Word of mouth marketing

From ArticleWorld

Word of mouth marketing is the practice of promoting a product through the media of social conversation. This is usually done between friends and relatives at will and costs the company whose product is being promoted nothing.

Effectiveness

Word of Mouth advertising is often very effective because it involves the promotion of a good or service from one party to another party who usually are familiar with one another. Even if those parties do not know each other very well, the word of mouth information transferred about a product or service between them is usually unbiased. In other words, what is shared between these two parties is more likely to be trusted because neither party has a vested interest in the other.

Examples

An example of word of mouth advertising might be one parent who might recommend one brand of diapers to another parent as being the most leak proof and absorbent of all the brands. This information is helpful to the consumer looking for the best product, and this is done through the use of ordinary conversation. One business may have contact with another business and be in a similar conversation, and it the end result would be similar. That end result would be simply the transferring of information from one business to another without ulterior motive on either end.

Online word of mouth advertising can be a result of two people talking over an instant message service, or even through email. Although, the instant message service is more trusted because the two people are involved in a live conversation that involved the immediate exchange of information, which is instant proof that the information is from, an unbiased source.

Buzz marketing

Another more indirect form of word of mouth advertising is the use of buzz advertising. A buzz is a highly intense process of passing information from one person to another, than to another, and so on. One of the most highly noted examples of this would be the spread of the news of Gmail accounts, which originally were only given out to a handful of users. Then eventually the spread of the news of Gmail accounts even led to people bidding for Gmail accounts on Ebay. The buzz is a highly powerful form of word of mouth advertising.

Word of mouth advertising is an extremely effective form of advertising, and is highly encouraged by companies, because it reduces business advertising costs.