How serious are professional service firms regarding word-of-mouth about their firms? I read an interesting post by Jackie Huba, coauthor of the great book Creating Customer Evangelists, and blogger on the Church of the Customer blog.
Jackie's post features some excerpts from a study about how often buyers verbally discuss various brands and companies. It's a great reminder that these numbers can be tracked, and of course measured.
I spend a lot of time encouraging professional service firms to increase their objective measures and longitudinal tracking of their marketplace progress. Here's some evidence that even the most incidental brand awareness can be monitored -- and it doesn't have to be incidental either.
I urge professional service firms to get serious about harnessing word of mouth!
Question: does your firm deliberately include word of mouth (or buzz marketing) as a formal element in its marketing programs? Why did your firm take these steps, if it has? If not, why not? What are your lessons learned?
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