Welcome to Digital First Leadership, the podcast that explores the essential principles and strategies for leading in the digital age. In this dynamic podcast series, we dive deep into the realm of digital leadership, equipping leaders and teams with the necessary tools to thrive in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Richard Bliss:

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Richard Bliss, and you're listening to this episode of Digital-First Leadership. I want to thank all of you who have been supporting the show, sending your feedback, engaging with my guests. It's been a great experience and so thank you very much for that. Today's episode is kind of fun. The guest well, you know what, I'm just going to introduce him. He's Zack Seripert and Zack is the I'm going to read this out of the book because today we're talking about the most amazing marketing book ever. Zack is one of the co authors, along with me. His chapter is chapter 27, and it's on the secret power of word of mouth marketing, something that I'm extremely interested in. So let's do a quick introduction. He is the marketing and communication specialist for the Central Utah Water Conservancy district. That's a whole mouthful. I think that probably fits on a business card. Zack knows how to get important messages seen, heard, and most importantly, understood in today's fast paced world. He's got a bachelor's degree in digital marketing and currently serves as training committee member of the government Social Media Membership Council. And you can find him on LinkedIn at Zack Seipert. That's S-E-I-P-E-R-T. Zack. I'm pronouncing your last name. Right. Right.

Zack Seipert:

Is that 100% correct? Yes, it's German heritage. So that's great. You got it on the first try.

Richard Bliss:

Excellent. And something that we did learn is that we both speak fluent Spanish, so we could actually do this in Spanish if we wanted to. We're not going to.

Zack Seipert:

That would be an experience I would probably fumble more so than I will today in English.

Richard Bliss:

No, I completely understand that. Zack, first of all, thanks for joining. This is awesome. Of course.

Zack Seipert:

Glad to be here.

Richard Bliss:

We have got to know each other over the past, let's say six to eight months. It might have been longer, shorter, something like that, because we've been participating in a community with Mark Schaefer. Mark Schaefer's, Rise community. You and I have both participated in the writing of this book, the Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever, which was co written with 30 plus other authors. We each did a different chapter, which is way cool. I did my chapter on LinkedIn. You did your chapter on word of mouth marketing. And that's why I have you here, because I'm fascinated by this idea of word of mouth marketing. Because it is my impression that most people feel when it comes to word of mouth marketing, that it's just kind of just kind of random. That, hey, your friends are going to talk about you, people are going to say nice things about you, but there's really no structure around that. Would you agree or disagree that concept or excuse me, that perception is fairly common?

Zack Seipert:

Yes, I would 100% agree with that statement. Word of mouth is definitely taken for granted and definitely under studied and underutilized in our world today. People just assume, like you mentioned, that customers are talking about them if you give them a good experience. However, as we've talked about in Mark Schaefer's Rise community and I've heard other places, great marketing is about zigging when other people are zagging. So you don't want to be average or ordinary or so so in anything that you do, you want to be known for doing something different than your competition. That's what ultimately causes word of mouth to happen and ultimately pushes it over to be in your favor. And I'm sure we might talk about this later, but just as word of mouth can be of a large benefit to your business, negative word of mouth can be extremely damaging. So we might talk on that a little bit later, but just wanted to throw that out there.

Richard Bliss:

No, that is a good thing to think about, but you said something that a lot of people are going to go, okay, so I need to be different, and different is good, but how I mean, everybody tries to be different. And so that's not that as easy as it sounds to be different to find something excuse me, that would resonate with your audience. But before we go there, let's come back because there's some terms in your chapter I wanted to talk about. You referred to it in all caps as an acronym, wom word of mouth marketing as a thing. And in your chapter you referenced several individuals and books that kind of put some structure around this concept of word of mouth. Wanted one of them. Was it Keller? Is that who correct? So correct about that. And what his philosophy or where he's coming from with that?

Zack Seipert:

Yeah, so his name is Ed Keller, and he honestly could probably be referred to as the father of modern word of mouth marketing. He and his colleagues did a study some time back where they basically were surveying a bunch of different people and discovered that a tiny but mighty subset of the population control or talk about companies, products, services far more than anybody else. And these individuals he referred to in his research as Conversation Catalysts. So these people are talking about products, talking about services, talking about businesses far more than other people. And our job as marketers, he points out, is to get our ideas, our services, products, whatever it might be, into these Conversation Catalysts vocabulary so they can start talking about us. And they'll talk with, on average, about nine other different people about our businesses.

Richard Bliss:

And you and I, before we started recording, had a conversation a little bit about a great book that we both enjoy, tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, that's been out for quite a while. And in there he talks about connectors, but he talks about this sounds like what he refers to as yeah, right. Those who know a lot and then share that information with people, not just that they're connected, but they actually take what they know and make sure other people learn about it. Am I accurate with that comparison?

Zack Seipert:

Exactly. Yes, that's 100% accurate. And that is a great book, by the way. It's the connectors, the salesmen and the mavens, if I remember right. Yes, a great book, like you said, written a little bit, probably ten plus years ago, but still very relevant and goes into how you can find those people and use them to your advantage as well. Another great book that an individual I cite in the book. The chapter is Jay Bear, who actually wrote a semi recent book on the topic Talk Triggers, which is basically baking into your operations. These triggers, or talk triggers that help serve as catalysts for word of mouth conversations. So he talks about the size of the Cheesecake Factory's menu, how it's so huge and people just talk about it for days. Or CVS receipts, how you go and you buy something at CVS and the receipt is literally four or 5ft long with coupons printed on the back. And people go to Twitter and show that they're making blinds or ties out of these things and just talking about your company and creating a lot of awareness for your product, whether it's not necessarily good or bad, but they're generating awareness.

Richard Bliss:

But we can go the other direction, too. Let's take in and Out Burger, because in and Out Burger is famous for its brevity of menu, and yet what do a lot of people know? That is the hidden menu, correct?

Zack Seipert:

Yep.

Richard Bliss:

And if you're in the know, you know, and you can walk up and make that order on that hidden menu, it's not on the menu up there. And that's another talking point or a talking trigger that Jay would be referring to, right?

Zack Seipert:

Yep, exactly. The animal fries, the Flying Dutchman, these are all things that are not blatantly put on their menu as you know it's cheeseburger, hamburger or a double double, I think is what they call it. That's pretty much it.

Richard Bliss:

That's it.

Zack Seipert:

But if you come up with this secret lingo and you come up to the register all secretive, hey, I'll take one Flying Dutchman, they'll know exactly what you're talking about and it's a lot of fun and it makes for a lot of conversation because, wow, I'm going to start citing a lot of different books. But Jonah Berger's book talking about contagious. He says that a lot of people like to share information if it makes them look smarter or have a higher elevated social status. If you have kind of undisclosed information, you now are on a higher podium than other people and it makes you look smarter. So, another great book to check out.

Richard Bliss:

No, I certainly have benefited from that, say benefited from that in that my chapter on LinkedIn talked about a lot of information that was counterintuitive, that people were unaware of. And then what happens is I get people all the time who are saying, richard, I've been just talking about everything that share, and I've been telling everybody, and it's not me that they've been sharing, but that one tiny nugget that I gave them in such a way that they can easily say it. And that's one of the things that I've really learned about word of mouth marketing, Zach, is that it needs to be simple is not the right word, but what am I trying to say? It needs to be in such a way that it's easily transferable from one person to another. Right, exactly.

Zack Seipert:

And if you go on to read Talk Triggers by Jay Bear, once again highly recommend it. He has this four part framework of what makes a talk trigger. And the one that you're discussing here, Richard, is repeatable. He describes it as repeatable. It needs to be the same for every customer every time, regardless of their status, regardless of whether it's now or six months from now. It needs to be repeatable in order to keep the talk trigger relevant. Is another one that he talks about.

Richard Bliss:

And I think of it almost like a small jewelry case with a piece of jewelry inside. Like you think about an engagement ring type thing, a ring box, that it needs to be something that people can easily, comfortably, and succinctly share, even if they have no other frame of reference of knowledge. It's a self contained idea. Meme is what we refer to it now, today. And Jared Diamond talked about the concept of memes being infectious. But back in that before social media, it was the idea that spread an idea virus. And I think what we're saying here is that word of mouth is, can you get a concept to be easily shareable and passed around to people who understand it without having any context? And that becomes really important to be able to do that. Exactly.

Zack Seipert:

That's a great analogy. Yeah.

Richard Bliss:

And so that's kind of what I like to think about when it comes to that. I hate to say there was a thought at the tip of my tongue, and now I forgot. Now I might come back to it, but let's talk about then. One of the things that you've identified is, okay, there's some structure to this. There's some things that you can do to be more effective. Word of mouth marketing, you talked about be different. You talked about what are some of these other concepts that we can do to make sure that our word of mouth marketing is effective?

Zack Seipert:

Yeah, that's a great question. So basically, word of mouth happens regardless whether we know it or not. One of the things I talk about in the chapter is you could open up your phone and pick on any conversation with a friend or family member. And if you scroll up just a couple of scrolls, you'll notice, hey, a name of a business or a product will pop up that you recommend to someone. Word of mouth marketing is basically doing that on purpose. You're encouraging people to talk about it. So it's looking at your business and looking at your customer touch points along their journey and thinking to yourself, strategically, as an organization, where can we put in these little nuggets? As you mentioned, that will cause conversation, but in a good way. So if you're thinking of like ecommerce businesses, those businesses, you don't have very much interaction with the people that are purchasing your products other than the packaging. So that's a great place to look for and start thinking of. What can we put here that will cause a word of mouth conversation? Before this call, I was looking and reviewing at some that I've seen in the past. There's one that's I believe. It's a European company called Matte Pillows or Matte Sleep. I can't remember Matt T. And what they do is when you buy a pillow from them, it comes in this obviously very large box and it's memory foam. And when you open it up just enough, it's like one of those Hallmark cards that starts singing to you, oh my gosh. You open it up just enough and it says, sweet dreams are made of oh no. And so it's like that's in and of itself is a great word of mouth conversation starter because it's one tying into Sleeping, a fun song that everybody knows. And people will grab their phones and record these things and go crazy, start posting it on social media, tell their friends, right? It's starting small and thinking about those customer touch points. Obviously, B to B is a little different. Ecommerce is a little different. I'm in the government space. What does that look like? We're out in the public a lot doing outreach. So thinking about the customer journey sitting down, what can we do that's different? What can we do that will cause conversations to people to talk about our company, our services, our products?

Richard Bliss:

Well, you said something about the consistency, that the message has to be consistent across the board. Here's what I was just thinking about. So I have this during the book, right, about LinkedIn. I talk about LinkedIn a lot. Obviously, I also have a and I shared with you the community you and I belong to, the Rise community. I also created something called the Bliss Bot. And the Blissbot is where I've uploaded all my books, my blogs and everything. And you can chat with it through the Chat GPT interface and it only talks to my content. Well, here's what happened, Zach. Yesterday I'm on the phone with somebody because I haven't really handed out the Blue Spot to I just had people testing it because I'm testing some concepts with it. And if anybody's listening and they'd like to play around the Blue Spot, just send me a message and I'll send you the link. But here's what happened. I discovered I got a random question from somebody on LinkedIn the other day. They just asked me a random question. I didn't really know who they were, so I didn't take a whole lot of time. I just sent them the answer. Here. Here's the answer. Well, then I got a phone call from their partner yesterday who said, yeah, we've been playing around with your Blissbot. I'm like you have. And they said, and to test it, my partner sent you a question. I'm like, oh, that's who that was. But he had first asked the Blissbot the same question. And so this is all my content coming out of my book, my chapter, everything. And he was comparing that answer to my answer. In essence, he was testing whether there was consistency in the word of mouth. And I asked it, did I give the same answer?

Zack Seipert:

Did they match up?

Richard Bliss:

Did they match up? And the answer was yes. And here's what's interesting, is that very seldom do we have that feedback loop where our word of mouth efforts actually come back and tell us that it's working, that we've got consistency across the board. And so as you're talking, it's striking me with these ideas.

Zack Seipert:

Yeah. And that's a great point. So word of mouth, I feel like, is often set aside because technology is booming right now, and it has been for many years with AI and with the Metaverse or NFTs or you name it, it gets a lot of attention. Word of mouth has been around for arguably millennia. Yeah, exactly. Older than direct mail. Sorry, Jeff. Beat you there. But it's interesting because lots of people set it aside, largely because with these tech tools, we can measure engagement, we can measure ROI, we can measure all these things. Word of mouth very difficult to measure. Very difficult. Largely because it's so fragmented. It's happening online, it's happening in person. It's happening all over the place, and we can't get a full picture. It's just like brand marketing. You can't directly measure the effectiveness of your brand marketing either, but, you know, it's important. So I stressed that in the book a little bit, too, but just wanted to point that out as well.

Richard Bliss:

No, you did you did a good job. You just triggered another thought in my head. The oldest example of word of mouth marketing. This is a terrible example, but the original source that I can go back would be the serpent in the Garden of Eden convincing Eve to do word of mouth marketing to Adam. Right?

Zack Seipert:

Try this apple.

Richard Bliss:

Here, try this apple. It's not okay. He's like, oh, okay. And then she's like, goes to Adam, hey, you got to try this apple, otherwise we're in trouble. Terrible example, but I'm thinking, how far back does it go? It goes back. Way back. All right. The reason I like word of mouth marketing is because it doesn't necessarily take a lot of money. It doesn't take a lot of presence. What it takes and I think you've identified it focus. Right? It's like, okay, what's our message? What pain point does our market have? And how can we craft our message around that pain point in such a way that people pass it around? Right. And I'm thinking back to Jeffrey Moore's book, Crossing the Chasm, where you've got to find that little beachhead because word of mouth marketing doesn't work. It's like ping pong. It's like billiard balls or something that if your market is spread too thin, the interaction can't be frequent enough. For example, we do business in the legal industry. Well, you talk to one lawyer, they're probably going to talk to another. If you talk to two or three, they're going to talk to somebody, and all of a sudden that word of mouth is going to spread. So you talk about kind of the influencers. But I would also say that understanding your niche and then influencing the influencers in your niche helps you establish that connection. Am I on the right path with that?

Zack Seipert:

I believe so, yeah. And one thing that we've talked about in the Rise community, coincidentally enough, is the trusted sense makers. I believe even on Dan's episode a couple of weeks ago that you mentioned the trusted sense makers with so much content with AI, with all these things coming out on the Daily, we're overwhelmed. Everybody's overwhelmed. And so the power that comes from word of mouth is that each recommendation from a friend or a colleague carries with it this level of trust, carries with it this level of this heightened sense of man. I really need to trust this individual. Richard, for example, he's a LinkedIn expert. I'm going to trust what he says, and I think it's truly important to realize that. Yes. I'm so sorry.

Richard Bliss:

That's all right.

Zack Seipert:

What was your question again?

Richard Bliss:

I don't remember. No, we're doing good.

Zack Seipert:

But I like what you're saying because.

Richard Bliss:

I'm going to keep talking, you're going to remember it, you're going to interrupt me, but we refer to it in the military as trust but verify. So you're going to trust what I have to say, but you're probably going to also just test it just a little bit to make sure. Right. And that's, again, what makes that connection, because we were talking about the niche markets, right. And bouncing around the influence. What Dan had to say about that concept of finding those people to help you validate all of this information that's coming at you. And oftentimes a word of mouth from a friend, a colleague, or someone you trust has already done a lot of that filtering for you. So you're like, you know what? I'm probably going to pay attention to them.

Zack Seipert:

There you go. Exactly. Yeah. So in the book, we describe the difference between what is influencer marketing and what is word of mouth marketing. And so an influencer is a conversation catalyst that's saying, hey, I am a conversation catalyst. Going back to our discussion on Ed Keller, whereas there are other people that will not blatantly tell you I'm an influencer or I am a maven or somebody that can spread your words for you, your message. So it's all about finding those people. It's all about making sure that everybody has their own network and they have trusted individuals. It's how do we get to those people and how can they spread our message for us? And as you alluded to, word of mouth is so powerful, it directly influences 19% of purchases. And other than that, it influences so, like you said, it plays a role in our purchase decision 90% of the time, people, the customer journey is so it's not a funnel anymore. We can't display it as a funnel. It's so complicated. People go to online reviews, people go to Chat GPT, people go to who knows, it, you name it. Word of mouth is still in there and it's still relevant. And I believe it's much more weighted or should be much more weighted than it currently is and will be in the future, too, as AI and content begin to become more overwhelming than they already are.

Richard Bliss:

100% agree. I'm going to make up some statistics because I can't remember exactly how they are and somebody might just check it for me. But research has shown that when it comes to LinkedIn, the greatest influence on LinkedIn is not our first degree connections, which is interesting, but it's those second degree connections that validate the first degree connections. It's those loose connections that actually carry more weight. And so what you're saying is, if you have a first degree connection, somebody they're an influencer, but their word of mouth further out is what's going to be the power. That secondary circle of contacts, and that has been shown on LinkedIn, is that we pay attention to those not right in our circle, but are just slightly outside of our circle. It's almost an external validation that allows us to do that. And so I agree that word of mouth that you're talking about, word of mouth continues to be so powerful also because hang on, I'm going to come back now. You and I are jumping around here, influencer and the maven, right? The conversation catalyst. People that you're talking about, you made a statement in the book that I really liked and we've only got a couple of minutes here, but the influencers you said you have to kind of seek them out so that they then talk about your product or your service, right? You kind of get them so that they're pitching your Gucci bag or whatever it might be, right? You said the conversation catalysts, they're going to seek you out, right? They're going to come find you and want to share your knowledge, just like you and I are talking here, right? You didn't reach out to me, I reached out to you. Not that I'm an influencer and I don't consider myself an influencer. I consider myself a maven because I like to share ideas. But I reached out to you and brought you in and said, hey, I'd love to have you share your knowledge with my audience. That's very different than an influencer who's like, well, I've got this audience. What am I going to get from you if I share? Yeah, you did a much better job in the chat.

Zack Seipert:

It's almost a transaction with influencers or it has become one where they're right. They're usually asking for, well, what's in it for me? Whereas in the case of word of mouth marketing, it's individuals spreading your ideas, your products and services for free. They're doing it because, again, going back to Jonah Berger, would like to maybe have an elevated status amongst their network, would like to be in the know. And yeah, these influencers, on the other hand, the flip side of the coin usually, generally speaking, now require, hey, I need a small fee or I want free swag, or well, take me on pay for my expenses to come to this photo shoot or whatever it might be. There's usually something where and I feel like people more so nowadays than maybe in the past are catching on to that. And it feels fake. It feels fake. And people, whether it's blatantly stated that it's a sponsored post or not, people can usually catch on to it. Whereas a word of mouth marketing or excuse me, word of mouth recommendation doesn't feel that way. It feels more human, it feels more personable, at least in my opinion.

Richard Bliss:

Well, I'm going to second your opinion because you're the one who wrote the chapter. For example, I don't do affiliate marketing. I don't do it because I feel not because I don't want the money, but I feel that it validates the trust that people are putting into me for making a recommendation. And I've had people approach me saying, hey, we'll split revenue if you can recommend and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, if I'm going to recommend it, it needs to be because I recommended it, not because I get some kind of hidden benefit financially, because I feel that validates this relationship I have with my audience. If they knew that you were paying me money to be on the show, which you are not, but if suddenly it would change the whole dynamic of everything that we've talked about today. And so I like what you're saying. I 100% agree that word of mouth marketing needs to come through authentic. It needs to be something that is definitive. If I tell you that I love and I think you should drink Coca Cola, because I use that in your chapter, and I'm going to say, yeah, Mexican Coca Cola. It's the best. And then I reach down and hold up a bottle of Mexican Coca Cola at Joe in Mexico. And I tell you, I buy this by the case. And I have people all the time saying, wow, we can't get that here. How can we get that here? Right? All of a sudden, not that Coca Cola needs my word of mouth marketing. Perfect example of really? So is it better? Does it taste different? Oh, yeah, the sugar is so much better. And this is my main caloric intake. I don't have to eat during the day. I mean, there's a whole narrative that goes around and that's all word of mouth marketing, right? Yep. My experience I'm transferring it to you through my experience and affiliate marketing, I struggle with that. Any kind of endorsement paid, I really struggle with that. And maybe I've missed out on some financial opportunities, but that word of mouth validity continues to be the currency that I need the most.

Zack Seipert:

Yeah, and I think that that's very true. The word of mouth truly shines because it's usually tied to a story, it's usually tied to an experience.

Richard Bliss:

I like that.

Zack Seipert:

And in its nature, it makes it more personable, it makes it more meaningful because you wouldn't recommend a product or a service to somebody if it didn't benefit you in some way or if it wasn't something that you truly enjoyed. Arguably, we talked about or I mentioned this previously at the beginning, but negative word of mouth is also an interesting concept because if you have a horrible experience at a restaurant, bet your bottom dollar that they're going to go tell people about it. They're going to go say, hey, what are we getting for dinner tonight? I heard about this new Thai restaurant and somebody will speak up and say, oh, you do not want to go there. I went there and the food was cold. It took 2 hours to serve us. Whatever.

Richard Bliss:

And so what do we do? We go on Yelp. We look at the reviews. We don't look at the five star reviews. You look at the one star reviews.

Zack Seipert:

Yep.

Richard Bliss:

That's the ones you go look at. Because anybody can get the five star reviews. But the one star reviews, you look at two things. You look at what they had to say and how long ago they said it. Right?

Zack Seipert:

Has there been management change? Have they had time to correct themselves? Exactly. That's great insight.

Richard Bliss:

Yep. So those Yelp, that's how we do it with Yelp. We do it always look at the one star. Why did that? And I've done that with a purchase that I just recently made. I was looking at the purchase, I went on Amazon, it's everything. And then I went and looked at the one stars. And in this case, I still bought it because the one stars problems were unrelated to what I was trying to deal with. I was like, oh, I don't have that problem. And in one. Case it might have been I think it had to do with the color or something. I'm like, I don't care about that. All right. Those one stars I can negate. And now off we go. This has been great. Zach, thank you so much for taking the time. This is obviously something that's very near and dear to my heart. And so having you the chance to have you on talk about the book and your chapter, I'm thrilled. Thank you so much for joining me.

Zack Seipert:

Of course. Thank you so much. And word of mouth, it's the real deal, guys.

Richard Bliss:

It's the real deal. Hence, we're here. You've been listening to Digital-First Leadership. I'm Richard Bliss. I've been joined by Zack Seipert. We've been talking about word of mouth marketing. And again, Zack is the marketing and communication specialist for the let me get this right, central Utah water conservancy district didn't even know they existed, and now we've got a marketing guy on the call to talk all about them. Well, we didn't really talk about them. We talked about word of mouth.

Zack Seipert:

That's okay.

Richard Bliss:

It's all right. Yeah.

Zack Seipert:

Thank you so much and appreciate your time, Richard. It's been a real treat. I appreciate it.

Richard Bliss:

It has been fun for me as well. I want to say to our audience, thanks for listening, always appreciate your support. And if you have any questions for Zack and myself, just feel free to reach out. You can find us both on LinkedIn. Zack Seipert. S-E-I-P-E-R-T. Go ahead and take a look. Find him. Thanks for listening. Take care.

You've been listening to Digital-First Leadership, the podcast where you learn to leverage and build your expertise on digital platforms. For more valuable tips on mastering the language of social media, subscribe to our newsletter at blisspointconsult.com. If you'd like to stay in touch, feel free to add Richard on LinkedIn and join the conversation.