brandknewmag.com
08
Why do some companies, products and services get more
word of mouth than others? It’s not luck. There’s a science
behind it. Social media gurus always preach that no one
talks about boring products or boring ideas. So you would
think that more interesting products and brands get talked
about more. Surprisingly, they don’t.
Startups live and die by word of mouth. Whether it’s a new
website, a revolutionary recruiting service, or B2B play,
consumer awareness is always low at the beginning. No one
realizes you exist, so you have to get the word out. But most
new ventures don’t have a big advertising budget. They have
to grow organically: Get existing customers or fans bringing
in new ones — one at a time.
Why, then, do some companies, products and ideas get
talked about more readily than others? People often think
getting word of mouth is like capturing lightning in a bottle.
You have to get lucky. The market has to be just right. Or you
need the right combination of three or four indescribable
qualities that combine in some inexplicable way to create
magic.
That’s a great theory. Except it’s completely wrong.
People often think getting word of
mouth is like capturing lightning in a
bottle. You have to get lucky.
There’s a science behind word of mouth. It’s not random and
it’s not luck why people talk about some things rather than
others. Just like behavioral economists have studied why
people make certain choices, or statisticians have pulled out
insights about human behavior from “Big Data,” researchers
have been hard at work analyzing the human behavior
behind our decisions to talk and share.
In one recent investigation, for example, my colleague
and I looked at word-of-mouth data on almost 10,000
products and brands from Coca-Cola and Walmart to small
startups. Everything from technology companies to services,
from B2B to consumer package goods. In another project,
we analyzed