Viral marketing, blogging, tweeting, or influencer marketing – call it any of the new fancy names one can think of, word-of-mouth marketing is alive and well and is a perfect way to market to women.
About Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Authors Michele Miller and Holly Buchanan tell readers in their book, The Soccer Mom Myth (Wizard Academy Press, 2007), word-of-mouth advertising is more powerful than ever, especially when marketing to women.
“Word-of-mouth marketing is a perfect fit for marketing to women. Women have been expert word-of-mouth marketers since the beginning of time.”, wrote Miller and Buchanan.
Word-of-mouth marketing includes:
- Buzz marketing – using entertainment
- Viral marketing – usually passing along the message via email or through social networking
- Community marketing – forming support groups
- Evangelist marketing – creating advocates
- Product seeding – putting the product in the right hands at the right time
- Influencer – identifying opinion leaders
- Cause marketing – supporting social causes
- Conversation creation – catch phrases
- Brand blogging – using blogs
- Referral programs – customers refer friends.
Word of Mouth Marketing Spreads
The best way to get word-of-mouth functioning is to find the influencers to spread the word. Do that by finding the influencers and let them have their say about a product.
Find the influencers by going deeper into the target audience. Miller and Buchanan recommend when marketing to women, “Understand your customer and how she lives her life. Find out what her networks, groups, or hives are. Find out how you can provide something of value to them, something worth talking about and worth passing along.”
Word-of-Mouth Short and Long Term Strategies
Word-of-mouth is a short-term strategy when creating buzz about a product or service. It becomes a long-term strategy when you start building a relationship with the target audience.
The authors wrote, “This is the true value of word-of-mouth in marketing to women, building relationships, relationships between her and her friends, relationships between her and your brand. It lets her become a participant instead of just a spectator.”
This is one of the reasons word-of-mouth is so powerful when marketing to women. Traditionally and historically women have taken on the role of caretaker and usually build the relationships in community and family.
Relationships are vital to women which according to the authors should be key to word-of-mouth marketers.
Creating Word-of-Mouth
The authors recommend keeping the following in mind when using a word-of-mouth campaign:
- Be authentic, ethical and relevant.
- Listen to your target audience and create a product or service with value and is worth talking about.
- Be 100 percent accountable and keep your promises.
- Give the target audience exclusive access and make it easy to pass along the message.
Bottom line – word-of-mouth is still the marketing king or queen and when used right can help a company rule the land.
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