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Word of Mouth and Buzz MarketingMost people would say that word of mouth is one of the most credible and influential forms of marketing communication, but what does it really mean and how does it happen? Word of mouth is fundamentally about customers sharing their customer experiences or reporting the experiences of others. It is an element both of reputation management and of brand building. As with all conversation, things can be distorted in the telling. However, when discussion about a brand is widespread in a community, it tends to normalize around a generally accepted view, which then becomes "the truth" on that topic. This accepted view becomes ingrained in perceptions, and the community moves on to a new topic of interest. Influencing Word of Mouth through Advertising Dinner Conversation, and How to Stop it. In the lead-up to the product launch, Optus had managed to establish a very humanistic, approachable, customer service-oriented image in the marketplace, and - using one of the largest budgets ever spent on a marketing campaign in Australia - propelled it's cost-saving and great customer service messages into the marketplace in a very engaging way. In this case, huge press interest in the opening-up of the Australian telco market, supported by extensive community-level promotional activity (and the extensive TV advertising) combined to keep the Optus launch in the front pages of the Australian media - and front of mind with consumers - for month after month. This was occurring to such an extent that (after several months) Telstra was forced to respond with a high-rotation TV advertising campaign portraying people who discussed phone call costs at the dinner table as really boring individuals! These were well thought-through commercials, featuring scenes at dinner parties where a husband or wife would drone on and on about the topic, much to the visible embarrassment of their partner. Too late! Despite Telstra's campaign, and its tactic (continued to this day) of making apples-for-apples price comparison as difficult as possible, the impression had already been created. It was accepted wisdom that Optus was cheaper. Most companies do not have such large budgets, of course. Nor are they riding on the back of a much-anticipated major structural change that would impact nearly everyone in the country. So what can businesses normally do to get word of mouth going? Creating Word of Mouth by Marketing to CommunitiesIf there was no TV, no radio, no press, no advertising on the back of taxis or at bus-stops, no email spam (please!), no internet newsletters, blogs, social networking sites, vBlogs, podcasts, banner adverts or pop-ups, and no automated telemarketing (oh, please!), how would people exchange views and form opinions? .... We all know the answer: "By talking to each other!" Note one key thing here - the people have to be in touch with one another, and for the message to go anywhere, each party has to know other people, and they in turn need to speak to others. In other words, there has to be some form of community or relationships between people. For this to be useful to a business, the community also has to be one that includes customers the business is trying to serve. So, for word-of-mouth (in its purest form) to work, you have to understand who you wish to appeal to, identify them, reach them, and provoke the conversation. Adding the press and other media back into the equation, one of their roles becomes helping the stories "jump" from one community to another (another being to spread awareness of where and how to join in). Step 2 is to create a reason and a forum for them to exchange views. Examples of where this combination has been integrated and compelling (both commercial and noncommercial) are Amazon.com's customer review posts for every product; social networking sites such as MySpace; TrekEarth, the site for photographers interested in exploring the world and reviewing each other's photos; Yahoo!'s Instant Messenger; the Open Source technical communities; and First Tuesday - originally Silicon Valley's forum for networking between technologists and Venture Capitalists (most famously during the dot com bubble). Back to topWord of Mouth comes in Three Flavoursa) Direct, person-to-person word of mouthThe direct, person-to-person form of word of mouth is obviously the most authentic source of customer experience stories. Many companies leverage such stories in their advertising and direct marketing, and in the case of business to business organizations, in their customer reference profiles and stories. b) Word of mouth from trusted third party sourcesLogically, a person will also believe secondhand information they receive from sources that are attributable and which they can assess for veracity, rigour, and objectivity. This includes recommendations, opinions, reports, feedback, and advice from specific sources. At the extreme, this is the role of the expert consultant, advisor, market researcher (in business), and of consumers' associations. Interestingly, government intelligence services routinely categorise pieces of information they receive according to two basic criteria - how reliable has the source been in the past, and how probable is it that whatever is predicted or stated in this piece of information will turn out to be true. c) Word of Mouth from non-branded communicationAdditionally, there is a third form - non-branded communication. If not impersonating word of mouth, then this at least assists it in a planned manner. The objective of this non-branded communication might be to:
This type of word of mouth is often refered to as "buzz", and stimulating it is sometimes called called "buzz marketing". Spreading Word of Mouth with Buzz Marketing and PRPeople form opinions based on the specific comments and advice from sources they know, but they also do so from impressions they acquire during their normal day to day activity. Think about reading newspapers, or listening to the radio, watching TV current affairs programs, and reading blogs or listening to podcasts. Reasonably sophisticated individuals may be aware of some bias in each of these sources, but they are all fairly intimate mental activities, in which a dialogue can occur in a person's consciousness. In other words, the "word of mouth" receptor is ON, and we're quite likely to go and discuss something we just heard about with another person. Marketing's aim in such situations is to create buzz by influencing these sources of influence - by influencing the influencers. The prime vehicle for spreading this type of word of mouth is the media (both online media and traditional), hence the importance most businesses place on PR and Corporate Communications. However, there are a range of other tactics which can be used to spread word of mouth and create marketing buzz. Back to topOther Tactics for Influencing Word of Mouth with Buzz MarketingThere are other sources of influence through which word of mouth can be steered or generated, but they vary considerably in their credibility and ethical nature. Some of the tactics used in such buzz marketing include:
Additionally, some products have great "flash" appeal where customers delight in showing the product to their acquaintances. These include the more advanced or fashionable mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras, and iPods. To a degree, these products have the ability to generate word of mouth built into their design (a point not lost on Apple's branding strategy). Great care needs to be taken when considering this form of word of mouth marketing, as authenticity is very important to most customers, and if the trust in a brand is violated it will suffer enormously. Some forms of word or mouth marketing assume that the more inconsequential / non-challenging and "bite-sized" the comment, the more likely it is to get "under the radar" and simply become one of the many thousands of factoids that each one of us absorbs each day that shape our impression of the world around us. Other forms rely on making a fairly strong initial impression, to drive interest and discussion about the product or service.
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