With the world being such a digital place, how can we make ‘word of mouth’ a useful tool in letting others know what we are all about?
I have been very fortunate to have a lot of work come via ‘word of mouth’ or even through people that know and trust me because we have built up a relationship over the years.
As a new business owner some elements of the responsibilities are new to me. Marketing, accounts and to some extent, networking. So, being the kind of person I am, I investigate the subjects in more depth to gain a better understanding.
I discovered a few things:
How do things catch on?
You can have the ‘same’ product as a million other people, why should your product catch on? Why wouldn’t your product catch on? According to Berger there are 6 key steps in making something contagious, so much so, that people want it.
1. Social Currency
How cool does talking about the product/service make you? Do you get bragging rights from it? Take, for example, a funny story whereby someone falls over, trips over their shoelace, but they don’t actually just trip over their shoelace because that does not sound amazing in the slightest. We are all guilty of telling a little fib here and there, so maybe instead of someone just tripping over their shoelace they tripped over their shoelace and poured their coffee all down their shirt before a big important sales meeting but went into the meeting regardless and bagged a £6m contract.
What makes that stick? Can it get more dramatic every time it is told? Probably. The next time it is told maybe the coffee wasn’t spilled but the guy managed to catch all 3 coffees without spilling a drop, got to the meeting early and because it was the client’s favourite coffee they managed to not only get a £6m contract in the bag but it turned out the client wanted to invite them to the golf course on the weekend.
All from tripping over a shoelace.
2. Triggers
You’re walking down the beach and see an advertisement for a new ski shop opening in town. Now, this might stick out in your mind but when you are skiing you don’t think of the beach and vice versa, so in time you’re likely to forget some detail.
If you’re walking down the beach and see an advertisement for a new swimwear shop, that might stick. ‘I’m going down to the beach on the weekend I’ll probably call into that new shop for a swimming costume before we go’. Same goes for the ski shop…what kind of place would trigger you to think of the new shop?
Would a poster, in the airport, asking you to vote for a member of parliament have the same effect as a poster near the local polling station? It’s a prompt in the right place at the right time.
3. Emotion
I have seen recently, a lot of outrage about the attitude towards health and safety of the Oceangate maker ‘at some point, safety is just pure waste’. How often has this statement been spoken about, especially by health and safety professionals working hard to make safety matter?
If he had said ‘safety is number one on the agenda’ what would our responses have been then? It’s a statement we have heard so many times, a statement that rolls of the tongue of so many. Does it bring up a lot of emotion when you hear it?
What about viral videos. Funny dogs or kids. Remember the kid that grabbed the pigeon for eating the bread? Remember the roller coaster ride with Janice ‘I’m falling Janice!’?
What about the videos that outraged people? Logan Paul live streaming inappropriate content?
They’re all things that are well remembered and talked about far and wide.
4. Public
Perception goes a long way. Have you ever noticed that Apple’s logo is ‘upside down’ on a laptop? Because the user won’t be the one looking at it, the branding matters to those looking at the laptop when it’s open. I’ve done the same with my branding on my laptop FYI, so when I’m out in public people can see my company information and contact information.
Marketing campaigns can work against their intended message too. Take for example a ‘stop vaping’ campaign at school. If the message isn’t carefully delivered the message could be ‘it’s very easy for young people to get vapes at shops that sell them to underage people’ when those pupils in the room had potentially not given a second thought to vaping because their previous perception was that hey weren’t accessible. Or, worse, the message is that there are a lot of pupils vaping in school = you’re the only one not doing it so, to fit in you should vape too.
5. Practical Value
How easy do things make our lives? If you’re on Tik Tok you will have heard ‘Show me a hack that has changed your life. I’ll go first’ and those recording will show us how to peel an orange with just one swift movement or how to curl our hair easily without heat and effort.
These things make our lives that little bit easier. So when we are talking about the pain of peeling an orange, this will trigger the ‘hack’ we saw recently. Going on a night out? I know how to curl hair easily with a dressing down cord!
Need some training and don’t have funding ‘oh I saw an offer recently that might be of use to you’.
See where this is going?
6. Stories
We are fortunate in health and safety to have speakers who have their own stories to tell about why health and safety matters. I’ve been told about speakers that really make an impact and make people think about what they are doing. I’ve heard stories from guys on site about accidents they have had that have made them think about their own actions.
I love to listen to other people’s stories. I’m not so much of a storyteller, I’m a basic facts kind of person usually. I will re-share stories that people have told me though, because it makes an impact.
If you are interested in where I learned this, I wrote this article with knowledge I gained from reading Jonah Berger’s Book, Contagious. The book goes into more detail in each of the topics with specific examples that we all know and love.
Feel free to get in touch with me and tell me an interesting story…but it has to be relevant to either construction or health and safety….or even both!
Thanks for reading.
M
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