A Word of Mouth Marketing Success Story: IKEA and I

I’ve never really been to IKEA until recently. I went once, but my colleague and I rushed through it like a thunder storm, looking for some photo frames, so we missed most of it. Why did I go to IKEA in the end? Word of mouth, of course, from several sources. They all lead me to believe IKEA is a must see when decorating a new home, they made me envision a dreamy place where all your ideas could come true. I fell in love with these huge shrine to all all things interior design and I thought I should stop and analyze how it all happened. I believe there are quite a few lessons to be learned from this experience, which is in no way unique. Continue reading

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How to find problems to fix

When you think of marketing a product or a service, you have to consider what kind of issues it will help your customer with. But just telling them what problems you’re solving might not be very convincing. You need to also show how it all works. So what can you do: talk to your current customers and start writing a few case studies. Then move along to publishing a few testimonials on your site.

But when you’re new, there aren’t hordes of customers to show off. And even when there are, they might not be cool enough to draw that much attention. So what can you do then? Well, it’s easy: scan the papers, magazines, portals and blogs for news on a problem you could solve popping up in the life of someone important. A star, a state department, some sort of royalty, there are dozens of possibilities. Continue reading

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