Have you heard the news about the amazing new product everyone is talking about? Spoken to your friends about that awesome restaurant that just opened and absolutely everyone is trying to get a reservation? Welcome to the action-packed world of buzz marketing.
Buzz marketing is an avenue of marketing that maximises amplification of your brand story through word-of-mouth excitement. The power of personal recommendation is nothing new to Malaysian marketing, but the framework that surrounds it now offers more opportunity than ever. That can mean everything from engaging on-the-street conversation to inspiring and intriguing social media discussions.
Imagine you’re at the top of a hill with a great idea. You get the ball rolling with some inspiring marketing or aspirational brand image that gets people talking. As the conversations grow, the idea picks up pace and mass. More people are talking about it, it’s moving faster as it travels, until it’s so big and traveling so fast that everyone has to take notice. That’s how buzz marketing works, and at its heart it’s built on the fundamental power of word-of-mouth marketing.
Understanding the value of word-of-mouth
Word-of-mouth marketing is the single most trusted form of marketing. A 2015 study by Nielsen shows that 88% of consumers in Southeast Asia trust word-of-mouth recommendations, a full 20% higher than the next most trusted format – newspapers. In fact, analysts McKinsey estimate that consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising.
This form of marketing also lives on far beyond the single view of a billboard or reading of an article on a blog. By creating an engaging and (crucially) important on-going conversation, word-of-mouth carries a brand message beyond the borders of the digital space and into physical spaces that are notoriously challenging for marketing to engage in. A study by the US-based Word Of Mouth Marketing Association revealed that two-thirds of the impact of this marketing is found offline, meaning brand amplification carried by the consumers themselves.
So is social media word-of-mouth?
Yes it is! Social media is just a big, digital platform to host conversations. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, and a lot of the involve cat memes. That means it’s also important to recognise that, just like in the real world, people assign different values to just how reputable a recommendation is based on who is talking to them.
Buzz marketing and influencers
In today’s connected modern world, buzz marketing has evolved to include some more strategic considerations. The role of influencers has always been important to the idea of building buzz, but social platforms like Facebook and Instagram mean that easily accessible metrics to understand who those influencers might be are now readily available.
Instagram is a particularly heavy influencer-driven platform for brands, with a predicted US$1 billion spent on almost 15 million brand sponsored influencer posts in 2017. Meanwhile, a study by Twitter showed that 49% of users relied on influencers for product recommendations. In fact social media influencers can be a particularly powerful tool for accessing the next generation of emerging consumers. Just take YouTube, where a study shows 70% of teenage subscribers relate to YouTube creators more than traditional celebrities.
Buzz marketing in action
There are countless cases of buzz marketing. Even before we coined the term, people were getting excited and talking about emerging new products or exciting new food experiences. Today that whole thing just has more jargon to go along with it.
Pokemon Go is a global success story that exploded on the back of international hype. It combined the unique opportunity of emerging technology (augmented reality) with the excitement of an established and recognised brand (Pokemon) to create a viral sensation that had everyone talking. Within 80 days of launch, Pokemon Go had received over half a billion installs and generated over US$470 million in revenue. It was the fastest app ever to earn US$100 million, and two years since its launch it’s now been downloaded 800 million times and grossed around US$2 billion in revenue. That’s some powerful buzz for a few little digital monsters.
If you want to talk about a more Malaysian buzz, then how about we discuss the madness of McDonalds’ Ayam Goreng!? People went crazy for this crispy chicken joy, with viral adverts leading to huge word-of-mouth excitement that ultimately drove the fast-food retailer to run out of crispy delicious stock. The most amazing part of the Ayam Goreng story is that the dish has been on menus for years, but a sudden burst of buzz following a new advertising campaign drove hordes of hungry McD lovers to the stores. That’s an example of buzz marketing at its crispy best.
