When FoodShare (Wisconsin’s SNAP program) users were asked how they learned they could use their benefits at the farmers’ market, Word of Mouth (n=44) and From a friend, family, colleague (n=32) were the top two responses (see the rest of the report here). Additionally, respondents (n=22) indicated they found they could use the program through other businesses/services, such as WIC or a food pantry.
What does this mean? Word-of-Mouth works in reaching not just FoodShare users, as shown in our data, but it’s also used as a powerful marketing tool to promote ideas, brands, or even consumer behavior changes (Berger and Schwartz, 2011)¹.
According to Berger and Schwartz (2011)¹, ongoing or continual word of mouth marketing is most successful when people are reminded or cued by their environment (pg.869). If reminders or cues are needed to facilitate successful word-of-mouth marketing, how does this method differ from printing and distributing a poster or flyer, or a billboard? The answer: people power. By integrating outreach with environmental cues, we believe markets have the power to efficiently, and cost-effectively reach SNAP users in their communities. So…what do you mean by ‘outreach’? We really liked the definition of outreach developed at the University of Kansas’ Community Toolbox: Here is the direct quote from the toolbox resource that we used to support our market partners in improving outreach to SNAP users in Wisconsin: People use the word “outreach” to describe a wide range of activities, from actual delivery of services to dissemination of information. As a tool to help expand access to healthy services, practices or products, outreach is most often designed to accomplish one of the following (or some combination): For our project, we focused on the last three forms of outreach: educating or informing the target population (SNAP users); educating or informing the people who interact with the target population (WIC clinic workers, food pantry workers, other community-service providing organization partners and staff); and establishing beneficial connections between people and/or organizations (SNAP users to farmers’ markets; farmers’ markets to other community-based organizations). Find out more about our Community Connector model here Word-of-Mouth (WOM) Marketing and Outreach
1) Jonah Berger, Eric M. Schwartz (2011) What Drives Immediate and Ongoing Word of Mouth?. Journal of Marketing Research: October 2011, Vol. 48, No. 5, pp. 869-880. 2) DeChiara, M., Unruh,E., Wolff ,T., Rosen.A., with Community Partners, Inc. Outreach Works: Strategies for Expanding Health Access in Communities. 24 South Prospect St., Amherst MA 01002, 2001.References