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Where do you rank? The two most important elements of buzz

October 8, 2006

Enthusiasm and Quality – How they effect your Buzz

In this article I have done a series of graphs that illustrate what may be happening with you and your company in regard to buzz marketing.

In order to create buzz individually, you must have a high level of excitement and enthusiasm for what you are buzzing about.  If not, you will not be able to sustain the effort and convince other people to get excited and spread word-of-mouth about your business or product. 

Yes there are other ways.  It is possible to create a product so good, so different, that it generates its own buzz and sales.  It is also possible to do something so newsworthy that you get a lot of buzz from the media.  These are not things you just wake up and push the buzz button one day.  They take a lot of work and some level of luck.

For the purpose of this article I will assume you have a high level of enthusiasm for your business or product and we will discuss how the remarkable qualities of what you are buzzing about will influence the effort you make through your enthusiastic promotion.

graph2.gifDull Product or Bad Quality

The first analysis is the situation where you have very high enthusiasm but a product that does not excite people.  Your excitement makes them take a look, but few buy and many fewer tell someone else about it.  This is very frustrating for the buzz creator because they are excited but sustaining the excitement when no one else buys into it is difficult.  One of three things is happening in this case. 

1) The product is not the right product
2) The product is of very poor quality
3) The product is very boring and/or a commodity

If you fall into number one or number two, you have to improve the product or move on.

Number three I see all the time with professional service providers.  Insurance, Legal Council, Accounting, Finance,….. they are all services that many different people are selling.  Standing out here is not so much about the product as it is developing your personal brand to the point that people would come to you for whatever you are selling.

graph3.gifDifficult Product but Good Product

The difficult but good product is one that you can sell to people very well but your customers and advocates have trouble selling it via word of mouth.  Thus, you do not get any scale or residual on the buzz effort.  Businesses that try to do many things for many people will have trouble in this area.  They may even have their own customers going out and hiring others to do another thing that they do.  I saw that when another company I am with was hosting an Internet Marketing site and the client then bought SEO services from someone else because they did not know we did that too. 

Quality of the product may not be the problem here.  The quality of your message and your product packaging is.

If this is how your buzz effort looks, consider the following.  First, simplify your offerings.  Make them easy to understand and talk about for the average customer or prospect.  You just have to get them to understand the broad benefits and they will find ways to talk about it.

Next, even after simplification you probably are still more difficult than average, so devise a strategy to educate your customers, employees and prospects in a quick and regular way.

graph4.gifBlockbuster Product

This is the kind of buzz that says the quality of your product is great and your benefits are easy to understand.  It also says your product easily creates enthusiasm in others.

If this curve is how your buzz effort looks, you may have big problems.  Are you going to be able to handle orders and questions that are running out of control?  Is your quality good now but will plummet as you get busier?  People always say to me, “That is a good problem to have…” but they do not realize that the incredible high will be followed by an incredible low if you are not prepared to deliver on your promise.

If you are hoping for blockbuster buzz, have a plan for scaling your company.  If you get busy and your quality suffers, your buzz will be short lived. 

graph5.gifSteady Buzz

What does a good buzz marketing job look like?  If you are dealing with a big company that can easily scale and maintain quality, the blockbuster scenario is the best.  For a small to mid-sized company, the steady buzz will win the race.  This is realistic graph for most businesses.  If you have good quality and an easy to understand product with clear benefits, a percent of people you talk to will talk about you, and a percent of the people you have never met will talk about you.  Enthusiasm will not be sustained in most cases very far out, but in a percentage of cases it does because the quality of the product gets talked about, even if it is not the next big thing.

This curve does not seem exciting, but it represents double digit annual growth while maintaining high quality and excellent customer service.  This is a goal that should cost you very little to achieve if you already have good quality.  Simply increase enthusiasm and get more people to start talking about you via everyday channels on a regular basis.

Quality and Sustainable Enthusiasm are the two biggest elements for creating buzz and growing your company.  By strategically making more people enthusiastic and maintaining or improving your quality, you will experience positive growth.

- Thank You!

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Marketing ROI, Buzzoodle, Employee Advocates, Blog 

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Comments

One Response to “Where do you rank? The two most important elements of buzz”

  1. LandingTheDeal on October 9th, 2006 1:27 am

    The Two Most Important Elements of Buzz

    Another good post from Ron McDaniel on the two most important elements of "buzz" when it comes to what you’re marketing or selling. Here’s a taste: In order to create buzz individually, you must have a high level of excitement…

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