Recap: How to Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales #ZubeBAS

Tuesday night Zuberance held an incredibly successful panel on the subject “How to Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales.” The space, 111 Minna, was packed, and our Twitter hashtag, #ZubeBAS, was the highest trending topic in San Francisco (higher than #sfgiants, the night before game 1 of the World Series!) In addition to the panel discussion, Zuberance also proudly announced their Series B funding. Thanks everyone for being a part of the event.

The Featured Panel:

• Michael Brito, VP of Social Media, Edelman Digital (@britopian)
• Rob Fuggetta, Founder & CEO, Zuberance (@robfuggetta)
• Tony Lee, VP of Marketing, TiVo
• Becky Brown, Director of Social Media Strategy, Intel (@beckyannbrown)
• Moderated by Anthony Ha, Assistant Editor, VentureBeat (@anthonyha)

Listen to the Podcast!

Click here to listen to the recorded panel discussion (49 minutes.) Note: There were sound issues the first three minutes of recording, but after that it all sounds fine.

View photos!

Visit the Zuberance Facebook Fan Page to view photos and videos from this awesome event or view photos on Flickr!

View video interviews!

Check out the on-site interviews conducted by David Spark on topics like Word of Mouth, Social Media and Brand Advocacy. You can view all vides on the ZubeTV playlist.

• “How do you energize word of mouth?” ft attendees from the event
• “Influencers vs. Advocates: Which group is more important?” ft. Becky Brown of Intel and Rob Fuggetta of Zuberance
• “How to take advantage of your social media investment“ ft. Matt Elders of Zuberance
• “Make it easy for Brand Advocates to tell your story, and they’ll do anything for you” ft. Deep Varma of Zuberance
• “How do you cope with or even convert detractors?” ft. Travis Murdock of Edelman Digital and Mark Silva of Real Branding
• “Club One: We’re getting a 9X ROI by energizing our Brand Advocates” ft. Kari Bedgood of Club One Fitness
• “HomeAway: “Harnessing the Energy of our Customers” ft. Jason Mathias of HomeAway
• “Social Media 101: Start with people who already love your brand” ft. Michael Brito of Edelman Digital
• “Do you approach influencers different than Advocates?” ft. Anthony Ha of VentureBeat

Key Takeaways from “How to Turn Word of Mouth into Sales”:

• Every brand has Advocates. There are more than you realize.
• 61% of us advocate brands
• Advocates go out of their way to recommend brands. The key is to make it easy for them to do so.
• TiVo’s marketing projects are either experimental or optimized.
• For TiVo, experimental projects can fail. Optimized projects can’t.
• Fail as quick as you can. Fail as cheaply as you can. And fail with some kind of learning.
• Failed marketing campaigns are not authentic.
• TiVo looks for advocacy and word of mouth at the point of sale. For example, they ask, “Would you like to share the announcement of your purchase with your friends?”
• Foundation of “Intel Inside” is inciting the Brand Advocate.
• Intel stalks consumers. They read everything. They listen to influencers.
• Create relevant content in the right place and time. A communications team helps build that content and time it for you.
• Brand Advocate is a highly satisfied customer/other that recommends a brand without being paid to do so. They’ve had a great experience with your brand or product and are willing to share with others.
• How do you find Brand Advocates? Net Promoter’s “Ultimate Question”: How likely are you to recommend our brand/product to a friend of colleague? On a scale from 1-10, people who score 9 or 10 are Advocates, 7-8 are passives, and 0-7 are detractors.
• Advocates recommend your brand even if you ignore them.
• Influencers, for the most part, require an incentive.
• Important to create Advocate programs. Politicians do this very well.
• Advocates in aggregate have more influence for your product or brand than influencers.
• Listening tools find the people who are not your Brand Advocates. Specifically, the people who are detractors of your product.
• Be on top of tweets and negative experiences. It’s important to reach out the moment you see problems.
• Authentic relationships are between individual’s Twitter accounts, not a corporate Twitter account and an individual’s Twitter account.
• Don’t shout on social media like you wouldn’t shout walking into a party.
• Don’t ask agencies to read posts about you. Read it yourself. Don’t outsource your listening.
• People appreciate that you actually read their content. If you take the time to answer your customers it’s tremendous.
• Do you want to amplify? Do you want to fix something? What do you want to authentically try to do? This is the number one place NOT to put an intern. Be thoughtful though because it can suck up every marketing resource you have.
• An ideal marketing group is one that’s dedicated to a fast response.
• Listening is important. Taking action is how to create advocacy.
• Make it easy for your Advocates to engage with your brand and they will.
• Advocates often know your product better than you do. Let them talk to the detractors as well as answer prospects’ questions.
• Keep good comments. Keep bad comments. Get rid of the ugly (e.g., profanity and stuff getting out of control, spam)
• How do you engage executives to participate? Selectively forward social media items.
• Putting $1 into brand advocacy will give you $10 in return. It’s earned media, not paid media. You can’t buy Word of Mouth.
• You’re ten times more likely to respond to something your friend sends you than an advertiser sends you.
• Show a little love to your Advocates and you’ll get love back.
• Your customers are not stupid. Listen to them. Treat them seriously, not the ones that are being loud and rude.
• Be resourceful by using your employees, Advocates, agencies, and partners.
• You can buy impressions, you can’t buy Advocates.

Cara Fuggetta I tweet, therefore I am.