IM Sphere

Every brand has a story to tell. But not every business knows how to inspire its customers to re-tell its story. 

Despite the inherent difficulty, word-of-mouth marketing is the sort of self-perpetuating machine that should be the goal of every company to engineer. Rather than overspend on traditional advertising, turn to your best and least expensive marketing asset: your customers. How do you do this? By creating talk triggers — essential elements of your brand experience that customers cannot help but share with others. When done right, you can turn your customers into an army of volunteer marketers.

Rather than overspend on traditional advertising, turn to your best and least expensive marketing asset: your customers. #TalkTriggers
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Not all word of mouth is created equal, though. While you should obviously avoid giving your customers gloomy gossip, it can be less clear how to create positive triggers that stand the test of time — or, even better, talk triggers that can be adapted to changing times.

As Timeless as a Compass

Amid ever-changing market dynamics, any brand differentiator is always moments from irrelevance. Much like the products or services you offer, your talk trigger… Read More

How do you make decisions? Are you impulsive or are you deliberate? The study of behavioral economics tells us that all of us are both, dependent on the situation. We have two different systems for decision-making. We think fast and slow, as Nobel prize winner psychologist Daniel Kahneman would say. When the stakes are low, we are able to use our “automatic,” system of decision-making.

Think about the last time you were doing food shopping while hungry. Perhaps you stood there, in line, waiting for the cashier and decided, “Sure, I’ll buy a candy bar.” The candy bar is inexpensive, it’s a brand that you know, and you’re hungry. It’s easy to make automatic decisions because you have pretty much all of the information you need on-hand without giving that candy bar a second glance.

For companies in commoditized industries or those competing at lower price points, clear branding comes heavily into play—these brands need to be top-of-mind because they don’t have the time to get into the nitty gritty of why you should choose their brand over others when you’re taking 10 seconds to make your selection. 

However, in a survey conducted by Convince & Convert and Audience Audit and presented in “Chatter… Read More

Unlike content marketing (which is centuries old), SEO is a very new discipline. It has been around for just a couple decades, and it quickly became the primary digital focus for many marketers.

Yet, SEO cannot exist without content, and I am happy to report that the search industry has reached maturity when it goes back to basics: recognizing that content is the most important and fundamental part of the marketing puzzle. Now, with SEO maturing so quickly, there are still many misconceptions and misunderstandings around it. Those misconceptions may impact the content marketing process in a not-so-positive way.

Let’s clear things up a bit:

1. SEO Has Become Much More Integrated and Diverse

SEO used to be standalone: no one had any idea what SEOs were doing and how they got pages ranked. Many SEOs would ignore very important digital marketing aspects, including user experience, brand building, etc. The only purpose was to get a page ranked.

These days it’s finally different: SEO is just one element of success. It’s next to impossible to achieve high rankings without building authority and brand awareness, or without ensuring users are going to have a good experience using the site.

#SEO is just one el… Read More

66. That’s the number I want you to remember today. 

It’s a hexagonal and triangular number. It’s the name of the Mother Road, the famous and historic Route 66. Sixty-six is the international direct dialing code for Thailand. And, it is the number of hot dogs Joey Chestnut ate in 15 minutes in Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2007 for the world record. It’s quite a number. 

We recently studied word of mouth to understand more about how it works in the year 2018. In our report, Chatter Matters, we’ve learned word of mouth isn’t created equally, and it is not spread out evenly.  

The same is true of trust. We don’t trust people and information sources evenly or equally. The data from Chatter Matters gives us a look at some of these unexpected variances. 

When it comes to word of mouth, Americans don’t trust information sources evenly or equally. #ChatterMatters
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How do we distribute trust? 

It’s different for each of us. The way you distribute trust isn’t the way I distribute trust. Now, in general, we place more credibility into word of mouth from our offline circle of family, friends and associates. But our unique circumstances can majorly impact how we trust information sou… Read More

Even when you’re selling something unique, you need that perfect talk trigger to separate yourself from the pack. #TalkTriggers
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When your friend returns from a vacation, he’s probably eager to tell you about his fun getaway. But which story truly sticks with you? That the hotel had an amazing infinity pool? That the local restaurants offered incredible food? What about something oddly specific — like the fact that the concierge gave away a different stuffed animal each day?

You might not think that last aspect matters, but those “talk triggers” tend to remain the most memorable. This makes them worth their weight in gold—and then some—as part of an effective word-of-mouth marketing strategy.

When marketers lean on unique selling propositions (USPs), they position their products as effective—but forgettable—solutions. While a USP seems perfect in theory, too many marketers forget how important the first letter of the acronym is.

As part of our research for my new book, “Talk Triggers,” we surveyed customers of The Cheesecake Factory. As you might expect, about 60 percent of respondents mentioned “food quality” as the first thing they tell their fr… Read More