Fighting a Recession With Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Is there any cheaper marketing strategy than word-of-mouth? You get people talking, and they go out and sell your product or service for you. Perfect for recessionary times.
Of course, it's not nearly that simple or necessarily that effective, but it certainly can be a frugal way to stretch your marketing budget.
So as my contribution to your zero-budget marketing program, here are some tips gleaned from a recent Bulldog Reporter audio conference on word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing:
- WOM Marketing = giving people a reason to talk about you and your stuff, and making it easier for the conversation to take place
- What can you get people to talk about? Something they would be willing to tell a friend. So the way to develop WOM messages is to test them against a very simple standard: would anyone tell their friend about this?
- Talkers: people who talk about you (duh!)
- Topics: what are they talking about
- Tools: how are you making it easy for them to talk about you?
- Taking part: participating
- Tracking: measuring your WOM impact
Resources:
Word of Mouth Marketing Association
Word of Mouth Marketing -- the book
My thanks to Andy Sernovitz, Bob Pearson and Mike Manuel for a highly entertaining and informative audio conference.