Buzz Marketing or Marketing Word of Mouth

Our generation lives in a world where the media, understanding media as TV, internet or radio, involves us 24/7 and this can sometimes led us to be saturated about it. This saturation and the reiteration of spots can generate among us, consumers, a high level of skepticism and resistance to the messages marketers want to give us. This is why traditional publicity loses efficiency and appears the Buzz Marketing or Marketing Word of Mouth.

The Buzz Marketing is a technique based on the rumor extension or the exchange of information from a person to another one. This information is usually recommendations and also general information someone can give us but in a more informal way than in the communication media or traditional marketing. The Marketing Word of Mouth is normally referred to spoken communication, but Internet dialogs, like blogs, chats or e-mails are also sometimes included. Who would we take in consideration more than a friend or a neighbor, right?

I think it’s a really interesting topic, as the word of mouth is the most antique way of doing marketing and there aren’t many companies that know how to take advantage of it. We are constantly interacting with others and we make our own thoughts or ideas about products (in this case) from the experiences of others, among other things. That’s why if a marketer it’s not afraid of dealing with some taboo topics sometimes, he can make the buzzmarketing a very powerful tool to catch the attention of the consumer.

There are some authors that have talked and written about the Marketing Word of Mouth. Of them, the one that has cached my attention is Mark Hughes former vice president of marketing of eBay’s Half.com who has written the book Buzzmarketing: Get people talk about your stuff. The following link is an article of the USA Today that explains what if buzzmarketing giving special attention to Mark Hughes book:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2005-07-25-buzz-marketing_x.htm

I have also chosen this topic because I think I can connect it in many ways to the subject as the word of mouth is all about understanding customers insights and reach consumers in an informal but really effective way. To show how this topic is connected with consumer experiences, what a better way than using a reference from the article mentioned before which I think that hits the nail on the head of how to create a buzz:

To create buzz, you need to know how to push the right buttons. They include: the taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humor); the unusual; the outrageous; the hilarious; the remarkable; and secrets (both kept and revealed).

There are also some questions I make myself about the word of mouth. Questions like: How effective this marketing really is? How can we quantify its impact? What is the best way to make customers talk about a product? Would they recommend it? Is it a bad buzz of our product better than not having a buzz at all? etc.

This is why, in my opinion, the Buzzmarketing is a really interesting topic to get into depth and compile as much information as I can. It can be really effective if we, as future marketers, understand our product and the consumer we target. As I already said in this blog, the word of mouth is the oldest and more effective form of marketing so lets learn how to use it. Lets start spreading the buzz.

The Phenomenon of Social Network

In today’s world, in which we are all involved in a let’s say difficult economic situation that has cached up the concern of everyone. There is a latent phenomenon that let’s people worldwide stay 24/7 in touch and from which companies are starting to take advantage of: Social Networking.

As we have talked several times about, a characteristic that today’s generation has is the amount of information which is reachable for us. This situation is linked with the appearance of tools as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 or Tuenti (this last one in Spain) in our everyday life. Not so long ago, the only way for knowing about others was being physically in the same place or making calls from the only fix telephone everyone had at home. Today if we don’t have the option of talking whoever we want and share our thoughts immediately we think we are disconnected of the world. Of course this worldwide connection influences in our way of being as customers.

The social network we are involved in lets us share our thoughts about any product or service we consume with people rather than we know or that we are linked with for being consumers of the same product. This is why (linking this blog with last weeks topic) we don’t only have a large wide of choice in our daily consuming decisions but we can also build our own thoughts from the experiences of others. In some way our customer insights are totally generated for a social living experience stimulated by the world of mouth.

With the more information we have it decreases the uncertainty when we consume. This, in consequence reduces the risk we have when we take a decision as a customer, which is a fact that people is starting to appreciate more and more because of the worldwide situation.

Big companies are becoming aware of this situation and are starting to take advantage of it. Big brands are using these social networks to let people share their opinions about their products and in this way get a better approach to the segment they are focused in. To give a concrete example Pepsico has created the group Lays which has more than 500,000 people in it, all usual potato chips consumers, and with this they approach to the sensations of actual customers. It looks like an easy, direct and fast way to know what consumers think about a new flavor, a marketing campaign or even the new display of the products at the university/school cafeteria.

Anyway, the social network it’s becoming an essential tool in our life’s as it is the cell phone today. If we focus in the segment of college students, almost everyone checks Facebook daily or use their blogs often to share their latest concerns. This is why companies should find the way of reaching to their customers through these tools. To show the importance that social surfaces are gaining, I was watching the all-star NBA game this evening when a facebook advertising appeared. Marketers should have in mind the impact it has as the all-star game is watched by millions of people all over the word.

But this is not only a way of approaching from companies to customers or customer-to-customer, it can (and actually is) a way of connecting companies between them. There are networks as Ryze (which is a social network for entrepreneurs) or LinkedIn that are doing it, but I’ve read some articles in which actual CEO’s are skeptical about the actual utility of social networking as I recommend you to read in the following link:

http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6240543-1.html

In any case, the social network phenomenon is present in our lifes and increasing rapidly. We have to be concerned about it and I strongly think that if companies find the way of taking advantage will have a competitive advantage among their competitors and will reach more efficiently to their customers insights.

The paradox of choice

The podcast about ‘The paradox of choice’ of Barry Schwartz lets some interesting ideas related to what he calls the ‘official dogma’ of thinking that having a lot of choice it’s better than not having that much choice. He talks several times about freedom, welfare, expectations, etc. and this is why (before going further in the topic) I would like to give the definition of freedom that gives Jorge Bucay, a famous argentine writer, which I think it’s appropriate:  freedom is the capacity of choose in between the possibilities we have, over what is possible.

It’s a fact that in today’s world we have a lot more options, related to products or services, than the ones we had years ago. And this is one of the reasons of today’s consumerism, the whole branch of things we can purchase and with some help of the communication media the consumerism has been spread worldwide. But in the other hand having too many choices it is true that affects to our satisfaction in the consuming experience. As Mr. Schwartz says in the podcast, having some choice it’s better than none, but its not true that having more must be better than some.

With this word the author is relating to how having so many choices to make affect our decision when we purchase, and definitively affects to our satisfaction once we have consumed the product/service itself. When we don’t have many options where to choose from we just take the decision and feel good with the consequences, like in the examples of the jeans that is given in the video. When we have a lot of choices to make, apart from making the decision harder, creates in us some kind of anxiety that makes us feel worse although the decision taken is correct, having too many choices makes the decision hard (paralysis).

In this way, a lot of times having many choices or decisions to take makes us not even taking the choice. If you start to think in your last purchases, it is true that a lot of times the ones you feel that were the best ones where those you made forced for many reasons. I like the paradox B. Schwartz makes about everyone needing a fishbowl, because for us to make a decision, we need some rules to follow or at least some barriers inside which to be free to make our choice.

As personal experience of being a victim of the paradox of choice, comes to the top of my head the one I experienced just a few weeks ago when I got to the room where I was going to live during the next 4 months as an exchange student in Austin. We (my roommate and I) realized that we didn’t have sheets on our beds so we decided to go to Target and buy our sheets. The problem came when we got to Target and there were 4 corridors full of different kinds of sheets. After deciding that of course the size mattered, we thought going to the cheap ones could be another good idea of deciding which ones to take but there were about 20 different types in the same range of money to spend. What happened at last, is that after half an hour thinking which ones to buy we finally went with the ones we had seen first and when we got to our room with our brand new sheets we realized that we had mistaken with sizes…

Finalizing this mix up of ideas, it can be true that having many choices between to choose from can increase paralysis, and it’s this paralysis the one that decreases the satisfaction we have. Anyway, I don’t share with the author that the secret of happiness is having low expectations because in a punctual experience can be true that it works, but it’s the freedom we have to make our own expectations and how we deal with them afterwards what makes us truly satisfied in the end.