Bringing SEXY Back to Offline Word of Mouth

Join Geno Church for his workshop, Bringing Sexy Back to Offline Marketing, on Sunday, October 16, 2011 3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. at the PRSA 2011 International Conference, Oct. 15–18 in Orlando, Fla.!

During my session, I’ll help you refocus your public relations efforts and evaluate the power of offline word of mouth for your brand.

With all the social media buzz floating around the public relations industry, let’s look at a few statistics:

• 90% of word of mouth happens offline (face-to- face or voice-to-voice) – Keller Faye Group
• 10% of word of mouth happens online (social media, email, texting) – Keller Faye Group
• 93% of retail sales happens offline – Forrester Research report

So why all this focus and attention on online word of mouth? It’s because offline Word of Mouth is very difficult to do. It’s because marketers treat word of mouth as an output (sustaining the conversation) and not as an input (starting the conversation).

It’s time to talk about The 5th P… PEOPLE

Do you TRUST people? I mean REALLY, trust people? The reason TRUST is so important is you must give permission to your employees and customers to share why they love what it is they do with others in honest and authentic ways.

The focus of your business should not be the technology. It should be the PEOPLE. After all, we’re all HUMAN BEINGS not HUMAN Doers. PEOPLE are the KILLER APP.

After attending my session, you’ll know how to:

• Be famous for the people who love you for the way you love them.
• Identify passion conversations versus product conversations.
• Walk, listen, and talk with your employees and customers.
• Empower your hand raisers.

I look forward to seeing you in Orlando!

Geno Church is the word-of-mouth inspiration officer at Brains on Fire. He previously worked on campaigns for Fiskars Brands, Best Buy, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the American Booksellers Association, Charleston Parks Conservancy, Love146 and Rage Against the Haze (South Carolina’s youth-led anti-tobacco movement).

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