Building Buzz to Beat the Big Boys by Steve O'Leary and Kim Sheehan - Book Report/Review Example

 “BUILDING BUZZ TO BEAT THE BIG BOYS” Introduction The internet has brought about a redefinition of systems of business and how they interrelate and dialogue with consumers. This is mainly true for small businesses, which come across challenges marketing their goods and services and contending with large and often global competitors. O'Leary and Sheehan productively take on the challenge of addressing these important "how-to" issues for small businesses. They create a basic road map-customers-conversations-community-commitment-as the organizational structure for this useful work. The purpose is to help small businesses use customers to talk about their stores and services with others to help construct a growing community of clientele and increase sales. As a method, this is word-of-mouth on steroids. This well-ordered logical book sets forth this operating approach with sensible marketing proposals and ideas that make budget sense and can be quickly implemented and measured. A very good number of small, retail stores open every year, but approximately 80 percent of them close within five years. A lot are done in by the big box and Internet retailers who squash competition with low prices and convenience. However, smaller retail stores and service providers have distinctive competitive advantages: They are local. They can connect on a personal level with customers in a manner that the big guys can’t. Moreover, they can add gigantic value to the customer experience. To get the most out of on these advantages, marketing experts Steve O’Leary and Kim Sheehan offer dozens of low-priced Word of Mouth marketing techniques small businesses can use right away. If done well, these efforts will facilitate smaller merchants to do more than survive, they’ll prosper. For sovereign retailers to succeed, it is no longer enough to create a loyal customer foundation. Local store marketers have to to put their loyal customers to work, persuade them to talk about the store to their acquaintances, family members and others in their social networks. When they do, the outcome is Word of Mouth (or Buzz) marketing, an influential tool that creates an army of advocates who turn out to be even more loyal and help attract new customers (O'Leary & Sheehan, 2008). Above and beyond learning how to leverage the power of word of mouth marketing, readers will become skilled at: How to understand their customers better, How to amplify customer loyalty to their store, How to communicate with customers to maintain loyalty, How to persuade loyal customers to talk to others about their goods, How to build a customer community, both in the store and on line and definitely how to measure results. The book also comprises several examples from current businesses, as well as thought-provoking ideas and models to help readers come up with their own successful buzz marketing plans. The majority of resources available today on buzz marketing center on techniques for large companies and online retailers. This book however presents something incalculable for the little guy by showing ways to boost loyalty and get new customers. Encouraging and rewarding word of mouth with family first and phantoms For the reason that referral reward programs only reward existing customers and build the customer base, huge companies use them to hearten customers to make recommendations to others. The writers give a report on four tests in which they find that rewards amplify referral likelihood. Most especially, they discover that rewards are particularly successful in increasing referral to weak ties and for weaker brands. According to this book, it is also important who receives the reward. In general, for weak ties and weaker brands, giving a prize to the source of the recommendation is important. For strong ties and stronger brands, providing at least some of the prize to the recipient of the referral seems to be more effective. The authors also discuss the repercussion of the results for the design of reward programs. Establishing your online community When setting your online community up, consider about exactly what you want to do. If you are depending on the community to bring most of your traffic, you probably want to make it easy to access from your homepage. You might want to make it the main link or the top link on the page. Use a variety of colors and fonts to attract the attention of those who visit your site. Making your site easy to access and easy way around is a great way to get people to take part. The objective is to get the interest of your visitors. If you are placing a lot of emphasis on the online community function on your website, then they will be more likely to use it. Research illustrates that a lot of people love to use the web to communicate with other people around the world. Some people will use the web mainly to converse with family and friends, but the majority people take pleasure in talking to the complete strangers they meet through chat rooms or message forums. It was once impracticable to think social connections could be created this way, however today these communications are completely accepted. With more people using the network for this nature of communication, website operators are beginning to make use of the “chat” trend (O'Leary & Sheehan, 2008). The way website operators do this is by establishing their own online communities. They can do this in several ways. One way website operators can create online communities is by offering chat functions on their website. By creating chat rooms for visitors to utilize, website operators are subtly inviting visitors to return as frequently as they wish. Many visitors might come with the intention of making a short visit, but then may try the chat room out. If they enjoy their conversations with others there, it is likely they will return frequently to chat again. To make this work however, there will need to be someone in the room available to chat at most hours. You may have to assign people to take on this task at first, while the room’s participants grow. After the room takes off however, the members will likely maintain it themselves. Another way to build an online community on your site is by creating message boards for visitors to post on. Message boards are another popular way to get visitors to become part of your website’s community. You can offer boards for general chat or for specific topics. You can incorporate your website’s subject into the message boards as well. For instance, if your site was mostly about computers, you could offer a message board where visitors could post questions and get answers from experts and other visitors as well. This is a great way to get people to keep coming back to your site. Not only will people who post begin to rely on your site for information but they will likely also develop “relationships” with other posters and use your board as a place to communicate with them. Growing and supporting your online community Perhaps you'd like to give a little back to your community or donate to an organization you admire and respect or maybe you'd like to teach your family about the power of giving. Whatsoever your motivation, community foundations are one of the best medium to help individuals, families and businesses meet their charitable objectives. Three main fundamentals set community foundations apart: their stability, their flexibility and their deep understanding of the communities they serve. If the expression "planned community" makes you believe of terrible homogenous suburbs, take another glance at the Internet. Even though there are unplanned features and emergent behaviors, every aspect for the most part has been designed by people who thought that they knew what they were doing. Human-computer interactions specialist Jenny Preece takes apart our presumption and suggests new ways to improve our practical realities in Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability. Part sociological evaluation, part design handbook, the book is enough to appeal to academics but humanistic enough to touch the organizers and activists who will put her ideas further into action. Beginning with basic concepts of community and online activities, Preece moves on to survey research on the use of virtual spaces, and then focuses on techniques to design and build optimal cyber villages for given needs and people. By using plenty of examples and case studies from actual Web sites and other electronic communities, she sheds light on tools that work to make them sustainable. Whether the current generation of e-planners will heed her words and whether they can create something livable out of the weird suburb hybrid that we have now will be the key to determining how 21st-century humans live, work and communicate. Keeping your community fresh and vital There are various ways in which the community could be kept fresh and vital. These include: 1. Writing Fresh and Catchy Content If you have good content, people will at all times come back for more. One of the most important things about content is to keep it fresh and up-to-date (O'Leary & Sheehan, 2008). However, just like Smashing Magazine, make sure to archive your content for people to refer back to. 2. Listen to Your Community If you are already lucky enough to have a community, even just some usual users, pay attention to them. This can be done by sending emails to your users directly, putting up comment forms, live chat or even user feedback structures such as User Voice (O'Leary & Sheehan, 2008), which let users to vote on site subjects and functionality. By listening to your community, you can find out exactly what they want. 3. Monitor How Your Site is Used Having an idea how users use your site is vital. This allows you to target their needs better. The best way is to keep a close eye on your analytics data is by checking what area your users are coming from, what search terms are working well for you and what sites are giving you the best referrals. Find out how users navigate your site by means of heat maps. These help you alter your site so that it is easier for your visitors to use and find what they want. This keeps your users happy and more likely to return. 4. Take Part in the Online Community When you read your favorite blog or read an article of interest, leave a comment with your name, email address and website link. Make sure you are an active member of a significant forum discussion or networking group. Also ensure that you are an active member of your own site’s online community quarter. 5. Submit to Directories and Galleries This ought to be a constant process since there are a lot of local, national and worldwide directories. Following this, submit to the local directories and those specializing in your site’s business sector. 6. Always Have Business Cards at Hand Make sure you always have business cards to hand out. In case you meet someone needing your services, it is always a plus to have an outstanding and memorable business card to exchange. It is worth spending time on your business card to make it creative and memorable or else you may just be at the bottom of the pile with the rest. 7. Use Company Stationery Put your website address on the whole lot: pens, letterheads, flyers and anything that represents your company. Ensure it is clear and attracts people to visit your web site. For example, you could say, “For more information on our new product, check ourwebsite.com” (O'Leary & Sheehan, 2008) 8. Pay for Advertising Pay per click advertising can bring a great deal of traffic to your site, if you target your keywords rightfully. Placing your banner or link on relevant sites will greatly improve the chance of you getting noticed. 9. Write Articles Always ensure to write interesting articles that closely relate to your goods and services. Interesting material will more often than not attract people to join your online community. A pleased member of the community will always mention to a few friends and invite them to the community. As we have discussed previously, people enjoy conversing over the internet especially over interesting stuff. 10. Send Seasonal Cards and E-Cards A good number of people enjoy receiving seasonal greetings especially during festive seasons. Sending such to people will excite a lot of them and in turn they will be attracted to your community. These could be sent through e-mails. Therefore by sending such you are building a name and attracting people to your stores. With time, you will realize that the community will grow bigger and therefore the business will expand hence the beginning of success in beating the big boys! 11. Help with Charity Work You can either donate directly to a charity or run a charity event. There are a lot of charities out there, therefore choose wisely and carefully. You might want to consider an event that requires a lot of attention as opposed to one that is not as urgent. Building buzz is not all that easy but it is worthwhile. You might want to incorporate social Media Marketing plan which requires regular maintenance, updates and connections. There are a few examples of marketing plans below: Frequently and recurrently add optimized content with enough information on your social media sites. This can also be applicable to giving adequate information to consumers by word of mouth. This helps a lot especially when the consumers are persuading their acquaintances. We would not want a situation where a potential customer gets limited information. This could result in a wasted opportunity. Jerk your links and tags to increase your find ability online via traditional and social media search. Always ensure that you follow the buzz online in you community about your organization and campaign. Come up with personalized interactive advertising techniques to encourage your visitors to tag, share and interrelate with your online activities. This will enable you to connect with your visitors, contenders and community members through comments, links and other methods of online participation to organically grow your user base. The marketing plan that you have chosen should be able to work with you to track and capitalize on traffic and visitor trends. Maintain knowledge of social marketing events and tendency to help you gain maximum exposure with your target audience. Once you have an audience ensure to be friendly with them at all times and keep the conversations juicy and interesting. Once the foundation is strong, nothing will ever be difficult from then on. Remember that customers are what you work for; please them and you are successful. A small retailer is always on the ground with them hence has a better position to work on their demands faster and better! Conclusion The small boys always face huge challenges from the big boys. This is mostly because the big boys have already established themselves in the various markets. However, like this paper discusses, the internet has brought about a redefinition of systems of business and how they interrelate and dialogue with consumers (Longenecker, Moore, Petty & Palich, 2008). The so called small boys have greater advantages and vast opportunities to make it through. Among these opportunities that could work is building buzz!! Smaller retail stores and service providers have distinctive competitive advantages: They are local. They can connect on a personal level with customers in a manner that the big guys can’t. Research illustrates that a lot of people love to use the web to communicate with other people around the world. Some people will use the web mainly to converse with family and friends, but the majority people take pleasure in talking to the complete strangers they meet through chat rooms or message forums. In general, for weak ties and weaker brands, giving a prize to the source of the recommendation is important. For strong ties and stronger brands, providing at least some of the prize to the recipient of the referral seems to be more effective. The authors also discuss the repercussion of the results for the design of reward programs. References: Longenecker, Justin G.; Carlos W. Moore, J. William Petty, Leslie E. Palich .(2008) (Casebound). Small business management: launching and growing entrepreneurial ventures. (14th ed.). Steve O'Leary, Kim Sheehan. (2008). Building Buzz to Beat the Big Boys: Word of Mouth Marketing for Small Businesses, Praeger Publishers. Kotler Philip; Gary Armstrong, Veronica Wong, John Saunders .(2008). “Marketing defined”. Principles of marketing (5th ed.). p. 7. Joshi, Rakesh Mohan, (2005) International Marketing, Oxford University Press, New Delhi and New York Adcock, Dennis; Al Halborg, Caroline Ross .(2001). "Introduction". Marketing: principles and practice. p. 16. Paul H. Selden (1997). Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop. Milwaukee, WI. p. 23. The Economist. (2006).Swarming the shelves: How shops can exploit people's herd mentality to increase sales". The Economist. 2006-11-11. p. 90 Kotler, Philip; Gary Armstrong, Veronica Wong, John Saunders .(2008). "Marketing defined". Principles of marketing (5th ed.). p. 17. Dev, Chekitan S.; Don E. Schultz (January/February 2005). "In the Mix: A Customer-Focused Approach Can Bring the Current Marketing Mix into the 21st Century". Marketing Management 14 (1). Paliwoda, Stanley J.; John K. Ryans. "Back to first principles". International Marketing: Modern and Classic Papers (1st ed.). p. 25. Read More