Introduction
Word-of-mouth is the principal means by which an individual’s or organization’s reputation is spread. Opinion seekers will arguably depend on opinion leaders so as to attain their set objectives. Negative word-of-mouth travels faster as compared to positive word of mouth. Word of mouth conveys the central meaning of a product from one individual to the other. They talk things that are of mutual interest and some people tend to listen more than others. Word-of-mouth is viewed to be the best way in signaling customers’ value across the world. Since word-of-mouth is powered by the clients, champion clients spreading your reputation can exaggerate and expand your faults or virtues.
Discussion
Opinion leaders are the key figure in word-of-mouth communication. The opinion leaders include groups such as “product enthusiasts”, “market mavens” and “influentials” (Sernovitz, 2006). Thus, a stronger bond between opinion seeker and opinion leader implies that the opinion seeker will most likely operate on the recommendations given by the opinion leader. Opinion seekers are very instrumental to the opinion leaders as far as achieving their objectives is concerned.
As William & John (2004) observes where opinion leaders are spreading negative word-of-mouth about marketers’ product, they (marketers) should higher a committed representative in the social media who can carry out reputation management through screening the chat on the Web and reacting to each and every concern as efficiently as possible. This can either be done internally or handled by a consultant. ReadWriteWeb contains great review of tools (free and paid) that marketers can use to screen their online reputation, including Trackur, Google Alerts and Naymz.
Due to the reason that negative comments on most visited review sites, blogs, social networks as well as forums can be ranked top 10 in the marketer’s organization, it becomes easier for clients to get this information in the organization. Although marketers cannot beg, demand or bribe search engines so as to remove these negative comments from their indexes – marketers can always join the conversation themselves and speak to the concerned customer directly (Sernovitz, 2006).
In addition, marketers can get in touch with websites owners and negotiate modification or removal of such content. Of course some will co-operate, while others will not. Some will go to an extent of asking for money. Marketers might think that wiping out the negative comments is the ideal move, but they ought to remember that the community is watching them.
Marketers can boast about their dedication to customer service in their marketing, but unless given an opportunity to demonstrate their service, it’s all propaganda! So with improved customer services, consumers will no doubt develop confidence in them (Michael, 2006). Once end-users click to read the negative comments in the marketers’ company and read how they manage problems, it gives them increased confidence in that should anything go wrong, they can look forward to the marketer to fixing it.
Another opening will be that of pushing negative results lower in the search engines through creating web content that will outrank it. Since online retailers can as well take advantage of the available deals sites, affiliate programs, shopping comparison engines and coupons, marketers should think of selecting those websites that will allow the name of their company to show in the title tag of the page, and they should link these pages from other pages so as to build up their Page Ranks. This needs a lot of creativity.
Conclusion
Consumers at the early majority stage of the innovation adoption process will be most subject to influence of the negative information since at this stage consumers happen to sit and watch the experiences of others after which they decide on whether to buy the product (Michael, 2006).
Work Cited
Michael R. Consumer behaviour: a European perspective. New York: Prentice Hall, 2006
Sernovitz, G., Word of Mouth Marketing. London: Cambridge University Press, 2006
William L. & John K. Essentials of Marketing High Technology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004