[experiential word of mouth marketing]
On the 14th, you’ll note my post about holidays in general, and Valentine’s Day in particular. Each holiday is announced well in advance. The idea being to generating upcoming interest by merchants to make sure that during the lead up and the event customers show up at their doors.
Word-of-mouth communication tends to make people feel that they are being told the truth without any ulterior motives. Honesty is perceived and the receivers of messages are moved to perform the intended call to action at significantly higher rates than when approached by various other communication techniques. This is true because there is no perceived reward for the person that is speaking positively about the product, service or message at hand.
If you missed this video, it’s an excellent example of real one-on-one word of mouth marketing. Connecting directly with your intended audience. (Be sure to click “read the rest…” I’ve got more to say and the video to watch).
All marketing endeavors are centered around attempting to get the targeted audience to produce a certain pattern of behavior – most often to make a purchase. Marketers utilize many techniques to illicit these patterns from their targets. Guerilla marketing (influencer marketing) techniques are often used to catalyze positive word-of-mouth advertising. Key individuals are targeted to stimulate a larger number of people. When you get these key figures talking, everybody wants to jump on the wagon with them so to speak.
Traditional word-of-mouth advertising was a more naturally-occurring phenomenon. Products and services seemed to naturally cause a societal buzz and therefore become very popular and desired. Today, there are loads of techniques being utilized to create an initial word-of mouth spark that develops into a powerful advertising effect. Buzz words are intentionally injected into seemingly natural conversations from various brand ambassadors to generate the desired responses. The hope is to cause a spreading effect that self-perpetuates.
Some of the most popular websites in the world rely heavily on this buzz-creating effect. MySpace, Digg, YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter are all solid examples. Buzz-generating word-of-mouth advertising is used in conjunction with the ability of these sites to stimulate massive behavioral responses – and it works very powerfully. The Internet has brought word-of-mouth advertising to an entirely new level of efficiency and strength. Every major advertiser that’s succeeding today uses this knowledge to their full benefit.
