June 26th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
I just read an article by the Steven Wonda, founder of buySAFE, citing research that the “Trustworthiness of the merchant” is important to 55% of online shoppers, nearly double the importance of getting a good deal.
We recently ran a study of online consumers that found that 78% have more trust/respect for brands that feature product reviews. And we compared this for US and UK customers. Note the UK is slightly lower, and our hypothesis is that reviews are not as prevelant there (yet!).
So, in addition to solutions like buySafe who sponsored the study above, also consider the fact that if you have reviews on your site your prospects and customers will have more trust in your brand!
June 23rd, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Recently we were awarded by the Austin Business Journal one of the Best Places to Work in the small business category.
I reflected on this last Friday when we had our monthly “Grill-o-Rama”…where Bazaarvoicees eat, drink and socialize. It was the end of a great day and a great week. What makes Bazaarvoice great, every day, is the people who are there. The sales team, client services, development, business development, my marketing/product management team, and (yes) even finance. Everyone in the company seems to reflect our five core values. We believe that client satisfaction (which makes my job easier) is the result of employee satisfaction.
Creating a great place to work is not just the job of the CEO or the executive team. It is the result of input, participation, and involvement from every team member. Becoming one of the greatest places to work in Austin is the collective result of everyone in the Bazaarvoice family, and I’m proud and excited to be part of that.
June 18th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
More notes from a previous Word of Mouth event in D.C. a few months ago.
The keynote was from Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman of AOL (oh, and billionaire). His presentation has tremendous insight and perspective, and was presented with disarming humility and sincerity. It is great to hear someone at his level 'get' what is happening with the market and marketing and present it with such simplicity.
Here are some of the points I captured from his presentation…
- Give customers the opportunity to create, share, and self-express. It’s why there are 55 million blogs.
- Typically corporations want executives to ‘stay on message’ and to ‘be handled’…but that doesn’t pass customers’ sniff test. Mr. Leonsis, for example, typed his responses in chat room Q&A…typos and all.
- Their job at AOL was to surrender to the audience. To hold the mirror up to the audience.
- Fastest growing markets: Latino, African American, Boomers, Youth.
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June 18th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Digging up some notes from a session at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference a few months ago… George Silverman, author of The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing, had these things to say:
- 90% of marketing spent on brand choice. Should be on decision acceleration.
- Get strategic about word of mouth. Don't get lost in tactics. Don't let the sideshows run the circus.
- Buzz is noise. So what if you don't break through the clutter, you need a message. Does the WOM break through the blocks?
June 18th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Social “this” and Social “that”! What do these new marketing terms mean for your business and moving it forward, if we define ‘moving it forward’ as positive revenue and margin dollars?
I recently wrote an article on “Social Commerce” for iMedia to highlight and help define the term that captures two important ‘centers of gravity’ that marketing professionals should orbit. Below is an adapted version
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tired of the overused, ambiguously defined buzzwords?
• viral
• long tail
• folksonomy
• crowdsourcing
• prosumerism
• P2P marketing
• C2C marketing
• social media
• social computing
• social networking
• social shopping
• citizen marketing
• open-source marketing
• user-generated content
• word-of-mouth marketing
• customer-created content
• consumer-generated media
Notwithstanding the ambiguity of these terms — or the authoritative positions from Wikipedia contributors – I believe there is a productive purpose of evolving definitions: to illuminate important marketing principles and strategies. Even the words themselves shed light on what marketers should think about and do, such as "Listenomics" and "C2C Marketing."
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June 15th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
Recently, one of our clients, Avvo, launched ratings and reviews. You can now rate and review lawyers online. I know because I was emailed by one of ours, Clay Arendes, as soon as Avvo went live. I gladly wrote a review on the wonderful service we have received from him for almost two years now. Although I marinate in Web 2.0 daily, the act of writing a review on Clay made me realize something: I write more reviews on people than I do on products.
It is always dangerous to make any conclusions based on only your own behavior. You need to look no further than the failure of Webvan, which raised $1 billion based on the premise that everyone in the U.S. was like San Franciscans. But I still find it fascinating that I am more compelled to write about people than products. Perhaps it is the nature of my job or personality type. Or perhaps most of us talk more about people (i.e., generating more word of mouth) than products in everyday life. Let’s not forget how many Americans voted on the last American Idol (74 million in the last round).
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June 13th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
One of our clients forwarded us an ‘interesting’ blog post from Adsoftheworld.com showing an analogy between Ads, PR and Branding:
Image courtesy of Neutron, LLC.
Unfortunately, the analogy didn’t capture the more authentic form of marketing, through user reviews. So we took the liberty…
June 10th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
[This is an article I wrote for Netmpreative, a UK publication for new media. I'm copying it here as well for benefit of our clients (US and UK))…
Today’s consumer is presented with more retailers, products, options, advertising, promotions and ways to buy than ever before. So now, they are finding products the way a honey bee finds nectar. It’s called the Honey Bee Waggle Dance. First the ‘scout bees’ go out to find sources of nectar. Each comes back and it communicates the strength of the nectar source by the strength of its waggle dance, literally shaking its body more vigorously if it found the mother load of nectar. The strength of that waggle dance determines how many bees will follow it to the source.
Word of mouth has always been the leading form of marketing. But now, with the growth of web accessibility, web commerce, and tools to share opinions, word of mouth is critical for customers and marketers alike. If a brand surveys customers after an online purchase and asks how they found the site or why they chose a product, it’s likely the majority will reference something like ‘advice from a friend’
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