Improve your Viral & word-of-mouth marketing with our hub page

Use our hub pages as a reference to get up-to-speed on all the main digital marketing techniques. They will help you quickly understand how to make the most of the technique through definitions and recommendations on our member resources and blog articles covering strategy, best practices and the latest statistics.

Online viral marketing and it's near cousin word-of-mouth marketing are one of the most powerful advantages of digital media which encourages sharing of content between users. So viral marketing should be built into all online campaigns and platforms.

Viral & word-of-mouth marketing quick guide

Viral & word-of-mouth marketing success factors

This infographic gives more background on how online word-of-mouth can be generated.

Word-of-mouth

Viral & word-of-mouth marketing definition

This is a nice, simple definition of the scope of word-of-mouth marketing from the word-of-mouth marketing association.

See WOMMAs WOM101 for more details on the the main activities and types of WOM:

  • Educating people about your products and services
  • Identifying people most likely to share their opinions
  • Providing tools that make it easier to share information
  • Studying how, where, and when opinions are being shared
  • Listening and responding to supporters, detractors, and neutrals

The Eleven categories of WOM marketing

The main categories of WoM give a practical checklist of thinking through which WoM activities you can and could apply in future.

  • 1. Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.
  • 2. Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.
  • 3. Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.
  • 4. Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.
  • 5. Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.
  • 6. Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.
  • 7. Influencer Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.
  • 8. Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.
  • 9. Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.
  • 10. Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.
  • 11. Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends.

Key techniques for Viral & word-of-mouth marketing

These are the related techniques which we recommend as important for managing Viral & word-of-mouth marketing effectively. View these hub pages giving details on best practices, statistics and examples for these techniques:

View all blog articles on Viral & word-of-mouth marketing