Are you Maximing Your Word of Mouth at Retail? Lessons from Apple - Ed Keller

In Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson talks about the seven industries that Steve Jobs revolutionized personal computers animated movies music phones tablet computing digital publishing and retailingAs we approach Thanksgiving and quotBlack Fridayquot the most important day in retail let39s consider how the Apple Stores changed business retail which is the topic of Chapter 29 in the Jobs biography It39s easy to forget how dismissive experts were when Apple decided to enter the retail business in 2001 quotMaybe it39s time for Steve Jobs to stop thinking quite so differentlyquot wrote Business Week Of course the Apple Stores went on to achieve record breaking success despite such doubts because they had a mission that was about more than providing a place for transactions with customers Jobs envisioned the stores as a center of consumer conversationword of mouthfor the entire Apple enterpriseAs Isaacson explains Jobs realized in 2000 that for Apple to be successful it needed to have a way to communicate directly with customers and the best way to do that was with retail stores But it39s not just a conversation between Apple39s employees and its customers that matters but also customertocustomer communications quotIn July 2011 a decade after the first ones opened there were 326 Apple storesquot recounts Isaacson While the stores proved to be very successful from a sales perspective quotthe stores did even more They directly accounted for only 15 of Apple39s revenues but by creating buzz and brand awareness they indirectly helped boost everything the company didquotIn other words retail for Apple was not only a sales channel but also a word of mouth channel The Apple stores became a center of consumer conversationamp8212those that happened on premise as well as the stories of a great shopping experience shared later at the water cooler or over the kitchen tableThere is a valuable lesson for all brands here According to research by my firm the Keller Fay Group 5 of all brand conversation actually occurs inside stores While not a very large percentage it is a very large volume as consumers are exposed to instore brand conversations some 750 million times per week One of the real benefits of a strategy which focuses on retail environments is that word of mouth conversations that take place in a store are by far the most likely to have active recommendations to buy or try the brand being discussed and they have the highest levels of purchase intentWhat sparks instore conversations Some are driven by the product package itself and some as a result of instore displays or videos Some are just a matter of people shopping together and talking about the relative merits of one brand versus another or about which brands are offering deals that day and are therefore worth buying But retail is also a place where people can see and sometimes sample products that excite them and share the excitement with friends or family in the storeThis is the key to Apple39s highly successful retail stores amp8211 they are a place to shop and buy but they are also a place to experience Apple products and get caught up in the emotional energy that seems to just compel visitors to talk to one anotherWith the holiday shopping season upon us it39s a strategy that all brands should be thinking about Is your brand doing all it can to maximize its word of mouth at retailEd Keller CEO of the Keller Fay Group has been called quotone of the most recognized names in word of mouthquot The publication of Keller39s book The Influentials has been called the quotseminal moment in the development of word of mouthquot Ed can be contacted at ekellerkellerfaycom You can follow Ed Keller on Twitter kellerfay Read all Edamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at WOM MattersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Are you Maximing Your Word of Mouth at Retail? Lessons from Apple - Ed Keller

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