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10 Simple Ways to Generate Buzz & Word-of-Mouth Part 4

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All of this week, we have been looking at the different methods of creating Buzz & Word-of-Mouth Marketing, and doing it right! In our first edition we looked at Buzz & Word-of-Mouth marketing, then we examined Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Success Stories, & in our last post, we looked at ways to Actively Work to Promote Buzz. Today in our final addition to the series, we hit the streets, figure out where to find our big mouths, and creating a business blog. Lets jump straight in…

Hitting the streets

Another way to promote buzz is to take your product or service literally to the streets: to pound pavements where people are out and about, walking and driving. This method isn’t the same as outdoor advertising on billboards, signposts and car livery; instead, it’s more about meeting and greeting potential customers.

For example, we recommend doing such simple and low-budget advertising as putting stickers on every lamppost to build awareness of your brand. When The New York Times started its online service, it hired a small ad agency that gave out paper spoons with the company’s Web site on them, and when those people logged on, they could print out a coupon for a cheap but yummy meal at Daily Soup, a popular café in midtown New York City. That strategy generated buzz about the Web site.

Figuring out where to find your big mouths

In addition to finding the right type of big mouth, you need to know where best to reach him. Finding your market maven requires creative thinking on your part, because you know best (or at least you should!) where your customers are most readily found.

For example: A nurse in San Diego wanted to make more black women aware of and knowledgeable about diabetes and breast cancer. She began in what she thought was the right place, by targeting black churches, but she found that the women who stayed after services were already knowledgeable, and the rest of the congregations just wanted to get home.

So she thought about finding a place where black women would have more time and be more relaxed and therefore be more open to receiving information, and she realized that the best place for her to generate word of mouth was at the beauty salon. So she taught hairdressers to be her mavens, her big mouths, and she generated the buzz she wanted in order to educate women about these diseases and to encourage them to get mammograms and find out even more about how they can protect themselves.

Creating a blog about your business

WOMMA (See Getting the Terminology Straight) also offers a Womnibus (another great name) that posts useful information on the WOMMA Web site for people interested in word-of-mouth marketing trends. WOMMA touts the Womnibus as the primary resource for advertisers wanting to get involved with word-of-mouth strategies. One Womnibus described a study conducted by the Pew research organization about the prevalence of blogs (short for Web logs) as of mid-2007. Among the key findings:

• Eight percent of consumers (12 million U.S. adults) keep a blog, up from 7 percent in 2006.
• Thirty-nine percent of consumers (57 million U.S. adults) read blogs, an increase from 27 percent in 2006.

Pew concludes that blogs have become one of the key media for word of mouth marketing. Maybe this strategy is something that could work for your business, if your target market spends a lot of time on the Internet. If you plan to start a weblog to encourage buzz and word of mouth marketing, i would suggest Darren at ProBlogger would be a good place to find out exactly what is involved in starting a weblog, and the various different ways in which you can market your blog.

Conclusion

As you can see from this series, there is still a lot of buzz about buzz marketing & word-of-mouth marketing, and it is still an essential part of any marketing campaign you run for your product or service. Whether it be utilizing a big mouth to talk your product or service, hiring beautiful people to promote your company, or just . All will go a long way to increasing the buzz around your product or service, and when you have good buzz, you have word-of-mouth too. Perhaps you have a particular method of creating buzz, or good word-of-mouth marketing? Id be delighted to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment with your suggestion or questions. Ill always do my best answer all comments or emails i receive.

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.