At the October Business Marketing
Association, Milwaukee Chapter meeting, we listened to a fantastic presentation
about word of mouth marketing from Spike Jones from Brains on Fire.
Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing "encompasses
dozens of marketing techniques that are geared toward encouraging
and helping people to talk to each other about products and
services", according to the Word of
Mouth Marketing Association or WOMMA.
Here are just a few types of WOM from WOMMA:
- Buzz Marketing:
using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk
about your brand.
- Viral Marketing:
creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to
be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or
by email. Example: YouTube videos.
- Community
Marketing: forming or supporting niche communities that
are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups,
fan clubs, and discussion forums) providing tools, content, and
information to support those communities. Example: Adobe Users
Group for programmers.
- Grassroots
Marketing: organizing and motivating volunteers to engage
in personal or local outreach. Example: political action
groups.
- Evangelist
Marketing: cultivating evangelists, advocates, or
volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively
spreading the word on your behalf.
- Product Seeding:
placing the right product into the right hands at the right time,
providing information or samples to influential individuals.
Examples: Free samples at trade shows.
- Influencer
Marketing: identifying key communities and opinion leaders
who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to
influence the opinion of others.
- Cause Marketing:
supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people
who feel strongly about the cause. Example: "Truth" television ads
about smoking.
- Conversation
Creation: interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch
phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of
mouth activity. Example: "How many licks does it take to get to the
center of the Tootsie Pop".
- Brand Blogging:
creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere in the spirit
of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value
that the blog community may talk about. Example: Microsoft and
Apple.
- Referral Programs:
creating tools that enable satisfied customer to refer their
friends. Example: "Send to a Friend" links on websites and
emails.
While WOM has been around in various forms for ages, the
key take-away is that people buy from other people first. We may be
inundated with advertising on television, radio, newspapers,
emails, texts, billboards, bus signs, and pop-ups; but when we
really want the facts, we get it from people we trust--family,
friends, co-workers, etc. It's these people that talk about the
products, services, and companies that can influnce our purchasing,
whether we know it or not.