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Buzz Marketing

Written by: Mark Deo

Article Overview: Buzz Marketing. Why does it work, but more importantly, how can I get it to work for me?

Buzz Marketing

What influences customers and prospects? Is it what a company says about their product or service through advertising, marketing and direct sales?

Or, is it what other people are saying about the company's product or service?

Surely, it’s the later. Then why do we spend so much time and money on traditional marketing, advertising and selling, and so very little on word of mouth marketing?

From Your Mouth to Their Ears
Most marketing focuses on building a case for a better product or service. This is good and necessary but it ignores the fact that for many, purchasing is part of a social decision. People rely on invisible networks of friends, relatives and co-workers for recommendations. This is buzz. I have spoken before about establishing a unique identity, branding and differentiation. Buzz is the natural extension of a branding and identity campaign. This is beginning to take a much more influential role in the purchasing decision.

Why Buzz Works
Today customers are suffering from information overload. They see and hear so many advertising and marketing messages that it becomes difficult to filter out what is valuable and credible through all the clutter and noise. As a result, customers are turning to their friends and associates for purchasing advice more than ever. Marketing experts believe that the new customer, Generation Y - those born between 1979 and 1994 - shop by word of mouth. In the coming years, buzz marketing may that much more important.

Buzz works so well because talking is in our genes. As human beings, we need to talk. We talk to connect with people. Sharing information is essential to our make-up. We talk about the latest movie we saw, the car we test drove, the book we read and so on.

How to Create Buzz
Here's some simple ways to create buzz about your product or service:

1. Good buzz begins with a positive customer experience.
There is no substitute for exceptional performance. The key here is to under promise and over deliver. Try to change your thinking from: "I need to get this sale," to "How can I get this prospect to talk about my product or service?"

2. Give a little away.
Ask yourself, "How can I get people to experience my product or service without them making a big commitment? How can I giveaway a small piece of my product or service so that people will start talking about it?" When Hotmail launched its web-based free email service, it experienced the fastest adoption rate of any product ever introduced. Subscriptions went from 0 to 12 million in just 18 months. Also, each person who signed up helped to recruit other members because a message was sent with each email.

3. Work at building trust
Let's face it at the core most customers and prospects are just plain skeptical. They don't trust us. To begin with, they don't know us. They don't know our values, our history, or our background. The more we tell them how great we are and how wonderful our product and service is, the less they trust us. Instead of pushing our product or service, let the product spread itself through the invisible customer networks through good buzz.

4. Know your customer.
If you want to create buzz, you have to know your customer and how you are reaching them. Ask yourself the following: From whom do your customers learn about your products? What do people say when they recommend your products? In what invisible networks are your products discussed? What kind of information spreads through the networks fastest?

When you follow these simple steps, your product or service should be the buzz of the town in short time!

Related Articles
  The Failsafe Way to Create Buzz for a New Product Launch
  Is Google’s Buzz Light Years Ahead of the Competition?
  Supernatural Promotions
  Parents, Privacy Watchdogs Up in Arms Against Google Buzz
  How Social Proof Can Make or Break Your Business

Article Tags: advertising marketing, buzz marketing, clutter, co workers, customer experience, customer generation, differentiation, ears, friends relatives, generation y, genes, human beings, invisible networks, marketing advertising, prospects, social decision, time and money, traditional marketing, word of mouth, word of mouth marketing



Related Forum Posts
Re: Google Buzz - Any Thoughts? - [quote="Trent Brownrigg":suimkaob]I'm not too big into these social sites but Buzz looks to be just as good as the next. I have started using it more and more.[/quote:suimkaob] How are you finding it Trent. I haven't got around to it yet have been very busy with offline work and so my time has been limited and have used it adding more articles etc to my website. Still have Buzz on my to do list. MichelleJ
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.
Re: Google Buzz - Any Thoughts? - [quote="MichelleJ":3u0447fv][quote="Trent Brownrigg":3u0447fv]I'm not too big into these social sites but Buzz looks to be just as good as the next. I have started using it more and more.[/quote:3u0447fv] How are you finding it Trent. I haven't got around to it yet have been very busy with offline work and so my time has been limited and have used it adding more articles etc to my website. Still have Buzz on my to do list. MichelleJ[/quote:3u0447fv] It seems to be similar to Twitter but you are not limited in length on what you write and people can directly reply to your updates kind of like on Facebook. It's sort of a cross between the two. I like it better than Twitter but not as much as Facebook so it's somewhere in between in my opinion.
Re: Google Buzz - Any Thoughts? - I'm not too big into these social sites but Buzz looks to be just as good as the next. I have started using it more and more.
Re: Let’s talk about the ways of marketing your products, servic - I agree with some of the others who responded it depends on what your selling... but to answer your questions here are some of the methods I use. Forum Marketing Yahoo Answers (I need to use more of) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Bum Marketing or Article marketing P-P-C (Pay Per Click) Marketing Online Directories Hope this helps.


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