What Is Buzz Marketing? An Ultimate Guide, Strategies, Examples

All about Buzz Marketing

Buzz Marketing is about creating hype among your customers about your brand. It uses the technique of word-of-mouth to spread the word about your brand. It has the potential to enhance conversions, and generate more customers, leads, and sales in a market. Social media has become an effective way for buzz marketing. Buzz marketing creates a buzz about your brand in the target customer base. In today’s article, we must learn about the meaning of buzz marketing, its concept, and marketing strategy along with some examples. 

Buzz Marketing leverages virality to enhance the word-of-mouth advertising of a brand. 

What is Buzz Marketing?

Buzz Marketing is a form of word of mouth marketing and a subset of viral marketing. This form of marketing is used to capture the attention of customers/ influencers to talk about the brand or product or services provided. The term “Buzz” means a trigger or making a low humming sound. Buzz can be about an idea/ company’s tagline/ its logo, or such factor that triggers the listener to talk about the company. This strategy has the potential to attract a huge audience base. It is a freeway of marketing or popularising a brand.

Benefits of Buzz Marketing:

Buzz marketing is used by companies across the world. Some of the advantages of buzz marketing are discussed below:

• Cost-effective: Advertising or promoting a brand is free of cost. Buzz marketing is much more cost-effective than other conventional forms of marketing.

• Reach customers: You can reach out to customers from anywhere in the world. Word of mouth travels very fast. So companies can promote their brand and products/ services without much effort.

• Unique: Buzz marketing has a unique marketing strategy. This method is very useful for such brands who want to stand out from the crowd and define themselves. 

• Brand recognition: Buzz Marketing enhances brand awareness. Such awareness attracts more customers, increases conversion and engagement, and generates more sales. This also improves customer retention.

• Accessible: Small businesses lack good marketing strategies due to varied factors. But buzz marketing is accessible to every type of business as it is easy and cost-effective.  

• Digitalized marketing: In today’s world internet has emerged as a kind of communication. The Internet has emerged as a great source of marketing as people are socializing more. Social media has become a powerful weapon for businesses. So generating brand awareness and buzz around the latest products and services is not a big deal now.

Types of Buzz Marketing:

• Buzz campaign – Campaigns are conducted through events for enhanced brand awareness. During an ad campaign, the organizer explains about the product/ service getting promoted.

• Online campaigns – It has become an important method of buzz marketing. The whole world is getting connected through the internet. So it has become an important medium for the promotion of brands. The company posts an advertisement on various social media platforms. For example, the first-ever banner ad got created in October 1994 by the company AT&T on HotWired.com. The ad said, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? YOU WILL”. The company saw that around 44% of people clicked over the ad.

• Offline campaigns – Offline campaigns are those which occur in reality and not virtual. It inculcates within the minds of the customer that the products are safe for use. This leads to positive customer reviews and feedback. A company gets connected with its potential and existing customers using this technique. 

• Influencer buzz – Brands associate with influencers to promote their products and services. Consumers watch launch videos of a product or service provided by a brand. When the video is shot by their favourite blogger or by a famous influencer, the customer feels gets more interested in buying the product.

• Spreading rumour – Buzz marketing occurs by spreading rumours about a product/ service. The rumours build inquisitiveness among the customers to buy such a product.

• Taboos – These get used as triggers and get implanted within our brains. The taboo trigger is an online campaign using controversial and surprising topics. Using a social taboo, brands trigger sales of a product by grabbing the attention of audiences. Such taboos also generate strong emotions in the masses. For example, how will you react when someone speaks about “cannibalism” or any such topic? You may have a surprising or disgusting response to such discussions. Such a reaction is a form of buzz marketing used by many brands.

• Hilarious – This form of buzz marketing is very popular these days. It is usually created by meme marketing. People are finding ways to laugh and have fun during their leisure hours. So while creating a buzz marketing campaign, popular brands keep in mind that people love to see funny visuals running in the ads.

Tips for a successful Buzz Marketing campaign:

• Scrutinize the existing trend: A product or service getting viral depends upon the existing trend in the market. For example, in the current trend, one of the popular buzzwords is “Bitcoin”. So if a brand is creating an ad campaign related to Cryptocurrency, then the possibility of such an ad getting viral is high. When a campaign becomes viral, people start making memes or imitating the viral content.

• Know your audience: Before marketing a product, you must know who you are trying to reach. Understanding your buyer persona is an essential factor for the success of a buzz marketing campaign. Your content should focus on the needs and requirements of your audience. 

• Focus on the audience and not the product: To have a successful buzz marketing campaign, you should focus on your marketing strategies.  Your marketing strategies should meet the needs and interests of your target audience. 

• USP creation: Another method to create a buzz is to build a unique USP (Unique Selling Proposition). You must create a marketing strategy based on your brand’s goals. 

• Influencer marketing: People generally rely upon advertisements by their influencers. You can use the benefits of an influencer to get a positive outcome for your ad campaigns. So influencer marketing technique is another effective way of creating a buzz.  

• Social media campaigns: To create a buzz, it’s essential to let the campaign go viral. For virality, you have to post your ad campaign over social media platforms. These days, people go online now and then. So chances are high that your posts go viral by getting shared by many people. So post and wait to see the positive outcome.

• Include hashtags in your content: Create your personalized hashtag. Such a hashtag will help people share about your brand and give feedback regarding a product. The hashtag should contain features of your campaign. This will help your audience to reach up to your brand.

• Induced product scarcity: Create a brand-induced deficit in the availability of a product/ service. You can post flash sales, limited period offers, etc. on e-commerce websites to show such a deficit. This will create a buzz around your brand and increase its demand.

• Include content marketing and video marketing strategies while creating your marketing campaign. They are proven to be effective in creating buzz around a brand. To create a buzz marketing strategy, you may include popular influencers and bloggers. Such influencers have a greater potential to promote your brand.  

• Email your subscribers: Send emails to loyal customers and inform them about a new or upcoming product. For good results, categorize your subscribers and divide them into different categories. Include discount offers and CTA in your email. This will encourage the recipient to become your brand advocate for better promotion. This will create a buzz.

• Send personalized messages: Automated messages are cost-effective. They have the potential to generate huge ROIs, open rates, and engagement rates. An automated text message is pre-written and can be sent at any time. SMS automation allows you to send personalized messages to your target audience.

• Analyze your results: Use tools like Google Analytics, to see how many people have visited your website. Such tools show the behaviour of the visitors to your website. Follow marketing KPIs to understand the status of your ad campaigns. Every campaign should be unique to reach a bigger audience.

• Guerilla marketing: Use of unconventional marketing techniques involving cost-effective resources.

• Taboo: Controversial topics have the potential to grab the attention of your audience.

• Humour: Use of humor in the campaigns will attract more audiences and create a buzz around your brand.

• Spreading Rumour/ suspense: The spread of rumour or suspense about a product/ service will grab the attention of audiences and create a buzz around

• Unrelated ad: Creating an ad campaign not related to your brand but focusing on your brand will grab the attention of your audience (think about that(^^)) and create a buzz around.

There are many buzzwords that brands use to create brand awareness in the market. Some of the words are Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, ChatBox, Content Marketing, etc. You have to identify in your niche to create a successful buzz marketing campaign.

Examples of Buzz Marketing:

These are the best buzz marketing campaigns created by brands

Apple: Steve Jobs adopts one of the best marketing strategies in the world to create a buzz. He focussed on simplicity while providing wonderful gadgets like MacBooks and iPhones. He invested his valuable time in designing unique ad campaigns. Thus every campaign says a story and creates a buzz. It also generates word of mouth marketing.  

Old Spice: Since its emergence in the 1930s, the brand has created a buzz in its niche. It uses unique marketing strategies in its campaigns. The first successful Buzz marketing campaign of Old Spice was named “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. Former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa interpreted the campaign as being a hilarious one.  

Starbucks: One of the best ad campaigns for Starbucks is “Name on Cup”. The campaign increased the sales of the brand by 10 times. The brand started delivering coffee in cups with the name of the customer printed on them. The customized coffee cups delivered to the customers created a buzz around the brand.  

Coca-Cola: It created a unique and honest ad campaign “Coca Cola Obesity Control Marketing”. The campaign created a buzz among Americans. The brand accepts the fact that soft drinks contain ingredients that led to obesity. This fact created a buzz around the product. This type of marketing strategy is known as “Accepting the way we are”. The brand accepts its demerits and creates an image of honesty in the minds of the customer. It is a risky marketing strategy. Sometimes, people do not like your weaknesses and may drop their association with your brand.      

Conclusion:

The ultimate purpose of buzz marketing is to stand out among the crowd. Your success will make people talk about you and refer your products to their known ones. Thus Buzz Marketing is a sales tactic. It builds trust and creates hype within a customer. It also optimizes lead generation for increased sales. In today’s world, people prefer to stay connected with their known ones through the internet. So using the benefits of internet marketing strategies will yield your best results.

Buzz Marketing is an effective way of spreading brand awareness. You have to understand your audience, have a clear business goal, and put in the right approach. This stellar business strategy has already helped many canopies grow globally. Now it is your turn. 

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