by Andre Sanchez

The benefits of buzz marketing are a mystery to most people, yet most people have seen buzz marketing in action without realizing it. Much TV advertising is buzz marketing, and many auto and cosmetic companies use it to great effect.  You will certainly have seen it, but without recognizing it for what it is.

Buzz marketing is a marketing technique whereby the word about a specific product or service is deliberately spread around a community so that it gets talked about.  It is a bit like brand  identification, such as Hoover being a generic name for vacuum cleaners, although is a bit more widespread that that.  It involves people talking and writing about how fabulous a certain product is, allied to a promotional campaign that attempts to expose the public to the product as much as possible.

For example, it is easy to get people talking about a new model of car if there several examples are constantly being driven round the neighbourhood by company employees.  That is effective, but it becomes significantly better when trained people are seeded into the streets and bars to strike up conversations with strangers, and then bring the discussion round to the latest Ford model, and “Hey – there’s one driving by right now.  Isn’t it fantastic!  Do you know about its new environmental widget that saves on gas, and the unbelievable price?  Wow!”.

Large corporations pay people to recognize the type of person open to this type of marketing.  They can recognize people that love to chat to others, and have been trained in the psychology of persuasion.  They do not try to sell the target anything except the idea that this is a great product, worth talking about.  They are persuaded to tell their friends and relatives about it and it has been shown that those that are buzz marketing targets really do believe in the worth of the product.  Whether it is moral or not to deliberately strike up a conversation with a stranger in a bar with the sole purpose of marketing a product is another story.  However, since when has the marketing profession been involved in morality?

Such marketing is also used in the promotion of perfumes and the like.  It can also be an effective internet marketing technique if you have a product that suits the buzz.  Look at talking postcards:  these might have been a lot more successful with a good buzz campaign designed to get everybody talking about them.  All it takes are a few blog postings by different individuals prompted to mention the product in forums and chat sites through the offer of a free copy of your product, and one or two judicially placed adverts in popular ezines.  Once you get postings from strangers, not on the team that you are paying to write or chat about your product, then the buzz is on.

It can be spread by promoting more blog and forum posts, one or two selected national or local press campaigns and perhaps even having people review it online.  The whole thing about buzz marketing is to get it viral.  Get one to tell five, then them to tell another five and so on.  Have them write about it, talk about it, blog about it and mention it at seminars and telephone others about it.  Before you know it you have a load of people interested in what this thing is and just bursting to buy it.  Not all products are suitable for buzz marketing, but it can be exceptionally effective with those that are.

A buzz is improved by repetition.  Why do you think that TV companies run the same ads time and time again?  Even before the product is on sale?  Some internet marketers now do that.  They get their product talked about before it is available:  people even sign up for it before they have a full idea of what it is about. They get your money weeks before the product is launched!  All of that is buzz marketing.

So try it yourself.  It is still in its infancy in relation to internet marketing, but if you have a few friends that are willing to help spread the word, then it could be a very effective way of getting news of your product spread around the internet.

The Benefits of Buzz Marketing was originally published  at http://www.affiliatemarketinglife.com