Word of mouth book

The New York Times, USA TODAY Money, and Amazon bestseller!

Foreword by Seth Godin. Afterword by Guy Kawasaki.

With straightforward advice and humor, word of mouth expert Andy Sernovitz will show you how the world’s most respected and profitable companies get their best customers for free through the power of word of mouth.

Learn the five essential steps that make word of mouth work and everything you need to get started. Understand how easy it is to work with social media, viral marketing, evangelists, and buzz. Start using simple techniques that start conversations:

• 3 Reasons People Talk About You
• 4 Rules of Word of Mouth Marketing
• 5 Ts of Word of Mouth Marketing
• 6 Big Ideas: Deep Stuff That Changes Marketing Forever

Find out what sparks the irrepressible enthusiasm of Apple and TiVo fans. Understand why everyone is talking about a certain restaurant, car, band, or dry cleaner — and why other businesses and products are ignored. Discover why some products become huge successes without a penny of promotion — and why some multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns fail to get noticed.

Open your eyes to a new way of doing business: Honest marketing makes more money, because customers who trust you will talk about you. Learn how to be the remarkable company that people want to share with their friends.

Learn more and download great freebies!

Plus! Check out the amazing comic book edition!

While you’re checking out the book, be sure to check out the new comic too!

The original is the #1 word of mouth marketing book since 2006, translated into 14 languages. This exciting new graphic novel edition makes these fantastically useful ideas even easier to read, implement, and share.

The comic edition is a great way to teach word of mouth marketing to teams that need it most but don’t have time to sit down with the complete book. For fans of the full book, the comic makes a great back-pocket guide for your day-to-day marketing.

Check out the amazing Comic Book!

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,

A spectre at my door,

Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail —

I shall but love you more,

Who from Death’s house returning, give me still

One moment’s comfort in my matchless ill.

Shadow Houses.

This tale may be explained by those who know how souls are made, and where the bounds of the Possible are put down. I have lived long enough in this country to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only write the story as it happened.

Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him «Dormouse,» because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good Doctor and never quarrelled with any one, not even with our Deputy Commissioner, who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. He married a girl as round and as sleepy-looking as himself. She was a Miss Hillardyce, daughter of «Squash» Hillardyce of the Berars, who married his Chief’s daughter by mistake. But that is another story.

A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long; but there is nothing to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years. This is a delightful country for married folk who are wrapped up in one another. They can live absolutely alone and without interruption — just as the Dormice did. These two little people retired from the world after their marriage, and were very happy. They were forced, of course, to give occasional dinners, but they made no friends hereby, and the Station went its own way and forgot them; only saying, occasionally, that Dormouse was the best of good fellows, though dull. A Civil Surgeon who never quarrels is a rarity, appreciated as such.

Для перехода между страницами книги вы можете использовать клавиши влево и вправо на клавиатуре.

The art of voice-over is the backbone of commercials, animation, documentaries, and radio dramas produced for both national and local markets throughout the country. It is an ever-growing, lucrative field, and the demand for well-trained voice-over artists is increasing rapidly in our age of digital entertainment.

Word of Mouth—now in its updated and revised third edition—is the primary instructional book in the voice-over field. A clearly written and practical primer for the beginner and a welcome refresher course for the professional, Word of Mouth contains voice-over exercises, sample copy, and essential advice about producing a demo, auditioning, self-promoting, getting an agent, and what to expect on the job. It also provides exclusive and up-to-date lists of voice-over agents, coaches, workshops, and demo producers and duplicators. It is the standard text for numerous university communications, television, and acting department courses.

The book is accompanied by a 50-minute audio CD that demonstrates various techniques and styles of animation and commercial voice-over performed by ten top voice-over artists.

Word of mouth marketing is the oldest, most cost-efficient, and most effective way to create customers and grow any business.

Research from just last week from Marketing Charts shows that word of mouth remains the most likely way that consumers make purchase decisions, and that effect is even stronger among younger consumers, per a study I conducted last year.

Despite its importance, word of mouth is somewhat under-represented in the business book genre. When working on our own book about word of mouth, my co-author Daniel Lemin and I spent hundreds of hours reviewing the existing literature on the topic, both business books and academic papers.

I’ve been asked for recommendations, so I finally sat down and wrote up this list of my favorite word of mouth marketing books. Note that while there are other good books about word of mouth, this list represents the books that I personally prefer. Your mileage may vary.

Also, there are a great many other books about business and marketing that touch on word of mouth or its components but aren’t ABOUT word of mouth, per se. I have some notes about that at the end.

These 12 best word of mouth marketing books are in alphabetical order by title. Links are not affiliate links.

The Anatomy of Buzz, Revisited

Published 10 years ago, this seminal work from Emanuel Rosen remains a standard-bearer of the genre.

Killer quote:

Ironically, the more boring your product is, the easier it is to come up with a mismatch that people will talk about.

Brains on Fire

Perhaps the best book ever about tribalism and igniting customer communities. The case studies in this book are legendary. Authors Robbin Phillips, Geno Church, Spike Jones, and Greg Cordell are still driving the WOMM conversation, 8+ years later. Also check out the follow-up from Phillips and Cordell: The Passion Conversation.

Killer quote:

Movements are rooted in passion. By their very definition, movements are born out of passion. Passion to unite and passion for change. There’s nothing dry and emotionally detached about something in which you believe deeply. Because when you believe in something, you give yourself over to it. The desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself is hardwired into just about everyone’s DNA.

Contagious

This book by Wharton professor Jonah Berger may be the best-selling book of all-time that is squarely focused on the subject of word of mouth. It’s a fascinating read, mixing popular culture case studies with academic research. Also look for the follow-up: Invisible Influence.

(listen to my interview with Jonah Berger on my Social Pros podcast)

Killer quote:

Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular.

Creating Customer Evangelists

Terrific case studies in this one too, including longstanding word of mouth successes like Southwest Airlines, Krispy Kreme, and Build-A-Bear Workshop. Authors Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell put a lot of care into this book, and coined the term “customer evangelism.” It was released to excellent reviews, including in The New York Times.

Killer quote:

We’re drowning in a sea of media and information overload. In a world with so much choice, how do people make decisions? By relying on trusted friends, colleagues, or family members. In the new world of marketing, evangelists act as key influencers on future customers.

The Face-to-Facebook 

Written by Ed Keller and Brad Fay (formerly of the KellerFay Group and now part of EngagementLabs) this book debunked the notion that social media IS word of mouth. The research chronicled here showed that in 2012, 90% of all word of mouth took place offline, not online. And even today, word of mouth is still 50% offline, according to their newest data.

Killer quote:

The most successful businesses in the future will be the ones that embrace a model that puts people – rather than technology – at the center of products, campaigns, and market strategies. They will recognize that people have a far greater impact on each other than we previously realized, and that consumers are not just a collection of individuals.

Fizz

Ted Wright has probably achieved more as a practitioner of word of mouth marketing than any other living person. Fizz tells the inside story of how Ted and his team transform seemingly “meh” brands in beer, milk, and vacuums into word of mouth powerhouses. A must-read for anyone serious about the subject.

Killer quote:

When left to its own devices, word of mouth travels at a leisurely pace. Sometimes, as in the case of a new movie, that pace is a fast one because time is a factor. Otherwise, it can wait. So we have to as well. With rare exceptions, you can’t share stories with an influencer today and expect to see your sales increase a month from today. Word of mouth requires patience.

Made to Stick

Made to Stick isn’t really a classic word of mouth book and might instead be classified as one of the catalysts for the modern “business storytelling” phenomenon. But as one of the best-selling marketing books ever, this book from Chip and Dan Heath (their other books are also excellent) is a foundational text in the word of mouth world. Don’t try to run a business without reading this.

Killer quote:

What matters to people? People matter to themselves. It will come as no surprise that one reliable way of making people care is invoking self-interest.

Purple Cow

Perhaps unsurprisingly, of Seth Godin’s nearly 20 best-sellers on marketing and business, this one remains among my two favorites (alongside Permission Marketing). Purple Cow isn’t really about word of mouth, at least not in the executional sense like Fizz or Talk Triggers. But it is such an important book on positioning, it’s nearly impossible to get into word of mouth without embracing this one. If you like Blue Ocean Strategy but want to actually be entertained, read this (and Different, mentioned below).

Killer quote:

Because marketers have overwhelmed consumers with too much of everything, people are less likely to go out of their way to tell a friend about a product unless they’re fairly optimistic that the friend will be glad to hear about it.

The Referral Engine

Word of mouth is often thought of as something that consumer-facing companies must have but is optional (at most) for B2B companies. The opposite is true. In B2B, word of mouth is often referred to as “referrals”. There are a couple of differences in the mechanics here (see my article on proactive vs reactive word of mouth for illustration) but the reality is that the data show that ~ 50% of ALL purchases are influenced by word of mouth, but 91% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth.

This book by John Jantsch (everything he writes is worth your time) talks about the mechanics of how to make your business referable, which is really “word of mouth, with more structure.”

A more recent book on a similar theme is the also-outstanding Clarity Wins by Steve Woodruff.

Killer quote:

The hypothalamus likes validation – it registers pleasure in doing good and being recognized for it, and it’s home to the need to belong to something greater than ourselves. This is the social drive for making referrals. Human beings are physiologically wired to make referrals. That’s why so many businesses can grow and thrive by tapping this business-building strategy alone.

Talk Triggers

My project with Daniel Lemin is the most recent of these books, and we are standing on the shoulders of giants. In fact, we interviewed almost every author mentioned here for Talk Triggers, and we simply would not have a book without their work.

What Talk Triggers adds to the word of mouth literature is a SYSTEM, a proven, methodical framework for how to create, test, implement, and measure word of mouth. We also included a highly varied collection of case studies from B2C and B2B; from small and large businesses; and from American and global firms, to make sure that all readers can see how Talk Triggers applies to them.

For more on the Talk Triggers system, visit TalkTriggers.com where we have a lot of helpful, free resources. And of course, if we can help you create a winning word of mouth strategy for your company, please get in touch.

Killer quote:

People have the power now in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. This is why the time for talk triggers has never been better – or more necessary. Businesses’ ability to unilaterally dictate consumer attitudes and subsequent purchases and loyalties is fraying like the hem of a cheap dress.

The best organizations are running ahead of this shift, purposefully crafting differentiators that get customers to tell authentic, visceral, trusted stories about the business and its products or services; stories that create new customers through referrals and recommendations.

The Tipping Point

In some ways, the granddaddy of them all. Malcolm Gladwell’s book about mavens and connectors changed the marketing and communications lingua franca forever and crossed over into popular culture. One of the most important marketing books of the last 30 years, The Tipping Point is required reading for all business owners and managers.

In the same way that Purple Cow and Contagious are terrific companions to Talk Triggers, The Tipping Point makes a great pairing with Fizz.

Killer quote:

There is more than one way to tip an epidemic, in other words. Epidemics are a function of the people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating. And when an epidemic tips, when it is jolted out of equilibrium, it tips because something has happened, some change has occurred in one (or two or three) of those areas. These three agents of change I call the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context.

Word of Mouth Marketing

A popular and powerful book that looks at why word of mouth is important, its primary drivers and functions, and how to make it work for business. Excellent examples throughout from Andy Sernovitz, one of the founding members of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. This one holds up as an important read, even years after it was first published.

(hear my conversation with Andy on my Social Pros podcast)

Killer quote:

Earn the respect and recommendation of your customers, and they will do the rest. Treat people well, and they will do your marketing for you, for free. Be interesting or be invisible.

More Recommended Reading

As mentioned above, there are many outstanding books that I highly recommend that wouldn’t necessarily be classified as word of mouth marketing books in the classic sense but are still required reading for anyone interested in the field.

They include:

Different – possibly the book that influenced Talk Triggers the most. By Youngme Moon from Harvard Business School, this is an exceptional book on positioning, and doing something unusual.

Create Distinction – a fantastic book on the importance of standing out in your category, from my friend Scott McKain. Also grab his new book: Iconic.

Fascinate – a killer tome on how to make people pay attention to you. Filled with psychology evidence of what works, and why. An important book from my pal, Sally Hogshead.

Pink Goldfish – in the spirit of Purple Cow, Stan Phelps lays out an excellent formula for zigging while your competitors zag.