A discussion about business and marketing communications (or marcom).

Seth Godin writes (and talks) about being authentic with your customers. He talks about giving your customers a reason to talk about you and your business to their friends.

He also says things that are music to my ears, like "you can't force word of mouth marketing."

Too many big companies think all they need to do is blast enough people with enough advertising and they'll convert enough of them to make it pay.

It's the old, "if you throw enough mud on the wall, some of it is bound to stick" mentality.

To be fair, it's not just big companies that are guilty of this. Plenty of small businesses do the same thing.

They waste unbelievable amounts of money slamming their boring, uninspiring messages into people who could not care less.

Then they complain that advertising never works.

They should spend some time in their customer's (or prospective customer's) shoes.

Maybe then they'd realize how trivial and self-serving their marketing is. And I guess you could argue that marketing is suppose to be self-serving. But too many "marketers" don't quite understand how the formula works.

Your marketing should actually serve your customers, not you.

If your marketing DOES serve your customers, then the outcome may be that they do business with you.

It's the OUTCOME of your marketing that serves you, not the marketing itself.

If your marketing and communications give people a reason to think about you and talk about you, they will. But if all your marketing does it blab about how great you are, well, prepare to be ignored.

Because that's exactly what people will do. They'll ignore you.

Your message, your company, your product or your service will never even surface on their radar screen.

So, before you get too busy trying to create or manage word of mouth marketing, stop. Focus on what you can do for your customers. What messages can you send that get their attention because they're interesting and helpful to the people you want to reach?

Give them something to talk about and get out of the way.

Your customers will do the rest.

Technorati : Seth Godin, communications, marketing, word of mouth
Ice Rocket : Seth Godin, communications, marketing, word of mouth