What is Buzz Marketing? How to make people discuss about buzz?
As the modern world is developing day by day, businesses also increase at a rapid rate. Therefore, the competition between industries is also increasing tensely, leading to difficulties in attracting customers.
Winning customers and keeping them interested are not an easy task for both small and big companies. Marketers are now facing many different challenges in attracting customers, since they are now losing all the interactions with the old campaigns.
Thus, Buzz Marketing plays an important role as an effective solution that impulses the discussion about the brand among customers, besides strongly connecting the brand with its customers.
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What is Buzz Marketing?
Buzz Marketing is a marketing tool used to enhance display capacity and customers’ interest in a product or a brand, through word-of-mouth.
Word-of-mouth marketing fosters customers’ purchase decisions, and it is also a key element for every buzz marketing campaign. This is considered as a chain reaction when marketers launch a marketing campaign, then grab customers’ attention with Buzz Marketing tools.
So what exactly does “buzz” mean?
It can be an image, an idea, a quote, a statement, or even a video… To sum up, buzz is what influences people to discuss about your brand.
When executing Buzz Marketing tools, businesses can receive these following benefits:
- Free advertising
- Build brand awareness
- Positively influence the customers with the brand image
- Analyze target marketing and identify the next group of target audiences.
2. Differences between Viral Marketing and Buzz Marketing.
Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing all have the same goals, however, there are still certain differences between how these two tools are executed.
Source: educba
2.1. Reach rate
The main difference between Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing is their own strategies to approach customers.
A Viral Marketing campaign slowly speeds up and approaches a certain number of target customers after a period of implementation. Meanwhile, Buzz Marketing chooses to spread immediately and deliver the brand’s message to a large number of audiences.
2.2. The key objective
In Viral Marketing, campaigns are the key element and viral messages play the role of evoking customers’ emotions. In contrast, Buzz Marketing makes people discuss about the brand, not only about the campaign’s messages.
That’s why Buzz Marketing always gets prioritized by businesses to release a new product line.
2.3. Channels
Viral Marketing campaigns are mainly executed on social media platforms. And Buzz Marketing campaigns can be activated from a live event like street performances or a product testing event, which help brands to approach thousands of people right away.
3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Buzz Marketing
3.1. Advantages of Buzz Marketing
Some prime advantages of Buzz Marketing are:
- For small businesses that just joined the market, Buzz Marketing is a marketing tool with a minimum budget (usually free). Buzz Marketing can bring businesses a higher ROI (Return On Investment) than other traditional marketing forms.
- This tool also allows businesses to connect with their target audiences right away. This advantage also takes part in helping businesses to develop their brands’ images and enhance their relationships with loyal customers.
- Finally, Buzz Marketing only lasts for a short period, thus, it is considered a perfect strategy for businesses to gain back results in a short time.
3.2. Disadvantages of Buzz Marketing
Beside the above advantages, Buzz Marketing also contains some disadvantages:
- Buzz Marketing depends a lot on the triggering elements, and to stand out among many competitors is not that easy. Therefore, to create a buzz definitely requires a lot of in-depth research and unique ideas.
- After a period of executing, it is hard to control which target audience Buzz Marketing is really aiming at.
- Businesses need to draw lessons from the experiential campaigns to improve and better influence the brand’s message.
- If the business is not being precise in choosing the triggering elements, they can be counterproductive and cause the brand image to lose points in the eyes of customers.
4. Classifying Buzz Marketing
According to Mark Hughes, the key element behind Buzz Marketing is the six different conversion tools called “buzz”, which helps identify the campaign’s status.
4.1. Forbidden subjects
Forbidden subjects often mention controversial topics, go beyond safe zones and are also boring, such as topics about politics or vegetarianism. Every audience has his own personal perspective about these topics.
A prime example about forbidden subjects is how some news channels solve controversies as a way to attract people to discuss about their channel.
Although using forbidden subjects in marketing campaigns may help attract more attention, businesses still need to be careful and set strict limits when addressing sensitive issues.
4.2. Uniqueness
Conversations which provide target audiences unique information (sometimes include strange information) will lead to higher interest in your brand, and will also differentiate yourself from the competitive market.
Brands often use uniqueness in campaigns for new product lines, aiming at creating a public discussion about the product among target customers.
4.3. Outstanding point
When a restaurant has the quality over expectations that provides customers a wonderful eating experience, customers will tell good things about the restaurant to their friends or families.
This is when the outstanding point has been activated. This is considered one of the easiest ways for businesses to run Buzz Marketing since it mainly depends on customer’ satisfaction.
At this point, the campaign’s objective is to create a product that goes beyond average and brings customers a wonderful experience.
However, businesses need to take this into consideration, that average quality products are no longer used by consumers. Supporting customers right away, flexible return policy and fast delivery are the paving factors for a splash marketing campaign.
4.4. Surprise elements
If 3 of the above factors are considered the easiest approaches to customers, the 3 following factors on the other hand are more difficult to apply in campaigns.
Brands often used surprise elements to draw target segmentation’s attention. Surprise elements can range from humor, shock, sadness to any other emotions.
Businesses need to ensure this Buzz Marketing tool is related to their own brands. Audiences can laugh at an advertising video but no one will remember the name of the brand when they talk about it. The result is the business will not receive any benefits and the campaign will be considered a failure.
4.5. Humor
Humor is one of the most popular buzz elements, depending on funny factors to draw customers attention. Funny content is spreaded at a rapid speed because people are always attracted to funny factors.
4.6. Secret
Secret is the last buzz element. People are often curious about things that they know nothing about. They always want to inquire more about mysterious truths and will proudly share all the secrets they have discovered to surrounding people.
A method that is applied frequently for this tool is to provide customers with a product overview – things that have never been published in the market or on any communications channels. We need to make people feel like they are discovering some mysteries.
This is a perfect way to attract customers coming to your business.
5. Steps to create a Buzz Marketing campaign.
5.1. Draw Customer Persona
What to do first when executing a marketing campaign? Firstly, we need to confirm who our target customer is.
If businesses don’t understand clearly about the target customer, then it is impossible to satisfy the target customer’s needs, leading to the Buzz Marketing campaign’s failure.
Hence, we need to create an exact customer persona – the person who represents every target customer that your business is aiming at.
Source: amywright.me
Some questions to consider when drawing customer persona:
- Who are they?
- What is their profesion?
- How old are they?
- What difficulties do they have to face everyday? Identify pain points.
- Where do they often seek information?
- What makes them interested?
- Which factors affect their purchase decision?
After identifying the customer persona, businesses then can make a decision on the most effective Buzz Marketing tool.
5.2. Create brand-related hashtags
Brands tend to search for what people say about them on social media platforms. Thus, a hashtag attached with the brand name would make everything easier for the brand.
Marketing strategies that start with hashtags will also help brands to collect customer feedback after the end of the campaign.
Finally, every content is concluded under a hashtag which helps businesses to manage their campaign. Thus, it is crucial to consider using hashtags from the start of a Buzz Marketing campaign.
5.3. Sharing on social media
Even when executing an offline campaign, businesses can also influence the campaign on every online platform. However, we need to justify the content to suit each platform’s nature.
For the Buzz Marketing campaign to work effectively, businesses need to ensure providing customers with certain values.
High quality content will influence target audiences to acquire more about the business, as well as sharing about it with their friends. This leads to an easier way of developing customer conversion.
Brands should also take care of customers who register through email. Brands need to control the customers list and pick out the list of customers who have the highest tendency to read email marketing.
The next part is to send emails notify about free signup perks, coupons for next order, or free shipping… to those chosen customers.
Lastly, encourage customers to spread the messages to all of their relatives, friends and turn them into the next potential customers.
Read more: What are Facebook Ads? From A-Z of Social Media Advertisin (cleverads.com.ph)
5.4. Choosing the suitable influencers
Cooperating with popular influencers is one of the best strategies for businesses to increase display capability and better approach potential customers.
Influencers often have high reputation on crowded channels, with a huge number of followers and high interaction. They fully understand what content is the most suitable for their followers.
Therefore, optimizing influencers in Buzz Marketing will be an ideal solution for your business.
To get started with this tool, businesses should give a sample of the new product line to influencers for experiential purposes. Next, businesses can make contracts with influencers, requiring them to review the product in the most impartial and honest way. The reviews should then be posted on influencers’ personal social media channels and the brand attached hashtags should not be forgotten.
However, make sure your company has chosen the suitable channels with both your influencers and your target audience. No company wants to advertise on a channel which its target customers are not available on.
5.5. Keep your eyes on the campaign and draw lessons from weaknesses.
A Buzz Marketing campaign will last until the business can clearly see the success and conversion rate of it.
To illustrate, businesses can use technological tools to analyze the campaign’s related index, like the website traffic performance or the videos’ views on YouTube.
In a simple way, businesses set the KPIs and follow the work progress through the completion level of these KPIs.
Businesses need to evaluate if these Buzz Marketing campaigns are doing well or not. If not, try to identify what is the reason which leads to the imperfection of the campaign, then use the reason as a warning for future campaigns.
6. Tips and Unique Ideas for a successful Buzz Marketing campaign.
6.1. Focus more on people.
Branding and product are always the top goals for every company, but not everyone understands that people are the ones who impulse the Buzz Marketing campaigns. Thus, it is essential to always put customers first.
Think about customers’ hobbies, pain points and basic needs first if you want a successful Buzz Marketing campaign.
6.2. Apply the principle of scarcity
Ecommerce websites often provide very attractive flash sale programmes, and these programmes work based on the principle of scarcity. The operating principle of this tool is very simple, people always appreciate scarce things more.
The key point of this tool is to decrease the number of available items in the market while consumers’ needs remain unchanged. Brands that successfully apply this principle are often called exclusive brands, this allows them to set a certain higher price for their products than any other brands in the market.
6.3. Using 2 or 3 buzz at the same time
If your business wants to stand out from the competition with your own Buzz Marketing effort, you need to provide customers with a stand-out campaign.
Every buzz will bring a distinctive effect for your campaign, but with 2 buzz at the same time, your customers’ experience will be improved twice.
For instance, instead of just giving unique ideas, revealing some secrets behind your brand combined with humor is also a good idea.
6.4. Using Video Marketing
There are many reasons for businesses to choose video marketing right now!
Video marketing visually stimulates the audience, helps them to remember, is highly shareable, influences the brand message and can also strongly activate emotions.
These are mostly everything needed for your business Buzz Marketing.
6.5. Quality consistency
Even when the business has successfully created a Buzz Marketing campaign aiming at their target audience, failure is still possible if the products put on the market cannot meet consumer expectations.
This will lead to a certain loss of current customers and the brand will struggle to find new sources of customers. Hence, it is important to ensure that the brand and the product provided are consistent in quality, and are also consistent with the hype that the Buzz Marketing campaign has raised among the market.
7. The most successful typical Buzz Marketing campaign
Starbucks mainly depends on Buzz Marketing to increase popularity and widen its approach to target customers. One of the first things customers remember about Starbucks is how they write the customers’ names on their coffee cups.
Lots of customers have volunteered to share the photos of these cups on their personal accounts, advertising Starbucks for free. Even the names with wrong pronunciation also received attention on social media.
However, Starbucks’s Buzz Marketing does not contain only this. They even attach Secret factors inside their secret menu to promote the brand. Coffee lovers will not find these secret drinks anywhere in the menu, if they want to try them, they need to ask the bartender to precisely do it for them. Most of the flavors in this secret menu are unique and only a few know about them, for example: Butterbeer Latte or Apple Pie Frappuccino.
People who are curious about these drinks can only find information through word-of-mouth. Starbucks also picked some loyal customers to advertise this secret menu on social media.
Conclusion
Buzz Marketing is a marketing tool that assists businesses to spread brand awareness with low commitment. All you need to do is understand your target audience, have clear objectives and quality product, and choose a suitable approach.
