Google sent window decals to local businesses in the U.S. that have been the most researched on Google and Google Maps. Over 100,000 businesses were selected based on popularity, as well as users’ interaction with the local business listings.  Each decal has a bar code, known as a QR code, that can be scanned with a mobile phone. The QR code connects users to the business’s Place Page – a Google-based website with detailed information such as photos, videos, nearby transit, and reviews.  The benefit for users is the ability to check out a business before walking in, and accessing details that could enhance the shopping, dining, or visiting experience.

At the surface, it would appear that Google wants to help local businesses with these popularity-based seals of approval.  Beyond that, Favorite Places seems to be a move for dominance in the consumer review field against competition like Yelp.  Either way, it shows the growing importance of word of mouth marketing for businesses.

Google hand selected the first batch of Favorite Places based off of search popularity and positive reviews, a similar process will likely follow for future mailings. Unless a business is being talked about positively and generating some buzz, it won’t be Google’s radar – and it probably won’t be in the minds of local consumers either.

To be eligible for promotion on Favorite Places, businesses need to be registered with Google’s Local Business Center.  The Local Business Center gives businesses some insight into their word of mouth presence, with information like how many people looked up driving directions, and what customers search for to find them online. In addition to online reviews, this information is a good start for businesses to get a picture of their popularity from Google’s perspective.

As Favorite Places takes off, smart businesses will be aware of their presence in their local community, as well as the network of Google users.

Click here for more information on using the QR code, or check out the video below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuVSpG-ZdkU[/youtube]

If the answer to either of those questions is no, then MGH WOM would most likely explain why we would not recommend a social media campaign and work to see what other advertising and/or marketing solutions would best meet the clients needs.

The thing is, we want our client’s campaigns to succeed as it is a reflection of our recommendations; however, if they do not have the authority or capacity to listen and respond, then we do not want to put them in a position to fail. Period.

A few weeks ago, I read a blog entry (via @whatsnext) about the reasons a company should not use Twitter, and it got me thinking about our duty to clients to offer them solutions that just aren’t fun and new, but effective.

BL Ochman, the author of that blog entry, was right on when she said companies should NOT tweet if it needs to protect its updates, needs to be approved by legal or if the company is not going to respond when people direct tweets at it. Put simply, it’s just not wise for a brand to be in any social forum where they can’t/won’t/don’t want to interact and respond. And, if that’s the case, that’s okay. Social media just isn’t the place for them…yet.

That said, we honestly believe that there is no better way to connect with customers and receive open and honest feedback than through emerging social mediums. But, it has also become absolutely necessary to realize what is required to make it successful.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think social networking is for everyone? Would you recommend becoming involved on a network if you knew the company couldn’t respond in real time? Discuss.

Written by: Ashley (@ahrycyk)

Related Articles:

• Putting Twitter’s World to Use
• Twitter: A Marketer’s Duct Tape
  

Samitrex recently conducted a study within the wireless industry that compares the worth of promoters, those who refer a company to their friends, and detractors, those who spread negative WOM or are unlikely to refer a company. The results show that promoters are responsible for about .5 of every new customer obtained through WOM, while detractors account for the loss of 1.3 new costumers, as a result of their negative word of mouth. How does that affect the bottom line?

The chart above shows the total worth of each promoter and detractor. This value is found by combining how much each type of customer typically spends with the company and the indirect value they provide through word of mouth. Each promoter is worth about $1,700 while each detractor is worth -$300. That means detractors are actually costing a company more money then they spend themselves.

“A company’s ability to take action to increase Promoters and reduce Detractors has a significant impact on financial performance” according to Dr. Laura Brooks, VP of Sametrix business development. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. So, here’s some free advice, courtesy of us here at MGH WOM, on how to start taking that action:

1. It is vital that you do everything in your power to exceed consumers’ expectations when it comes to customer service.
2. It starts with listening. It is possible to transform a detractor into a promoter just by listening to your consumers and addressing the issues at hand. Heck, it’s worked for us before.
3. Use your current promoters to make up for the loss the detractors are causing. An ambassador campaign is a great way to leverage your loyal customers and amplify their positive word of mouth.

In a recent story, it was brought to light that it is becoming more and more common for doctors to require patients to sign gag orders that will bar them from posting reviews (mainly negative ones) online.  Doctors cite that negative reviews can “unfairly ruin their reputation”.

Of course, you will always have bitter people posting unfair reviews online, it comes with the territory, but I don’t believe that people are choosing a doctor purely based on reviews from sites like RateMDs.com.

Reviews must always be taken with a grain of salt. They are an amazing place to gather information, but certainly not the only information source one should look at. To me, a doctor’s offline word of mouth reputation is more important than online reviews, and is how I have chosen all of my physicians.

What would be the first thing that came into your mind if your doctor asked you to sign a gag order banning you from posting reviews? I would think that he has something to hide and terrified of people saying bad things. He would not be my doctor.

Doctors are no different than any other business when it comes to reviews. They offer a service and depend on loyal customers to be successful. They are not immune from the rules of customer service. Instead of worrying about blocking the negative things being said, address them and make people want to write positive reviews instead.

It may just be that Skittles intended on rotating the main page, but this change could also be in response to some of the not-so-appropriate chatter invading the Twitter stream.  Regardless, and rather intelligent of them, Skittles has made some sort of rseponsible change but still kept it’s original vision of allowing the consumer to define their brand.  We still like it.

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Just a few days ago, we were talking about how consumers feedback can impact a brand,  and now one brand has completely opened itself up and allowed its customers to define its existence – very open and very honestly.

As you may have seen, Skittles has overhauled its website, and it does not include any hokey corporate messaging. Alternatively,  it features links to Skittles across the most popular social networks. The main page is the live search.twitter.com feed that defaults to the search term “Skittles,” and the media link connects users to the brand’s Flickr and YouTube channels. Even the product descriptions are placed in the hands of consumers as each product links directly to its Wikipedia entry.

Despite our deep infatuation with Twitter, however, we still think it may have not been the wisest decision to lead in with this as it has the greatest risk of being abused by users. While there is a little bit more room for brand control on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, etc., Twitter is in real-time.  And those real-time remarks are seen by everyone who visits the site.

So far, though, it appears that this openness is working out very well for them. Sure, people may take advantage of the situation and post a few inappropriate messages, but the ultimate goal of allowing consumers to define the brand is accomplished.  A tweet we recently read on Skittles homepage said, “wow, when was the last time you tweeted about Skittles” – the candy is now leading the way on the trending topics list.

Customer review sites and word of mouth marketing pretty much go hand-in-hand, so when a colleague pointed out an article that discusses Yelp – the popular Web site based out of San Francisco – and the possibility of the review service not being as “honest” as one might think, we were pretty intrigued.

According to Kathleen Richards, the writer of “Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0″, many businesses have experienced a multitude of issues, including:

• Negative reviews being bumped up to the top
• Positive reviews being removed
• Negative reviews being created after a business passed on investing in Yelp advertising
• Business owners being offered the opportunity to pay to remove the negative reviews

Furthermore, the article referenced the fact that “Yelp pays some employees to write reviews of businesses that are solicited for advertising. And, in at least one documented instance, a business owner who refused to advertise subsequently received a negative review from a Yelp employee.”

Certainly, this is something we see as a problem as it completely undermines the integrity of consumer-generated reviews. If Yelp is allowing people to pay to remove their negative reviews or rearrange the order of the reviews, how can people trust what they are reading? And, more importantly, how ethical is it of Yelp to pay their employees to write a review and/or to tolerate employees that contribute negative reviews after not being able to sell advertising to a business?

While we only have read this in one article thus far, all it takes is one Google search of “disappearing Yelp reviews” to get a sense of the overall sentiment. Yelp responded to claims saying they have an automated algorithm, and that there is no human manipulation involved. But, how ironic is it that certain positive reviews disappear and some negative reviews appear after a business passes on or cancels their Yelp service?

We would like to know your thoughts – have any of you experienced these issues? And, how likely are you to value Yelp’s reviews the same way?

We would like an answer because WOM’s reputation depends on it, and quite frankly, all it takes is a few negative reviews to not trust them anymore. How ironic.

In the midst of the never-ending debate over digital downloading, it’s always refreshing to come upon an artist that just “gets it” and uses the social aspect of resources, like iTunes, toward their advantage. Take, for instance, 18 year old country singer Taylor Swift. Yes, that’s right, WOMM lessons from an 18 year old country singer, bare with me here…

Swift partnered with iTunes to create a countdown campaign for the release of her sophomore album, Fearless. Every week for a month before the release date, one new song would be available for download on iTunes. Each of these four tracks came with a vlog introduction that provided some background info about the song. When the entire album was available, on November 11^th, fans were able to use the “complete my album” option to purchase the album at a discounted price, depending on the number of songs they purchased during the countdown campaign.

According to one argument, making four of the albums thirteen singles available before the release would deter fans from going to stores and purchasing the album in its entirety. However we, here at MGH WOM, beg to disagree. Making her tracks available before the album released prevented the CD from being leaked and got her fans buzzing early. There were positive reviews on the iTunes store before the album was even released! So, what was the verdict?

Well, Fearless debuted at #1 in Billboard’s Top 200 album chart and within the first week 592,304 copies were sold in stores alone, making it the largest opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of music. An additional 129,046 copies were sold digitally, making it the biggest country digital album debut in the history of Nielsen’s Soundscan. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the campaign was a success.

Artists should also take note of some other great WOM-friendly features already integrated into iTunes. Here are our top three:

3. Genius Tool – When users select a track from their iTunes library, genius will recommend similar style songs that users can purchase on the iTunes. This tool can expose an artist’s music to a whole new potential audience.

2. iChat Collaboration – Anyone that uses “iChat” has the ability to set a song from their iTunes library as their away message. This way, the song is exposed to everyone on their friends and friends can preview the song, with the option to purchase on the spot via a link to the artists’ album page on iTunes.

1. Top Songs – A way for artists to listen to their consumers.  When deciding which tracks to release as singles, Swift looks to her own iTunes “Top Songs,” which measures the popularity of a song by the amount of purchases made. It’s no wonder every single that she’s released has been a top 40 hit on the Billboard hot 100…when you give your audience what they’re telling you they want, how can you go wrong? Every (smart) artist should be using iTunes for this purpose and every (smart) company should be looking for their own “iTunes Top Songs.”

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Southwest Airlines founder, Herbert D. Kelleher was spot on, when he said “you have to treat your employees like customers.”

We often talk about the importance of creating a positive corporate culture so your employees will go forth and prosper. And by “go forth and prosper” I mean “provide excellent service that will increase positive word of mouth from your customers.” And that’s all very important. However, another important goal that many often lose sight of, is maintaining positive word of mouth from your employees. Not from customers. Directly from your employees. Let me tell you a little story…

In college, I had a friend, who we’ll call “Sarah” who was a server at a local restaurant. She hated the job because of the poor management who overworked and talked down to the staff. As a disgruntled employee, she told us – the entire floor of a dorm – about her experiences as well as all the horror restaurant stories that occurred at that location. Now she would never tell her customers these stories and she still provided excellent customer service, simply because she needed the money. However, the damage was still done. Now I, along with 40 people on our floor and all of our friends will never eat at that chain again.

Like all things WOM, the internet has the potential to spread these negative (or positive) messages to millions in just moments. There are tons of sites, such as Job Vent , where employees can post their rants and raves about their employers. So trust me, you want to take the little extra steps to get your employees on your side.

If you create the right corporate culture, you can accomplish both of the aforementioned goals, obtaining positive WOM directly from your employees and as a result of their work ethic and service. If you need help, just take a few notes from Zappos.

As much as I would have loved to blog live from the WOMMA conference this past week, my overheating laptop wasn’t as keen on the idea as I was.  But I did take copious notes (ref: doodled), and have developed a list of the following top 5 list of things I learned from the 3-day event:

1) There’s no one right way to measure word of mouth. As much as I would like to claim that MGH WOM has the single best solution for measuring any word of mouth or social media campaign, I just can’t.  The fact is that there’s endless ways to skin the proverbial WOM measurement cat, and different metrics may be more appealing to different clients.  You may have 50,000 views on a YouTube video, but if the goal was conversion, you’ve likely done little to nothing to drive those sales.  150 new mentions on blogs mean nothing if you can’t sell in why such numbers were significant to meeting that client’s goals.  The key to WOM measurement rest in communicating with one’s client (prior to the start of a campaign) to identify specific objectives, and setting metrics and benchmarks against those goals.

2) Offline WOM is great and all, but it’s just not enough. While offline word of mouth appears to hold higher levels of credibility amongst most, and thus a larger influence on purchase decisions, the impression numbers can’t begin compare with those of the online world.  A person might have face-to-face conversations with 5 of their friends about a brand, but a single social media tool would allow them to reach thousands with the same type of recommendations.  The credibility-factor might not be as high online, but the shear volume of potential impressions makes up for what’s lost in personal trust.

3)      Do what Zappos is doing. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, was the keynote speaker during the first day of the conference, and had a lot to say about the impact of good customer service on a brand’s natural word of mouth.  He’s built the company from the ground up by developing a corporate culture based on passionate people who love what they do, and who are willing to go above and beyond to make the customer happy.  Zappos only hires and maintains employees who fit into this mold, and has reaped the benefits from being a thought leader in the realm of corporate culture.  I could write a book about all of the things that the company does right, but they’ve already beaten me to it.

4) I like Twitter. A lot. While there were plenty of great face-to-face conversations happening at the conference, there was a totally different dialog going on in the online arena.  Conference attendees used the keyword “#womma” to post regular Twitter updates as they sat through presentations, and used the site as a networking, conversational and idea-sharing tool (and sometimes as an outlet to complain about boring presentations).  In fact, one group of presenters replaced their regular PowerPoint slideshow with a live stream of the Tweets from the conference, giving attendees that opportunity to see their 140-character status updates on the big screen.  It was my first exposure to the microblogging tool being used at this level…and it was awesome.

5)      @Comcastcares rocks. A while back, I blogged about the WOM-worthy experience I had with the Director of Digital Care at Comcast, Frank Eliason.  I finally got a chance to catch up with Frank at the conference and ask him a couple of questions about his personal experiences in helping to reform a company’s struggling customer relations division.  He explained that much of the success of his team came from two sources: 1) power; 2) passion.  When Frank stepped into his role as Director of Digital Care with the Comcast, he had already served as a member of the company’s executive staff.  This previously established rapport enabled him to get things done quickly and with attention from the higher-ups of the organization.  And his passion for change enabled him to respond quickly to customer requests (a requirement in the social media space), sometimes answering questions and requests until 3 or 4 in the morning.  Frank is an inspiration to the WOM world, and an overall great guy.

I’ll be blogging, Twittering, YouTube’ing, etc. throughout the week.  You can keep up with all of my updates here and here.

See you in Vegas!

- Ryan G.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLUl8xkKSTk&NR=1[/youtube]