Launch events are a prime opportunity to generate word of mouth for your company/brand, product, or service. How best to harness their potential?
Yesterday I attended the launch of the Ecoroofs Everywhere campaign, which aims to cover in 5 years more than 12,500 acress of conventional roofs in Portland, Oregon with ecoroofs. The social included a tour of The Burnside Rocket building’s decorative and edible ecoroof; the highlighted edible part had supplied the fresh produce that the tenant Noble Rot restaurant used for some of the party finger food.
According to Andy Sernovitz’s word of mouth marketing cookbook, to generate word of mouth you need talkers, topics, tools, taking part, and tracking.
The Ecoroofs Everywhere campaign launch attracted a good crowd of almost 100 people interested in the ecoroof concept; the event helped reinforce these talkers‘ favorable view of ecoroofs. And though guests may have not been asked directly to spread the word about the campaign or support it with other actions, I suspect most guests will recall and share their experience.
The topic is clear cut and very talkable: growing a decorative or edible garden on your roof. While execution comes with a number of logistical challenges, the two tour guides (see pictures) presented edible ecoroofs as doable, fun, and sustainable. Everyone was engaged, fascinated even – you could almost see the brain wheels spinning.
Launch events are well suited for any word of mouth marketing campaign. If you have a topic you want your talkers to talk about, your launch event is a tool that can get the conversation going. The Ecoroofs Everywhere launch party attempted to just that. Keeping their presence fairly low key outside of acknowledgements, the organizers smartly let the ecoroof tell the story, which partly even overshadowed the story of the campaign itself.
The key is to use your launch event as the foundation of your word of mouth marketing campaign.
Communication before the Ecoroofs Everywhere launch event was outstanding. For example, everyone I talked to had heard about it from a friend or a mailing list (I’d heard about it from three different sources). The morning of, guests were reminded to bring a rain jacket and non-slippery shoes.
Following your launch event, take part in the campaign to build the momentum with follow up communication, calls to action, updates, future events, and similar touches – additional tools of the word of mouth marketing campaign. Building on your launch event is challenging, if only because you will spend a lot of energy on the event itself. Yet all too often a big-bang launch fails to harness the positive energy it generated. Continuous and consistent engagement is essential.
You may thank your guests for coming and ask them to take some action. In the case of Ecoroofs Everywhere the action may be scheduling an assessment of your roof, contacting your local elected official to express support, or subscribing to their blog.
Later communication may may include email updates with news and photographs of completed projects, interviews with happy ecoroof owners, or successes on the public policy level. Because the launch social was such a powerful experience, the Ecoroofs Everywhere campaign has a tremendous opportunity to build on it throughout its duration with tours of other ecoroofs around Portland. Sign me up!
Finally, because what gets measured gets done, word of mouth marketing campaign tracking serves to demonstrate its success, behind the scenes and publicly. Tracking may help Ecoroofs Everywhere monitor progress internally, and the figures may then help publicize it in follow up communications with supporters and the general public.
Have you used launch events in your word of mouth marketing campaigns? What launch events have you seen succeed in generating continuous word of mouth?
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Update: The good people at Ecoroofs Everywhere did indeed follow up with a personable thank you note containing distinct calls to action. I look forward to staying in touch!
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Comment from Facebook:
Blair Edmiston said, “Wanted to make it. Greg and Dan are getting it done and stepping it up! Cool to see it happen.”