18 Ways to Create Marketing Buzz by Elizabeth Gordon
Are you looking for ways to get people talking about your brand? An increasing
frustration with traditional media has driven businesses and marketing firms to
start employing more creative means of getting customers attention beyond the
traditional media outlets. You may hear this referred to as viral,
word-of-mouth or buzz marketing and this method is attaining broad popularity
as an inexpensive and highly effective marketing method.
What is Viral Marketing, Word-of-Mouth, or Buzz Marketing? Viral Marketing is a
way of capturing attention of consumers and the media to the point where
talking about your brand becomes interesting conversation. Generating a buzz is
based on either customers' personal experience with brands or what other people
have told them about these brands. When this experience becomes interesting,
your brand and what your company is doing become a source of entertainment, and
your brand becomes newsworthy. Basically it's unconventional, it's economical
and it's powerful. Buzz marketing is capturing the attention of consumers and
the media to the point where talking about your brand becomes entertaining,
fascinating, and newsworthy. Buzz marketing is about starting conversations. In
a nutshell, buzz marketing is about getting people talking and getting the
media writing about your brand. With Buzz Marketing you stop talking at
consumers, and start talking to them.
Why does buzz work? Today's noisy advertising environment has forced marketers
to become more creative and some say even slightly devious with their methods.
Consumers are subject to constant information overload and are wary and
distrustful of companies due to scandals and scams they have heard about or
been victims of in the past. All of that buyer's remorse from past bad purchase
decisions has built up and created a wall of sales resistance that they
psychologically throw up whenever faced with something that appears to be a
marketing message or sales pitch. Conversely, consumers like to rely on friends
and peers for product and service recommendations and will do less shopping
around and are more apt to act based on recommendations of people the know.
This has long fueled efforts to increase customer referrals for companies.
Another way to enter a customer's mindshare is through buzz marketing, which is
simply the process of sharing information through the natural social networks
of your target market that helps them in the decision-making process. That way,
instead of coming from a faceless and distrusted corporation, the marketing
message instead seems to emanate from the most powerful endorser possible: your
coolest friend.
What are the benefits? Many are saying that buzz represents the future and will
surpass traditional ads in regards to maintaining consumer brand-interest. If I
can involve one person really deeply in my brand in 50 cities, vs. 50 people in
one city, I'll take the former every time, says Mark Hughes, author of
Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff. Jon Berry of research
company Nop World, and author of The Influentials, argues that word of mouth is
worth more than twice what it was in the 1970s in affecting consumer purchases,
and it's 150 percent more influential than newspaper and magazine advertising
or articles. Another benefit of buzz marketing is the ability to break through
customers' natural defense mechanisms that they typically have up when
receiving marketing messages. Customers think of you more like a friend and
less like a business trying to sell them something, and that is a great place
to be.
You're speaking face-to-face, which gives you attention and mindshare. Another
reason word of mouth works so well is credibility. When your friend, neighbor,
co-worker or a family member tells you about a great movie, product or service
you believe them. They're not being paid to pitch the item and so you give them
full credibility. That's why having a great product matters so much: If you can
really wow people, they will tell their friends and neighbors. Such
face-to-face attention creates superior memory retrieval. In a study of two
groups presented with advertising information with the brand removed, only 49
percent of people recalled advertising based on a visual cue, while 70 percent
recalled advertising from a thirty-second musical cue. Given the right context
of attention, audio stimuli can be far superior to visual.
Buzz marketing is one of the hottest trends in marketing today. By applying
these 18 techniques in your business you'll see people buzzing about your
brand.
Here's how to do it:
1. Start with your initial or existing base of satisfied customers. While
enrolling new consumers, a successful buzz marketing strategy bases itself on
the impact these consumers could have on the next potential customer. Providing
a positive customer experience establishes trust. This trust is rewarded with
consumers acting as buzz marketing agents, literally working for brands free of
charge. The consumers who are first to climb aboard and become evangelists of
your brand.
2. Pick a target market you can find. Where does your target market hang out?
If you're selling hot pink lipstick you might find that your main customers are
at the corner of Pine and Main Street wearing stilettos and pleather. Make them
easily definable and be able to name the specific areas where they go so you
can target your target market.
3. Find the thought leaders. Every social culture has its thought leaders.
Building a successful buzz campaign hinges on finding the right carriers for
the message: influencers who are obsessed with staying one step ahead of their
peers. You must find, connect, and collaborate with the people who influence
your brand, lead opinions, and spread word of mouth. Look for opinion-leading
individuals who frequently offer or are elicited for category-related advice.
Thought leaders are the 10percent of society that help influence the majority
of all purchasing decisions. They are not necessarily the customers who spend
the most money with you, but they are the most important people you can reach
because your target market takes their advice. They hold a social power that
will amplify the affect of your word of mouth campaign.
After finding influencers, make sure that you develop ongoing, two-way
relationships with them from giving them a trial before the product is
available to the mass market, to going back a step and getting them involved in
your research and development. Try to give them experiences that exceed
expectations. This will generate goodwill and advocacy that will go a long way
toward kick-starting positive word of mouth and wider interest in your product,
service, or campaign.
4. Again, find the influences and give out freebies. Think outside of the box.
Rather than blitzing the airways with expensive TV commercials, give out
freebies to select people who are trendsetters. Targeting the influential
people you will get more visibility for your product or service by others who
are their friends or assistants and who will buy based on the trendsetters. It
is worth it to give out what you can for free that will allow customers to
experience how great your brand is.
5. Use fake shoppers. One way to get closer to your customers is to show up
right under their noses without them even seeing you. Often buzz marketers
cover their tracks, at least initially. Slip into the conversational pathways
of the target market and those who heavily influence their peers.
6. Work at a grassroots level. Get out there and hit the streets. Buzz requires
manpower, whether its volunteers, paid representative, or evangelists that just
can't stop talking. Create a culture around your brand, something that people
can stand for, support and be proud of. Get into their neighborhoods. The most
successful buzz marketers start on the streets, in the places people live, eat,
work, socialize, etc..
7. Piggyback off an existing trend or cause. Look for a trend that your target
audience is currently interested in, such as environmentalism. If you can show
them that you are interested in the same things that they are, you'll make fast
friends and get them talking.
8. Go to the point of sale. Stage an impromptu demonstration, create a display
that will attract your customers or have actors put on a show around your
product. If you are going to get people talking, get them talking as close to
the point of purchase decision as possible.
9. The more unusual and shocking the better. Traditional ad campaigns have lost
some of their punch while quirkier campaigns have generated huge grassroots
followings for their brands with laughably low marketing expenditures. Use what
people naturally like to talk about by creating a messages that contain one or
more of these 6 elements. The taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humor, etc.) The
unusual The outrageous The hilarious The remarkable Secrets (both kept and
revealed)
10. Be completely believable. When you have your consumer do marketing for you,
it is credible, less expensive and enormously believable.
11. Make it personal. Using the viral strategy on a humdrum product category,
will not yield your best results. Buzz marketing still seems to work best for
the relatively narrow range of products and services that consumers care deeply
about because of their physical intimacy, technical complexity or
status-enhancing potential.
12. Create a sense of scarcity. Lure those key consumers with coveted
items--whether hot news, loaner cars, or cool gadgets--that are in short
supply, and let the buzz begin.
13. Be bold and extreme. Companies that play on the extremes of being either
totally authentic or blatantly unoriginal are memorable and different. Although
a buzz campaign may have fictional elements, the premise should be true to the
brand. Make sure your buzz campaign fits with your overall ad strategy.
Similarly, being totally irreverent can get people talking as well; just make
sure consumers don't feel duped. Be sure to test your humor out on a sample of
your target market first.
14. Leverage the internet and buzz with blogs. From large corporations such as
GM and Microsoft to entrepreneurs, businesspeople of all kinds are using blogs
as a tool to connect with customers and internal audiences in new ways. They're
generating unprecedented buzz, and exponentially amplifying word of mouth
marketing. A single successful blog can attract tens or even hundreds of
thousands of visitors. Done right, they can give back loyalty, goodwill, and
valuable feedback. The best part is they often spread that message to others
within their sphere of influence through blogs, instant messenger or e-mail.
15. Don't overlook quality and customer service. Make sure that your product,
service or brand is of a quality level that stands out next to competitors. The
last thing you want is to have all this talk you generated turn into
complaints. Customer service should be given extra attention while you are
working a buzz campaign. Good service and superior quality are so unique they
create an inherent buzz of self-propelling word of mouth and customer
recommendations.
16. Do something innovative. Buzz is great for anything new and innovative, but
if your product is not innovative in itself, then put extra creativity in the
execution to generate that buzz.
17. Measure as much as you can. Connected marketing is not about control; it's
about management. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. The initial
contact may look spontaneous, but it's anything but, and the back end of your
campaign should be meticulously planned and the results carefully measured.
Marketers are even attempting to quantify how often their message will be
passed along and how many downstream consumers they need to influence before a
fad is born. Obviously, using online capabilities will make this kind of
measurement more easily and precisely monitored. At the very least it will show
you whether or not your efforts paid for themselves, best case scenario you can
determine the exact ROI. Figure out what types of data do you want to collect,
the measurement of recommendation rates, what specific actions should be taken
post-measurement, and what influences the recommended rate and how marketers
improve recommendation rates.
18. Integrate the campaign with the overall marketing strategy. It is time to
develop internal and external connected marketing strategies that integrate
product development and marketing activities in innovative ways, enabling
consumers and businesses to connect and collaborate with each other as
respected partners in order to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Don't fall
into thinking that if you get buzz you don't need any marketing. Buzz marketing
should be one part of an overall integrated marketing communications plan. Good
buzz is the best thing you could wish for. But, in most cases, distribution,
advertising, promotion and other traditional concepts are essential to
translate the goodwill surrounding your product into sales. The focus should be
not on whether something is classified as traditional or guerrilla, mainstream
or viral--but on whether it works. Focus on results, and don't get caught up in
any single marketing ideology. It is best to start little fires in lots of
places and fan them afterwards.
Implement these techniques and watch the buzz get started. For more information
about how you can create a marketing buzz, visit www.flourishingbusiness.com.
About the Author
Elizabeth Gordon, founder and President of The Flourishing Business, LLC, is a
visionary leader who has a passion for helping others achieve their
entrepreneurial dreams and enjoy more of the best in life. With a vast and
diverse background in many business arenas, Elizabeth regularly has the
opportunity to share her business acumen with clients, large and small. She
currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Women
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