Word of mouth or buzz marketing?
A new word-of-mouth marketing agency called BoldMouth has launched into the marketplace, offering word-of-mouth relationship-building services for brands and product launches.
BoldMouth's self-developed Interest Recognition Model will act as the strategic framework used to help brands cultivate word-of-mouth campaigns, by recognising the interests of individual consumers.
According to CEO, Todd Tweedy, "true word-of-mouth marketing is about sharing advice as well as product and service recommendations. These informal and typically person-to-person dialogues should not to be confused with 'buzz marketing' that's little more than an attempt to artificially engineer a referral by offering incentives so that people make recommendations on behalf of an organisation."
Is buzz actually fluff? Indeed, Tweedy argues that a marketing "buzz" is the direct result of a product or service being so good - and so recommendation-worthy - that people tell each other about it on their own. The principle of Tweedy's new business is to spot where that genuine consumer interest lies, and find ways of encouraging it further.
"Word of mouth is an operational principle that organisations can use to increase loyalty - and ultimately revenue - that creates a customer-centric approach to marketing," said Tweedy. "Disguising a commercial as a person and having them share commercial messages with an unsuspecting target simply creates more ad clutter and puts brands in unnecessary danger."
Model for loyalty Tweedy told The Wise Marketer that real word-of-mouth marketing is actually a model for boosting brand identity and customer loyalty, while empowering satisfied customers to share their own impressions and experiences with others. BoldMouth's aim is to build only true word-of-mouth marketing relationships, with the additional aim of de-popularising 'buzz' techniques.
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