Word of Mouth Promotion – one of the best ways to get book publicity is to get people talking! If you have a book publicist they will work to get a buzz around your book, inspiring people to tell others to pick it up. Nothing sells a book better than a personal recommendation.
A great deal of research finds that word of mouth is more effective than other types of marketing. Whether compared to traditional advertising, media mentions, or promotional events, word of mouth is more useful in creating new users and customers.
Word of Mouth Marketing – This differs from naturally occurring word of mouth, in that it is actively influenced or encouraged by organizations (e.g. ‘seeding’ a message in a network, rewarding regular consumers to engage in word of mouth, employing word of mouth ‘agents’). While it is difficult to truly control word of mouth, research has shown that there are three generic avenues to ‘manage’ word of mouth for the purpose of word of mouth management:
- Build a strong word of mouth foundation (e.g. sufficient levels of satisfaction, trust and commitment),
- Indirect word of mouth management which implies that managers only have a moderate amount of control (e.g. controversial advertising, teaser campaigns, customer membership clubs),
- Direct word of mouth management, which has higher levels of control (e.g. paid word of mouth ‘agents’, “friend get friend” schemes). Pro-consumer word of mouth has been suggested as a counterweight to commercially motivated word of mouth.
