By Ted Wright

How does a story find its ideal audience? This is a very common question and an important one. If you’re trying to activate word of mouth marketing for the first time, what’s the process to identify the ideal audience targeted for your stories? There is a very old adage in sales and marketing – you […]

By Ted Wright

Here is a great irony of word of mouth marketing. It is the oldest type of marketing known to the human race – we have always sold stuff by talking to others. And yet, in a modern company culture, it might be the most unfamiliar marketing option available to us. And, embracing the unfamiliar, like […]

By Ted Wright

A brand is a symbol for trust. A brand is something in people’s mind stands for something. As a marketer, you want your branding to stand for something as valuable as possible.  Ideally, as quickly as possible. Lucky for you, word of mouth marketing is the most efficient channel you have at getting that trust […]

By Ted Wright

When you see the Christmas holly, Word of Mouth gets very jolly! Do you like my poetry? There is actually an important lesson here and maybe that phrase will help you remember the connection between holidays and your Word of Mouth Marketing success! The part of the year between Thanksgiving week and New Year’s Day […]

By Ted Wright

How do you create a contract with an influencer? The answer to this question is simple. In fact I can answer this in two words: “You don’t.” When you try to contract with an influencer – specifying that they post so many times for a certain amount of money, for example — it rarely goes […]

By Ted Wright

Our own Sarah Neely had a chance to talk about the foundations of Word of Mouth Marketing at The Uprising, a small retreat for marketing thought leaders hosted by friend of Fizz, Mark Schaefer. Sarah led a discussion that covered five essential “big ideas” about WOMM. 1. An advocate is not the same an influencer […]

By Ted Wright

  Every marketer has influencers on their mind today. It appears to be an unavoidable conversation at any meeting or conference. But I think the term “influencer” is overly used to camouflage garden variety advertising. Same kind of messaging and effort. Differences are that the channel you are viewing it on and the people producing […]

By Ted Wright

  Digital business consultant Christopher S. Penn recently published a free research paper emphasizing that the most meaningful online engagement and conversations are happening in private groups like Slack, Facebook Groups, and even the gamer platform Discord. This is not necessarily new insight. We’ve all known that in the long term, it’s not wise to build our […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright I was just in the San Francisco airport lounge for Delta. In the men’s room this Dad is changing the diapers for his two year old son. The kid is just screaming up a storm. Now his diaper needs to be changed. It’s nasty. On some level, even the two year old […]

By Ted Wright

By Scott Jenson Recently, a word of mouth marketing conversation was saved with a bag of cookies. Today I want to show you how conversations and kindness go together. I’ve been working on a program to to raise awareness of the high quality made-to-order food at our client’s chain of convenience stores. Our target audience […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright The most important thing we do at Fizz is finding ways to transmit customer stories in authentic, interesting, and relevant ways. And while the “what” behind the story is essential, the “who” in the delivery of that story is also critical to our success. So an essential part of our job is […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright I was asked, “Is there any seasonality factor with word of mouth marketing? Is there a better time of year to do activations?” There is no seasonality for word of mouth because people are always talking. In fact, they may be even talking more over holidays and down times. Holiday seasons can […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright The short answer is… no. But you can’t have one without the other. Influencers like to share things and Word of Mouth Marketing is about sharing stories. Can see why they’re so closely connected? Everybody wants to compare Influencer Marketing vs Word of Mouth Marketing But you need to truly understand both in […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright At its core, Word of Mouth marketing is about people organically sharing stories. So how do we encourage people to share your brand story in a real, natural way? Create a story worth talking about. A good brand story is at the core of building a Word of Mouth Marketing strategy This […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright One of the most all-time most popular marketing ideas is swag – you know those little gifts you hand out at a trade show booth, customer meeting, or industry conference. Today I’m going to save you a lot of time and money by telling you the truth about the value of swag […]

By Ted Wright

  By Ted Wright First, let’s be clear on what we’re calling an influencer in this headline. When I say “influencer” you’re probably imagining a YouTube star selling energy drinks or Kim Kardashian pitching cosmetics. That’s not what I’m referring to here. I’m interested in natural, organic story-sharers that come from having a certain personality […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright Should you outsource word of mouth marketing or keep it within the walls of your organization? We see in the news that many types of marketing are coming back in-house these days, so I think an interesting topic is how this applies to word of mouth. Should this be an in-house competency, […]

By Ted Wright

By Scott Jenson I sell (insert thing here), how can I use WOMM to sell more stuff to more people? The easy answer is to hire our team of professional Word of Mouth Marketers at Fizz, we’ve created a proprietary system that determines what is unique about your brand and we’re pretty good at doing […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright I’ve discussed word of mouth marketing with hundreds of companies and there are certainly patterns you can see where it works and where it doesn’t. Here are the three ideal organizational requirements for successful word of mouth marketing: 1. Openness to innovation You have to like to try to do new things. […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright My friend Mark Schaefer has written an epic book called Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins. You should go buy it. Once you buy it, you will want to thank me, but there is really no need to thank me. Any way, Mark sets forth a visionary manifesto of the future […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright I have true admiration for Gwyneth Paltrow. I am deeply in love with how she is using her advocate personality to create an authentic and trusted business. Gwyneth is building her company goop based on her ability to share things she loves. And we pay attention to her because we have this […]

By Ted Wright

I know what you’re thinking,  “Who are these elusive Influencers everyone’s always talking about anyway?  What makes them special? How do you know one when you see one?”  And most importantly, “How can I get them interested in my cause?” “Influencer” is a term bandied about a little too loosely these days. In this short video, Ted […]

By Ted Wright

A guest post by Mark Schaefer For the last two years, I’ve been immersed in study and research, preparing to write a new book, Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins. The process forced me to face some very uncomfortable facts. At the top of the list — our traditional approaches to marketing don’t work […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright All good marketing begins with research and every good Word of Mouth Marketing strategy starts with insight. In many ways, marketing has strayed away from the basics of this important principle. We’ve become reliant on social media dashboards, we may be overwhelmed by big data, or we may simply not have the […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright Unlike other forms of marketing, Word of mouth marketing works slowly. It has to go slowly if it’s going to work at all. It may not increase your sales this quarter or even the next one, and if you’re accustomed to seeing a sales spike after investing in TV commercials or print ads, […]

By Ted Wright

By Ted Wright If “1” is the loneliest number than “10” is the importantist number, at least when it comes to Word of Mouth Marketing. From all of the previous research published on WOMM we know that right at 10% of any population set you can to carve out is made up of Influencers. We […]