Buzz Marketing
Why Buzz Marketing?
Triple digit sales growth in six months made me a believer.
With many years in business, I realized one day that despite our other marketing efforts, Word of Mouth was our best new client generator. It wasn’t because we were doing other marketing poorly. It is because word of mouth is that much more effective.
When we cut down on the other marketing and focus on word of mouth and creating buzz, we found that we achieved rapid growth in less than a year. We actually grew so fast that we had to curtail what we offered and raise our prices.
Because many of our clients were small businesses, we had to find ways to create buzz and word of mouth without big additional expenses. Luckily, the most effective marketing techniques are also ones you can employee for little or no cost.
Are you fighting a daily battle?
If you are fighting a daily battle to find new customers and they are not eager to purchase, you are fighting a losing battle. Chances are some of your competitors are creating buzz and word of mouth, and once they hit a critical mass, it will be too late. Eventually the buzz makes someone the obvious choice and you will find it hard to convince people to do otherwise.
The keys to creating buzz are simple, but do require a change in attitude and culture. They cannot be boiled down to a word of mouth “campaign” if you want long term results.
Industry Experts and Employee Ambassadors
The essential ingredients for word of mouth and online buzz are:
* Industry Experts – Owners and Key Employees must become recognized industry experts.
* A scalable, remarkable product – Nothing kills buzz faster than getting people interested in trying your product and not delivering on the hype.
* Employee Evangelism – “The success of an organization is the responsibility of every member.” If your employees are not buzzing, you are missing out.
* Advocacy Cultivation – Advocates are your happy customers, friends, family, former employees and people that are just excited about what your company has to offer. Are you giving them the tools to spread the word?
These are the essential ingredients to a successful organization. If you continuously work on these four items your competition will fade into the distance and you will become the obvious choice.
Your return on investment is much bigger than new sales. Much, much bigger.
Here are some of the ways you are building value with your investment.
Industry Expert
An industry expert will generate more sales and charges a higher price. They also can leverage their expertise into paid speaking, knowledge products like books and videos, high end consulting and more. The value of an industry expert is far higher than the sales they generate alone.
Advocacy
Actively cultivating advocacy among customers, former employees and others will pay big dividends over time. They may actually generate sales for you, but another important element is that they talk and write about you. If they write on a website or blog, this could generate curious visitors to your website steadily for years.
Another important element is the “I have heard of you” factor. If you are meeting someone for the first time and they say “I have heard of you before”, your first meeting is going to be a good one.
Employee Ambassador
This is one of the most overlooked opportunities. The world has changed drastically in the last few years. Communication opportunities have exploded and every employee you have can be a buzz generator. This was my single biggest reason for getting into this field. While I consider creating a buzz culture challenging, I also know how rewarding it can be for the owners, the managers and the employees that will see their careers advanced and share in the success of the organization.
An investment in buzz is an investment in your future and in the future of everyone in the organization.
