What Businesses and Marketers can learn from WOMM Successes?

The Digital future project 2007 reveals 43 per cent of internet users are part of online communities. As much as 20.3 per cent backed up their commitments to online communities with offline action. 70.4 per cent said, most often they interact with other members of their community while logged in. Internet and mobile association of India predicts that India’s net user base will touch 100 million by March 2008. There is no doubt that the online communities and networking sites are emerging as ‘the platform’ for people to voice their views and to stay in touch.

When we closely observe, these networking sites have altered our lives from a ‘mass society’ to a ‘networked society’. At this point of time, word of mouth marketing is something that marketers can’t afford to miss. As the media moves to the next phase so, should the marketing strategy. The power of the human voice and personalized contacts are the most powerful communications tools and now WOMM has the ability to harness them.

WOMM is not just about voicing your opinion or advertising. Companies can drive sale, generate leads, and do PR campaign through connected marketing. Sounds fantastic? Check out these brands names, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Procter & Gamble and Sony. They all have successfully applied WOMM to harness the opinion, launch new product, transform public opinion and drive sales.

There has been an explosion of networking sites like Orkut, Myspace, Facebook featuring a highly interactive platform to share and comment. Nothing is spared from critique, nearly everything new product launch, celebrity events, burning issues are put under the scanner with great enthusiasm. Word of mouth opinions through community sites are a ruthless juggernaut that ploughs bad crop as well as seeding fertile plains.

Think about how Apple went from something that you ate to keep the doctor away, to the creator of the best-selling iPod. How Hotmail managed to gain more than 12 million subscribers in less than a year-and-a-half! Microsoft launched its mysterious "Origami" with a video casting young people using the "Origami" device to sketch pictures, use a map with global positioning satellite technology, listen to digital music and play Halo, a popular Microsoft video game. It was not immediately clear whether the product would be a Microsoft-branded device or if the software giant would simply provide software and services. The mysterious marketing campaign fueled speculation and rumors. Everyone started talking about the product. They were successful in creating a buzz in the market.

Buzz marketing can be many times more powerful than conventional marketing. But to really spread the word about your business you should have a strong product. For instance ‘Apple’ has created customers who believe in their product so strongly, that they freely try to convince others to buy and use it. The customers become voluntary advocates, actively spreading the word on behalf of the company. Google employed referral programs to launch Gmail, they didn’t do conventional marketing and spent no money. Google created scarcity by giving Gmail accounts only to a handful of "power users." This kindled the curiosity in others who looked upto these power users and it manifested itself in their bidding for Gmail invites on eBay. Google created demand by limited supply and the catch of having a Gmail account spread through word of mouth. All these companies have successfully utilized the power of WOMM.

WOMM can suit any kind of business domain; it’s not just reserved for marketing communication. It’s the best platform to learn what people think about your product. So, it’s high time to think beyond the media space in T.V channels and newspaper columns. Harnessing these sites will surely leverage the extra mile for your product or service. But some thing that you should keep in mind is that; as much as they can be helpful in spreading the spiral about your company; they are also capable of backfiring. So before entering the realm, you need to do intensive research and strategize the best plans to make connected marketing work for you.