Cutting Through the Clutter

Word of Mouth Marketing Prevails In Social Media
Excerpt:
What this image shows is traditional marketing and social media marketing. As you can see the black arrows aren’t penetrating through the circle and the reason is because it is getting harder and harder to market using traditional media. The red arrow on the other hand is social media. You can clearly see that this is penetrating into the market and reaching a certain number of people. These people belong to one group, one community. Say facebook.
If you are taking the right approach to social media marketing, one of these users might go into a different platform and talk about it. You can see from the image an arrow pointing to another user inside a smaller circle.
Now this user might talk about it within their community and then may be hit the other community that he/she belongs to. Social media is simply word of mouth advertising. You don’t pay a dime, you simply participate, become a valuable member and penetrate into the market.
Once you take care of that, each user will carry on the message without them even knowing that they are actually promoting your products and services. Word of mouth advertising has been the holy grail of traditional marketing and it is true when it comes to social media marketing as well.

My Take

Ritu -
“Word of mouth advertising has been the holy grail of traditional marketing and it is true when it comes to social media marketing as well.”

So true.

The current interest in “social media” seems to be a rediscovery of what has always worked for local, trusted businesses. The Web allows national brands to more effectively affiliate with consumers by seeping into their social circles. Conversely, local businesses can use the Web to grow through leveraging the consumer trust they already have.
Your illustration shows the value of breaking through mass media clutter and into the area of trust. Our attempts at illustrating this can be seen on SlideShare.