Unleash The Power Of “Word of Mouth” Marketing 
Politics is one area that I have never found very exciting. I would much rather spend my limited free time in other pursuits. With that being said however, I found the primary elections for presidential candidates very interesting yesterday. Not only interesting from a political point of view, but a marketing point of view.
I was flipping through the main channels, ABC, NBC and CBS trying to capture a quick overview of what was going on, throughout the evening. I happened to land on ABC, where the discussion was turned over to a correspondent in the studio who was tracking the FACEBOOK crowd, online, with her laptop. The FACEBOOK social online group is mainly composed of the GEN Y population, ages 20 – 30 and predominantly college students.
The correspondent, I didn’t catch her name nor did I recognize her face, was tracking over 1,000,000 FACEBOOK members who were currently talking (chatting) back and forth about the primaries. She was reporting responses from online chat, never before tracked during a presidential primary, that I know of, on a major network. What ABC was trying to determine at around 9:30 EST, after most of the polls were closed, was this….
Since Obama is very popular with the young, why was it that only 12% showed up to vote in the under 30 crowd? (This % was estimated by early tabulations.) And what was preventing them from getting out the door and going to the polls to vote?
Right Then And There, It Struck Me….History In The Making!
One million Gen Y participants were being asked this question on FACEBOOK, by ABC, in real time. How many answered?… don’t know. But what I do know is that the Presidential Primaries, or any major election for that matter, will never be the same. Why? Because social community groups are going to change the entire dynamics and have a much greater influence on the campaign process.
Word of Mouth marketing and online campaigning is an ongoing and ever growing process that is developing at lightening speed with daily advances in technology. Marketers and campaign strategists still haven’t quite figured out the entire online and word of mouth process that catches the attention of the tech savvy GEN X and Gen Y generations, let alone Boomers and the Senior population.
The under 30 crowd who wants to change the dynamics of how this country is run, may have lost out last night… They were too busy chatting online, instead of getting out and going to the polls to vote for their candidate. The old saying, “Actions Speak Louder Than Words”, was never more true than what was seen yesterday with the voter turnout under age 30.
Much will be learned from last night….and the political strategists are on it as we speak… We don’t know who the democratic candidate will be or the outcome of the presidential election in November. But one thing we do know….Obama lost electoral votes due to a poor turnout and Hillary was able to get her supporters to the polls with a 28% turnout in her targeted groups of women and those over 65, to maintain her lead.
Why is this History in the Making? The under 30 crowd will soon wise up, realize that a computer can’t vote for them, get out to the polls when motivated by their peers in online social groups… and change the course of history in future elections. If 28% of the under 30 crowd had turned out, would Obama now be in the lead? We will never know.
What Does This Have To Do With Orthodontic Marketing?
If you haven’t updated your marketing strategies to include Word Of Mouth Marketing and Digital Technology that targets current trends, you too may miss out on a “golden opportunity” to change the course of history in your practice.
Orthodontists recently graduating from school and those in practice for under 10 years are themselves, Gen X and Gen Y consumers. They understand and live everyday in a tech savvy environment. It is easy for them to make the transition or “come out of the box swinging”, right after graduation. If you think the competition is tough now, just wait…
It is much less expensive to target today’s market with “Word of Mouth” and Digital strategies than traditional marketing strategies of old. All you need is a strong desire to succeed and and understanding of the technical skills and strategies available to achieve your goals.
Do you know what these technical strategies and skills are? I’ll discuss them in future posts…
As many of you are aware, I will be changing the format of my blog to include videos, soon. Video captures greater interest and visual formats are the medium of choice, to target today’s consumer. Since you are my target audience…this will give you first hand experience of the power of digital and online marketing to encourage word of mouth referrals.
Till then…Here’s to marketing smarter, faster and with less team effort…
Mary Kay