Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) refers to the marketing that can be gained by actively engaging customers to share insights with each other (create buzz that goes viral). WOMM has clearly been around since the inception of marketing, but has gained more prominance with the evolution of the internet, and the ease with which customers can share their stories. Web 2.0 technologies such as Blogs and News Readers are enabling WOMM. Discussion Boards have helped customers form communities. Good WOMM relies on great products that customers willingly evangelize. Marketers have been prone to try to 'effect' this by incentivizing 'fake' customers to talk about their products. This can backfire. One can now consider marketing initiatives as three concentric circles: the inner circle representing traditional / push marketing; the middle circle representing a company's direct efforts to engage with customers with the web (hosting a blog, a discussion board etc.), WOMM; the outer circle representing the broader web, where the company's product is being discussed outside of its own web domain.
Maximizing Business Potential
