Buzz Marketing

Buzz marketing involves creating a trend among people through word of mouth to generate sales for a product. In other words, markets create a “Buzz” among target audience and spread through word of mouth and generate sales for the organization. As an example, if a celebrity wears a certain branded clothing and attend a public gathering, that will create a buzz among fans of that particular celebrity and it will spread among customers by word of mouth instantly.

Buzz marketing is a commonly used marketing method in modern world as it is cost effective and faster than other means. It uses strategies such as celebrity appearance, public occasions such as musical shows, voluntary and paid buzzers and many other means to create the buzz about product. Even though buzz marketing seems to be a new concept in modern marketing it was practiced in early days but in modern marketing practice of buzz marketing has expanded to make use of its cost effectiveness.

For a buzz marketing campaign to be effective organization should get the people to talk about their product in a positive manner which will persuade the listener to purchase and spread the message along.

There are many advantages of using buzz marketing such as:

• Cost effectiveness- Buzz marketing does not have major cost apart from costs involved in paid buzzers if any.
• Speed- Buzz marketing is a faster mode of marketing as the word of mouth about a product spreads faster than TV commercials and other adversing means.
• Buzz marketing campaigns are easy to be set up as it requires less effort such as initialing the buzz through celerity or other means.
• Buzz marketing effectively cater to the target market as people will always spread the buzz among people whom they think will have an interest on the product. This will work as a filtering method from buzz spreading to non-targeted people.
• It increases the brand awareness and the reputation of the company quickly.

There can be disadvantages of using buzz marketing such as:

• Negative buzz- Like the positive news spread fast if there are any negative news about the product it will spread faster than positive news as humans tend to spread bad news fast. (Bad news has wings)
• Human error- By nature humans make errors in communication. They edit the original message of a product to a message which will favor them. Original buzz reaches the audience in as different message. (Selective Distortion)
• Selective attention- Humans listen to messages only of their interest and this will delay the buzz spreading process.
• Over buzz created will result in loss of control where there may be situations such as stock outs resulting in customer disatisfaction.
• When the company wishes to stop the buzz campaign it will be impossible to stop as people will not stop talking about the products.
• Buzz marketing campaigns can be easily imitated by competitors or they can spread negative buzz to destroy the buzz marketing effort.

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