What Is “Buzz”?
If you’re in any kind of business, you know how important word of mouth is and what it means in terms of gaining new customers – translated into lots more inroads into the community translated into lots more dollars in the bank.
But how do you maximize on word of mouth? What actions can you take as a small, medium or large business, to get the word out and get those clients rolling faster towards your door? Or you could, if you prefer, wait and hope that your existing customers will get around to telling their friends and business associates about your excellent products and services.
There is a simply fascinating book on this very subject. Both Jeff and I consider it to be the “bible of word of mouth marketing”. It’s called “Anatomy of Buzz Revisited” by Emanuel Rosen. “Revisted” is his updated 2008 version of his best selling 2000 book “Anatomy of Buzz”. Absolutely brilliant, easy to read, with tons of examples of businesses that are household words you’ll be sure to recognize.
A short summary of a few of the many outstanding points in Rosen’s book include how to:
* Generate genuine buzz both online and off
* Encourage people to talk about your products and services – and help spread the word among their friends, colleagues, and communities
* Adapt traditional word-of-mouth strategies in today’s era of Facebook, YouTube and consumer-generated media
One of our clients asked us to help them with a strategy to create some buzz for their company and its products. This business has been around for almost 40 years, but the owner and limited staff have little time to concentrate on all the social media networks.
While SkyHawk Studios is mainly a graphic design and copywriting studio, we really like our clients and want to see them thriving financially so we thought we’d give it a go.
We came up with a simple, easy-to-execute campaign revolving around a Blog we created for them tied into their Facebook page entries and a once or twice a month email newsletter to their lists. The theme we developed was a Trivia game, inviting everyone to get involved, have some fun, learn something new, and contribute. The targeted public are people from their email lists that have an interest in music, composers, pianos and teaching. Very simple, the expected results could be huge in terms of name recognition and word of mouth about the store. We can’t wait to see how it plays out long term. Of course, we’ll keep you in the loop! If you’d like to take a look, here’s the link .
You are invited to contribute your own successes and experiences, make suggestions, etc regarding your own word of mouth marketing. We’d love to hear them!
We’re always here to help. Just give us a call 503 235 0062
Thanks for your contribution Karen!
A trivia game is a good idea!
For marketing my own practice, I have found it is helpful to plan events, then publicize them both online and with color postcards which I take to businesses that might have some connection to my event (such as health practitioners). I teach a class on healthy footwear, and I make sure the shoe shops around town are aware of it. I organize an annual “Free Rolfing® for Kids” day and promote it through toy shops and children’s resale shops. When people find my events to be relevant for their customers, they link to my site. It’s a great way to drive traffic by providing useful content.
Just thought I would share, in case it’s useful to anyone else!