Word-of-mouth marketing is the long tail advertisement of enterprise

"Word-of-mouth" The word from the song-Lipuzy "Five Lantern Festival" volume 17: "Advised you not to engrave stones, the road pedestrian mouth like a monument" used to refer to the image of the people or the public for someone or a certain thing evaluation.

To the enterprise, the word of mouth is about all the comments about the brand, and all the comments about the total oral communication of the people of a particular product, service or company. China has an old saying, "The wine is not afraid of the alley deep", this "bouquet" refers to the reputation of the tavern, no matter how deep the alley as long as the liquor must have a good market. This shows that Chinese people have known since ancient times a corporate reputation for its own significant impact. and Word-of-mouth marketing is precisely refers to enterprises through a variety of ways to design their own word-of-mouth, and stimulate users to design their own word-of-mouth more widely disseminated a special marketing tool.

Three Advantages of Word-of-mouth marketing

Word-of-mouth Marketing as a separate marketing method is used by enterprises, and its own characteristics have a great relationship.

(a) The user more reliance on word-of-mouth dissemination of information.

A survey conducted by Mediaedge, UK, found that more than 3/4 of people responded to "friends recommend" when asked what factors made them more comfortable buying products. A lot of research reports show that people who want to know about a product or service are more likely to consult family, friends, and other personal experts than traditional media outlets.

Word-of-mouth Marketing has such a high user credibility. It is because Word-of-mouth communication often occurs in the midst of family, friends, co-workers, or other relationships. People in these relationships have relatively high levels of mutual trust. This kind of trust previously generated is not a large amount of advertising costs and frequent advertising frequency can be replaced. For the communicators of Word-of-mouth, these people tend to have no interest in the sales company or the product itself, making their speech feel more just.

(b) Word-of-mouth communication has a relatively high pertinence

In Word-of-mouth marketing, "topic" is the main spread of marketing seeds. and the corresponding "topic" will almost appear in the corresponding groups. To put it simply, you should rarely talk to a friend who doesn't like listening to music about a big star concert. Because in the Word-of-mouth communication between the users have a relatively familiar relationship, so they will choose an accurate word-of-mouth for you to spread the market. More importantly, because of this familiar relationship, when the disseminator spreads again, he adjusts or improves the topic that we create, and makes the topic easier for the recipient to accept.

(iii) The cost of applying Word-of-mouth marketing is relatively low

In the intense market competition, the advertisement cost of the merchant invests more and more high, but the advertisement effect is not as obvious as day. Word-of-mouth marketing through its own operating characteristics, to launch users as their own brand MLM, cleverly help the enterprise open up ideas, find more effective and low-cost marketing methods, successful implementation of Low-cost marketing.

The development of Word-of-mouth marketing in the internet age

While most companies have long known the impact of Word-of-mouth on their brands and their sales, in the past, word of mouth marketing has rarely been mentioned. Until entering the internet age, Word-of-mouth marketing has become a real theoretical, complete, standardized way to be integrated into the marketing department of the business agenda.

The advent of the Internet so that the spread of Word-of-mouth, whether from the breadth and speed have been greatly improved. Especially into the post-era of Web 2.0. I personally put the Web 2.0 points for the former era and the post era. In former times, we built the Web 2.0 platform to make UGC (User Generate Content) a possibility. In the post-era of Web 2.0, many users ' behavior patterns began to change as the Internet environment changed. They are more and more interested in sharing their ideas and experiences on the Internet. At the same time, they like to collect other people's views and experience online. Sharing and acquiring experience has become a custom behavior of the user. A recent August 09 Nielsen report, a global online consumer survey (Consumer Survey), shows that 41% of the world's netizens believe in online information rather than traditional media. What a clever change it is!

Is in such a rapid development of word-of-mouth communication era, how to do good word-of-mouth marketing, is every enterprise must think clearly one thing.

The key point of word-of-mouth marketing in enterprises

(a) Create a good reputation

No good marketing method can make up for the shortage of the product itself. What's more, Word-of-mouth marketing is the use of direct communication between users. In the way of Word-of-mouth transmission, the actual user's Word-of-mouth influence is most obvious. They have a clear experience of the quality of the product, or the company's services, they will also spread their feelings to other recipients, whether good or bad. Although most people just spread good word-of-mouth, and will not deliberately spread bad word-of-mouth. But note that a negative word-of-mouth influence tends to be far greater than a good reputation.

So the enterprise must first through good quality, quality service to create a good reputation. Then you need to think about how to spread this word of mouth.

(two) online and offline combination of Word-of-mouth marketing

A 08 study from the "Keller Fay Group" (An American company specialising in online and online Word-of-mouth transmission) has shown that more than 90% of Word-of-mouth campaigns remain online, not on the Internet. Under the line face-to-face talk to the word of mouth also has the better effect, will cause the user to the product more intense purchase desire. So far offline Word-of-mouth effect still occupy the mainstream, online Word-of-mouth promotion can not replace offline activities. And this is not to say that online activities for Word-of-mouth marketing is not important, the advantage of the Internet is the rapid dissemination of information and the expansion of the area of increase. When we put an information seed on the Internet, we have a lot of information to expand the source to help us carry out information, although this transmission may not remain on the Internet.

(iii) Finding key communicators in Word-of-mouth communication

When we have a good story to do spread. Then we have to choose a good media. These mediums need to be quickly and efficiently spread our stories to more people. These are "opinion leaders" in Word-of-mouth marketing. Word-of-mouth Marketing is to find these powerful communicators, who have a wide range of social circles, they have a strong appeal, they like to share the new things they accept. If the company can find such a disseminator, it will undoubtedly let the effect of Word-of-mouth marketing more than twice.

(iv) Word-of-mouth marketing is a long time process can not be accomplished overnight

A brand or a company's reputation is not through several marketing activities can be created. The company's reputation is created through a long period of unremitting efforts to be able to create. This requires the company for Word-of-mouth marketing activities have long-term planning and control.

For enterprises, through a campaign to publicize their company, when the user has resonance, the company to quickly expand the effect of Word-of-mouth impact. And when the effect of this activity begins to decline, the enterprise needs to find a new topic of communication, the last effect. and long-term unremitting efforts will allow the company in the user to form a Word-of-mouth network. The network will also generate tremendous power as the user base grows.

Summary

Word-of-mouth Marketing has indeed become as important as any current marketing strategy of the market development. After the advent of the Internet, Word-of-mouth marketing will play its greater role. Word of mouth marketing is a low-cost long tail advertising, he let your every user become one of your advertising point, and will be the cheap advertising processing to send more people. Even for creators it is impossible to measure how far the topic of creation will spread.

But we need to be aware that Word-of-mouth marketing is not without flaws. For Word-of-mouth marketing This way, most of the power of communication comes from outside users. This leads to the spread of Word-of-mouth and Word-of-mouth in the spread of the change is difficult to control. Once a bad reputation is produced, it will have a bad impact on the business. So if you want to use good word-of-mouth marketing, we need to develop a set of marketing plans to correct the use of Word-of-mouth marketing, strengthen the monitoring of word-of-mouth effect, so that when the risk occurs, it can be timely and correct to respond to measures.

In addition, most of the successful marketing methods are not independent, each company needs to consider their own products, prices, distribution channels, promotional and many other traditional marketing factors, and combined with other marketing methods to form a three-dimensional comprehensive marketing strategy to achieve good results.

Word-of-mouth Marketing is a subject combining art and science. A good Word-of-mouth marketing program will enable an enterprise to quickly grasp their own user base to get better development.

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Car product sense, the current chief product officer of the Dunhuang network. He has received Western education in Britain, the United States and Australia. With several multinational companies, including HSBC, PCCW, NEXT, Microsoft and ebay, the multiple-stereo background has created the uniqueness and acuity of the thinking problem. With more than 10 years of experience working in the Internet, it is a future trend observer. EMBA at Tsinghua University and INSEAD business School.