Word of Mouth

Word of mouth marketing encompasses dozens of marketing techniques that are geared toward encouraging and helping people to talk to each other about products and services. Before we get into the most common types of word of mouth, let’s do a little review.

Word of Mouth is…
- The voice of the customer
- A natural, genuine, honest process
- People seeking advice from each other
- Customers talking about products, services, or brands

Most Common types of word of mouth marketing are listed below.

Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand. Check out one of my favorite books on the subject
Buzz Marketing Book>

Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.
Learn more>

Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.
Learn more>

Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.
Learn more>

Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.
My favorite book on the subject>

Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.
Learn more>

Influencer Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.
Learn more>

Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.
Learn more>

Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about. (if you don’t have a blog then go get one today. Facebook is okay for now.)

Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends.