Types of Word of Mouth Marketing

• Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.

• Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.

• 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.

• Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.

• Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.

• Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.

• 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.

• Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.

• Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.

• 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.

• Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends.

Online video ads expected to increase a lot in 2008

A new Internet marketing survey conducted by Western Wats in an AT and T-commissioned study reveals that about 65 percent of small businesses surveyed said they advertised in a printed yellow pages directory.

Approximately 53.1 percent of the small businesses that responded to the survey said they expected to buy online video ads in 2008 and 2009.

About 24 percent said they advertised on the Internet, and approximately 67.4 percent said they had their own Web site.

"Overall, it would seem that there are many consumers that are still using the Yellow Pages as their primary choice for local business information.

Frank Jules, CEO of AT&T Advertising and Publishing said "however, we've also noted that they're also searching on the Internet before they actually buy."

About 61.9 percent of U.S. consumers said they still preferred the printed Yellow Pages to find local business information, according to data from The Kelsey Group released by AT&T as part of the findings.

Those numbers were actually higher than the 13 percent who preferred Google and other search engines, and the 7.2 percent who said they preferred the Internet yellow pages best.

Source: eMarketer

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