Today’s approach to marketing must be based on creating excitement, making people talk about the brand, creating a buzz. While this is partly achieved by focusing on direct consumer promotion – this is only one of the ways of making people talk about the brand. However, with every marketer making “special offers”, it has become that much more difficult to sustain the excitement & differentiation !

By the Consumer, To the Consumer
Conventional marketing techniques tend to push the brand to the consumer – typically with the help of advertising, “P.R.” & even special offers.

The word-of-mouth approach is different the way it tries to pull the consumer to the brand. And this it does by capturing the attention of the media and thence the consumer. In a manner where talking about the brand becomes enjoyable both to the speaker as well as listeners. (This also makes it interesting and newsworthy.)

The objective is to have the brand experience narrated by consumers to consumers. A sort of “viral marketing campaign” unwittingly spawned by consumers.

And one sign of success is when the latest brand model or offer becomes a conversation starter.

Technology Favors Word-of-mouth
It started with the Internet - email, chat, message boards, blogs made it easy to communicate. What was started by the Internet has been enhanced many times over by the telecom industry. Today SMS has made it possible for instant word-of-mouth. And VOIP and cheap long distance calls has made it even easier for consumers to ‘talk’ to others and share the brand experience.

While technology has made it easy, it has also added some complexity. Since almost all communication is digital today, everything is recorded. This makes it many times more important to generate positive (and avoid negative) word-of-mouth.

Give Them a Story to Talk About
We as people, need to tell stories, something to talk about. Something interesting, amusing – which makes us (however momentarily) the center of attention.

The Word-of-mouth marketing strategy is geared towards giving people a story (linked to the brand experience) to talk about. And the media to report.

By the way, movies, TV program viewer-ship and the fashion industry are the 3 major categories which are widely accepted as driven by word-of-mouth.

Ideas Driven
While word-of-mouth strategy may use advertising, PR, events, Internet, technology, telecom (just about anything), it must necessarily be driven by innovative “ideas”. Along with a deep knowledge of the brand (including future plans).

Remember, in the beginning, there was only word-of-mouth!