 #ChatterMatters report.
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The only celebrity cited that actually receives any significant trust from those polled is Oprah Winfrey. Yeah, you know, one of the few people in the world everyone instantly recognizes by just their first name alone, and the woman who literally made a career out of… Read More

When we put together the marketing plan for Talk Triggers, we thought it would be fun to share it with friends early. We decided to package the book up with some of the key elements of the case studies: signature chocolate chip cookies from Doubletree by Hilton, a hot pink headband from Uberflip and … a soft, plushy stuffed alpaca.

We didn’t know exactly how people would respond and didn’t ask for anything specific.

How did people respond?

They made more than 65 minutes of some of the funniest videos we’ve ever seen.
1400+ shares, likes and comments on Facebook alone.
Hilarious photos of themselves in the wild with the book, alpacas and cookies.

We’re so grateful to the support of our friends who no doubt had countless other (frankly probably better!) ways to spend their time, and chose to show us some love.

We’ve rounded up some of the highlights here, but it’s just a small fraction of their creative genius! These appear in no particular order.

Julia McCoy, to whom we owe an extra alpaca and headband … this wasn’t the first report we heard of children raiding the box.

DJ Waldow, who went to Skip’s Kitchen for a photo opp. They’re one of our case studi… Read More

The number I want you to remember today is 38.

38.

It’s the number of slots on an American roulette wheel (0, 00, and 1 through 36). It’s the atomic number of strontium. Colorado was the 38th state to be admitted to the Union. And it’s the current Guinness World Record for the most fish caught with one hand in one minute (set in 2005 by Mirko Dhem and Nils Graulich with salmon). 

The number 38 is also significant for word-of-mouth. Over the last few weeks, you’ve heard me talk about word-of-mouth marketing and its importance for business growth. As I’ve said, word-of-mouth isn’t created equally, and it is not distributed evenly.

Word-of-mouth isn’t created equally, and it is not distributed evenly. #ChatterMatters
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Restaurants, in particular, are word-of-mouth hot zones. Here’s where the number 38 makes its entrance: I talked to hundreds of customers who’ve eaten at a Cheesecake Factory, and 38% of them have told someone else—without being asked—about the size of the menu. The menu is so enormous, it’s ginormous. It is 5,940 words long, which itself is a focal point and causes much discussion by customers. That way existing customers recruit more customers for the Cheese… Read More

Have you ever wondered what causes some companies to earn free publicity from customers who gush about them? Meanwhile, countless brands toil away in obscurity hoping someone will notice them.

The difference? Talk triggers. These are the qualities that spur word-of-mouth marketing. They are the talkable parts of your brand. This differentiator could be as simple as freshly baked cookies (in the case of DoubleTree by Hilton hotels) or a few free french fries (in the case of Five Guys), but it must be something that is literally remarkable — people cannot help but share the story.

As compelling as your talk trigger might be, that doesn’t mean it will appeal to every potential customer. Regardless of its quality, there’s no such thing as a universally adored differentiator.

To understand this phenomenon, we have to acquaint ourselves with the different types of customers who interact with our talk triggers.

The 4 Customer Types

While researching for my new book, “Talk Triggers,” I conducted a survey of more than 1,000 random consumers. After extensive conversations, I found that they naturally fall into four categories: uniqueness seekers, experience advisors, fundamentals fans, and skeptics. Understanding these four personas is the key to definin… Read More