Word of mouth marketing
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Word-of-mouth marketing is a term used in the marketing and advertising industry to describe activities that companies undertake to generate personal recommendations as well as referrals for brand names, products and services.
Word-of-mouth promotion is highly valued by advertisers. It is believed that this form of communication has valuable source credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe word-of-mouth promotion than more formal forms of promotion methods because the receiver of word-of-mouth referrals may believe that the communicator is unlikely to have an ulterior motive (ie.: they are not receiving an incentive for their referrals.) Also people tend to believe people who they know. In order to promote and manage word-of-mouth communications, marketers use publicity techniques as well as viral marketing methods to achieve desired behavioral response.
A very successful word-of-mouth promotion creates buzz. Buzz generates a highly intense and interactive form of word-of-mouth referral that occurs both online and offline. Successful word-of-mouth initiatives do not follow a strictly linear process with information flowing from one individual to another rather successful models leverage subgroup connectivity and relationships by pursuing a Reed's Law hub approach to message distribution. A marketer has successfully created buzz when the interactions are so intense that the information moves in a matrix pattern rather than a linear one. The result is everyone is talking about or purchase the product or service.
Examples
- Gmail - Google did no marketing, they spent no money. They created scarcity by giving out Gmail accounts only to a handful of "power users." Other users who aspired to be like these power users "lusted" for a Gmail account and this manifested itself in their bidding for Gmail invites on eBay. Demand was created by limited supply; the cachet of having a Gmail account caused the word of mouth, rather than any marketing activities by Google.
- FreshDirect - FreshDirect did no marketing to cause the word of mouth. They did exceed expectations of consumers who used their service. These consumers in turn raved about FreshDirect to their friends voluntarily and even spent time convincing them to try it. Word of mouth resulted from FreshDirect so far exceeding expectations that their customers naturally wanted to share, brag, or talk about it.
- Chain e-mail about certain product/service can be considered as word of mouth marketing.
Contrast with (non-examples)
- Hotmail - Hotmail "piggybacked" on personal emails from one person to another to publicize their free email service. At a time when few people had email, the first and only free email service in the marketplace was appealing and novel -- hence their rapid adoption and spread. However, the same "piggybacking" technique currently employed by all free email providers (except gmail) no longer works. Furthermore, the Hotmail users did not voluntarily pass it on; they had no choice about Hotmail adding the "sign up" link at the end of their personal emails. Hence this is not a good example of "word of mouth."
- Burger King's Subservient Chicken - Burger King's marketing program called Subservient Chicken did indeed generate a lot of word of mouth, but the word of mouth was about the marketing campaign instead of the product that was being marketed. Also, those marketing efforts which rely on being edgy or on some kind of stunt often fade quickly when the novelty or edge wears off. Finally, this type of marketing is not reproducible or sustainable since it won't be edgy the second time around.
- McDonald's LincolnFry - a fake blog was discovered, and it generated lots of negative word of mouth and little participation.
- American Express' billboard - a fake blog poster who told readers to check out a great Amex billboard was found to be an Ogilvy employee; this violation of trust resulted in massive negative word of mouth which spread around the world.
See also
- Marketing
- Marketing 2.0
- Promotion
- Publicity
- Viral marketing
- Word of mouth
- Business Marketing
- Online marketing
- Reputation management
References
- Rajdeep Grewal, Thomas W. Cline, and Anthony Davies, 'Early-Entrant Advantage, Word-of-Mouth Communication, Brand Similarity, and the Consumer Decision-Making Process,' Journal of Consumer Psychology Vol. 13 No. 3, June 2003.
External links
- [Word of mouth marketing] at the Open Directory Project
- [Commercial Alert's page on buzz marketing]
- [BoldMouth and Osterman Research study titled Perceptions, Practices and Ethics in Word-of-Mouth Marketing]
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