Marketing buzz
Marketing buzz or simply buzz—a term used in viral marketing—is the interaction of consumers and users with a product or service which amplifies or alters the original marketing message.[1] This emotion, energy, excitement, or anticipation about a product or service can be positive or negative. Buzz can be generated by intentional marketing activities by the brand owner or it can be the result of an independent event that enters public awareness through social or traditional media such as newspapers. Marketing buzz originally referred to oral communication but in the age of Web 2.0, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are now the dominant communication channels for marketing buzz.
Strategies
Some of the common tactics used to create buzz include building suspense around a launch or event, creating a controversy, or reaching out to
Development of a social media marketing strategy must also take into account interaction with traditional media including the potential both for
For advertising to generate effective positive buzz, research has shown that it must engage the viewer's emotions in a positive way.
Measurement
Two common terms used to describe buzz are volume, which quantifies the number of interchanges related to a product or topic in a given time period, and rating or level, a more qualitative measure of the positive or negative sentiment or amount of engagement associated with the product.[8] Basic social media measures of buzz volume include visits, views, mentions, followers and subscribers; next level measures such as shares, replies, clicks, re-tweets, comments and wall posts provide a better indication of the participants' engagement levels because they require action in response to an initial communication.[citation needed]
It is possible for firms to track the marketing buzz of their products online using
Positive vs. negative buzz
Positive "buzz" is often a goal of
Effectiveness
Buzz works as a marketing tool because individuals in social settings are easier to trust than organizations that may be perceived to have vested interests in promoting their products and/or services. Interpersonal communication has been shown to be more effective in influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions than advertising alone and the two combined have the greatest power.[5]
A 2013 paper by Xueming Luo and Jie Zhang[8] lists numerous previous studies that have shown a positive correlation between buzz rating and/or volume and product sales or company revenue. To expand further on that research, Luo and Zhang investigated the relationship of buzz and web traffic and their effect on stock market performance for nine top publicly traded firms in the computer hardware and software industries. Comparing data on consumer buzz rating and volume from a popular electronic product review Website with the firms’ stock returns over the same period, they found a strong positive correlation between online buzz and stock performance. They also found that due to increasing online content and limitations in consumer attention, competing buzz for rival products could have a negative effect on a firm's performance. For these nine companies, buzz had a greater effect than traffic and accounted for approximately 11% of the total variation of stock returns, with 6% due to the firms’ own marketing driving the stock price up and 5% due to rival firms’ buzz driving it down.[citation needed]
As consumers increasingly expect to have access to buzz about products as part of their purchasing decisions and to interact with the brand in social media, successful companies are being driven to adopt social media marketing strategies to stay competitive. To successfully plan and implement these campaigns requires the ability to predict their effectiveness and therefore the return on investment that can be expected for the dollars expended.[14]
Marketing buzz in the digital age
With the addition of new interactive and digital media technologies into the marketing industry, a significant emphasis has been put on the use of online content to generate buzz about a product, service, or company.
Many companies are also using their online presence to generate buzz by allowing users to post reviews on their sites, as well as the use of reviews posted on third party sites. This concept of online reviewing also works to generate negative buzz, and has been a topic of criticism. Online review site Yelp has been subject to criticism after allegations that business owners were paying the site to only publish the positive reviews, in an attempt to boost sales and hide negative buzz about these businesses.[17] After 10 small businesses filed a lawsuit against Yelp in 2010, the site made the decision to remove the "Favourite Review" option, that previously allowed a business owner to choose the review they liked the most and have it showcased, as well as made content previously hidden from potential customers, visible.[18]
Additionally, the social media site Twitter has been a game changer in terms of marketing buzz in the digital age.[19] The online microblogging site, with web traffic totalling about 350,000 tweets being sent per minute,[20] has quickly become an important tool in business and in marketing. Companies are now creating Twitter pages as a means of personal communication with their target audience. Twitter allows businesses of any size to speak directly to their intended demographic, and allows the customer to communicate back, a feature unique to marketing technologies and methods utilized in the digital age.[19] In addition, companies can pay to have their tweets show up on the Twitter "timeline" of users they want to reach. Many celebrities and public figures carrying a large amount of Twitter "followers" also accept payment to tweet about products.[21]
Some notable examples of buzz marketing in the digital age include the highly successful marketing campaign for the
References
- doi:10.1002/cb.158
- ^ ISBN 9780470827413.
- ^ Jaime J. Weinman, "Who's watching? Who cares? Once obsessed with viewers and ratings, the television model these days is all about buzz," Maclean's 126, no. 4 (February 2013):54
- Time. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
- ^ a b Caleb J. Seifert, et al, "Winning the Super "Buzz" Bowl," Journal of Advertising Research 49, no. 3 (September 2009):293-303
- ^ Jonah Berger and Zoey Chen,“When Controversy Sparks Buzz--and When It Doesn't”, Harvard Business Review 92, no. 4 (April 2014):28
- ^ Younge, Gary (9 February 2014). "Coca-Cola's Super Bowl ad showed that some Americans still can't take diversity". theguardian. Retrieved 2014-08-28.
- ^ a b Xueming Luo and Jie Zhang, "How Do Consumer Buzz and Traffic in Social Media Marketing Predict the Value of the Firm?," Journal of Management Information Systems 30, no. 2 (Fall 2013):213-238
- ^ Glaser, Mark (January 3, 2007). "Nielsen BuzzMetrics Tries to Measure Buzz in Social Media". www.pbs.org. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
- ^ Mehta, Maneesh; Doorley, Thomas; Horvath, Michael (November / December 2005). "Future signals: How successful growing companies stay on course". Ivey Business Journal: 4. Retrieved 2009-06-08
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-04-10. Retrieved 2013-04-06.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Mohr, Iris (Sep 1, 2017). "Managing Buzz Marketing in the Digital Age". Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness. 11 (2): 10–16. Retrieved Aug 24, 2020 – via www.na-businesspress.com.
- ^ Renée Dye, "The Buzz on Buzz" Harvard business Review, (2001-01-29)
- ^ Guy Powell, Jerry Dimos, and Steven Groves, ROI of Social Media: How to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment, (Singapore : John Wiley & Sons [Asia], 2011), p. 7-8
- ^ a b http://www.marketing.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5513#.U-oAvF5H3lI [dead link]
- ^ "What is buzz marketing? - Definition from WhatIs.com". SearchCRM. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
- ^ "The Ongoing Yelp! Controversy". Transition Marketing Services. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
- ^ "Yelp makes two major changes in the way reviews are posted". Los Angeles Times. 6 April 2010. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
- ^ "Twitter Usage Statistics". Retrieved 4 January 2016.
- ^ "Sponsored Tweets". HuffPost. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
Further reading
- Salzman, Marian; Matathia, Ira & O'Reilly, Ann (2003). Buzz: harness the power of influence and create demand. John Wiley and Sons. p. 246. ISBN 0-471-27345-7. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- Pursuing Marketing Buzz - NY Times article