Word of Mouth Marketing

We are in the research phase of a campaign for a non-profit client and I came across the The New Heroes – House Party Outreach Site from the Skoll Foundation. Granted, this was big budgets but check out the ‘spread the word’ button and feature. This is about as good as it gets in terms of redistribution

The Skoll Foundation is beginning a campaign to inspire grassroots giving circles to give internationally.

Brian Carroll points to an interesting article on b2b word of mouth marketing. Given the content, I might rename this article Interactivity gets people buzzing.

For a long time, folks have known that user groups, customer relationship management solutions, knowledge base systems- all contribute to word of mouth marketing. b2b interaction, like consumer marketing, is about building relationships and leveraging those customer experiences.

The Cisco Networking Community and Oracle Applications Community were early examples of company-customer/supporter interaction. You can read more about this here, in an oldie but goodie AdMarketing conversation on "How Marketers Use Interactive Tools".

BuzzMetrics has an interesting column newsletter on Why PR Should Own Word of Mouth Marketing

PR and word of mouth is a way interesting topic. As a practitioner, I’m much more interested in PR than advertising. That’s because advertising follows the old broadcast model whereas PR is (supposed to be) about building relationships.

Jonathan Carson’s comments about the search for ROI is spot on.

One thing is certain: PR’s leadership in the word-of-mouth discipline
will be dependent upon a fundamental shift in thinking and approach.