This post has nothing to do with Barbra Streisand movies or characters in musicals. It has to do with us, or at least most of us. We’re yentas. In fact, we’re in the golden age of yentas and that can be a very good thing if you’re a marketer who embraces it.
My grandmother used the term in the sense I mean it: a gossip. Oh sure, she had old women in mind when she’d proclaim someone to be one but today age has nothing to do with it. The more common marketing term might be brand advocate or influencer but to me it’s all the same thing and if you’ll stay with me a minute, I can explain.
Social media has become the world’s party line. As Wikipedia points out:
The completely non-private party lines were a cultural fixture of rural areas for many decades, and were frequently used as a source of entertainment and gossip, as well as a means of quickly alerting entire neighborhoods in case of emergencies such as fires…When the party line is already in use, if any of the other subscribers to that line pick up the phone, they can hear and participate in the conversation. Eavesdropping opportunities abounded…
Sounds like Facebook or Twitter to me! But if you’re a marketer, these yenta-facilitating technologies can have a powerful influence on your success:
According to a research study conducted by Dr. Kathleen R. Ferris-Costa, University of Rhode Island, College of Business Administration, brand advocates, people who habitually review products and share their opinions with others around them, write more than twice as many communications about brands as the average Web user, and forward between two and three times more of other people’s online communications about brands. Brand advocates are 70% more likely to be seen as a good source of information by people around them.
That can be both positive and negative, obviously. Many of us share when we have a great experience and even more seem to share when they have a bad one. We all seem to know what are friends are doing, what they’re buying, where they’re eating, and with whom they’re partying, exactly the sort of stuff that is the yenta’s stock in trade but that’s less of a concern to a brand than the fact that this sort of information has a 50% higher likelihood of influencing a product decision than other information.
If I’m a marketer, I’d be more worried when the data shows that my brand ISN’T being talked about. Finding the yentas, creating the buzz, and converting it to sales is what marketing has become.
What do you think?
Consult Keith 