Word of Mouth Marketing, whatssup?

FYI- generally accepted forms of word of mouth marketing:

Buzz Marketing: use high-profile celebs, entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.

Viral Marketing: create entertaining or informative messages designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion via social media or email.

Community Marketing: form or support niche communities with shared interests (such as user groups, fan clubs, message boards and discussion forums); provide tools, content, and information to support the "community".

Grassroots Marketing: organize and motivate volunteers to engage in outreach on a personal level.

Evangelist Marketing: cultivate evangelists, advocates, ambassadors or volunteers and encourage them to take the lead in actively spreading the word or your brand.am

Product Seeding or Seed Marketing: place the right product in the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals; with the right guidance, see "Evangelist Marketing" above.

Influential Marketing: identify key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.

Cause Marketing: support social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause which is usually akin or adjacent to your own brand.

Conversation Marketing: spread interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions to start word of mouth activity.

Online Brand Marketing: create a blog(s) and participate with other bloggers, in the spirit of open, transparent communications to share information of value that the blog community may talk about.

Referral Marketing: create tools that enable others to refer their friends.

Converting Customers into Evangelists!

I ’ve never been evangelical or so I thought.

But you may change your mind, too. Check out Ben McConnell’s and Jackie Huba’s “Church of the Customer” blog site http://www.churchofthecustomer.com .

They offer some great tips to creating customer evangelists:
◆Customer plus-delta : Continuously gather customer feedback.
◆Napsterize knowledge: Make it a point to share knowledge freely.
◆Build the buzz: Expertly build word-of-mouth networks .
◆Create community: Encourage communities of customers to meet and share.
◆Make bite-size chunks: Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite .
◆Create a cause: Focus on making the world, or your industry, better.

The new nirvana of marketing we all should strive for—not just loyal customers, but customer evangelists.

Who are these evangelists and how do you create them? Look around. They’re everywhere. Examples are the customers of:
Starbucks
Google
Virgin Atlantic Airways and Richard Branson
Black Berry users or
the woman who sent a check to Southwest Airlines after 9/11 because the airline needed the money more than her.

How do you transform your routine, everyday customers into evangelists?
Start by analytically asking yourself if your customers are atheists (people who simply don't believe in your products but use them out of habit), agnostics (those who would believe if you gave them a reason to) or the believers (a core group of righteous product users who deeply believe). Don’t be surprised if you have lots of atheists.

Seek out the "believers" and study them. See what makes them believers and then turn them loose. Empower and enable them. Create additional products and programs that recruit and attract more just like them.

This creative form of marketing isn't easy. But if you can crack the code, it's the most efficient and effective marketing effort you'll ever make.

Word of Mouth Marketing Association

http://www.womma.org/womnibus.htm

Awesome! Check it out! Here's a brief overview of WOMM...

Word of Mouth 101
An Introduction to Word of Mouth Marketing

Definitions
Word of mouth:
The act of consumers providing information to other consumers.
Word of mouth marketing:
Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place. It is the art and science of building active, mutually beneficial consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications .

What is Word of Mouth Marketing?
Word of mouth is a pre-existing phenomenon that marketers are only now learning how to harness, amplify, and improve. Word of mouth marketing isn't about creating word of mouth -- it's learning how to make it work within a marketing objective.

Word of mouth can be encouraged and facilitated. Companies can work hard to make people happier, they can listen to consumers, they can make it easier for them to tell their friends, and they can make certain that influential individuals know about the good qualities of a product or service.

Word of mouth marketing empowers people to share their experiences. It's harnessing the voice of the customer for the good of the brand. And, it's acknowledging that the unsatisfied customer is equally powerful.

Word of mouth can't be faked or invented. Attempting to fake word of mouth is unethical and creates a backlash, damages the brand, and tarnishes the corporate reputation. Legitimate word of mouth marketing acknowledges consumers’ intelligence -- it never attempts to fool them. Ethical marketers reject all tactics related to manipulation, deception, infiltration, or dishonesty.

All word of mouth marketing techniques are based on the concepts of customer satisfaction, two-way dialog, and transparent communications.

The basic elements are:
Educating people about your products and services
Identifying people most likely to share their opinions
Providing tools that make it easier to share information
Studying opinions - how, where, and when opinions are being shared
Listening and responding to supporters, detractors, and neutrals

Types of Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of mouth marketing techniques are geared toward encouraging and helping people to talk to each other about products and services.

Common types of word of mouth marketing:
Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.

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.

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