The "Buzz" in Viral Marketing

How effective is viral marketing and word-of-mouth advertising? Personally, I feel word-of-mouth and viral marketing are one of the best ways to advertise a product to consumers. I feel it's honest and really gives consumers the perspective from an unbiased individual. I think this is where the Buzz Agency is going with their campaign. The Buzz Agency, which is a network of regular-Joe brand advocates, is making a bet that word-of-mouth marketing will outperform any other discipline when it comes to ringing registers and driving advocacy for brands.

The agency is starting its "WOM Impact Guarantee" program, which recently launched and will run throughout the rest of 2008. They are inviting any brand marketer and its agency partners to take part in a challenge in which their agency and agency partner will run competing campaigns. If the Buzz Agency does not top the competing agency by 20% across four metrics -- brand awareness, consumer opinion, purchase intent and actual sales -- the agency will refund the marketer the cost of its word-of-mouth campaign and measurement costs.

This is pretty competitive, so Buzz Agency definitely has faith in word-of-mouth advertising. I have faith in it as well. It has been proven to be an effective way to market to consumers, as long as it's done in the right way. However, I think it is a good idea just to show advertisers the effectiveness of this type of marketing and advertising. There has been a significant rise in this advertising especially with social media marketing outlets and video-sharing sites. However, I presume there will be more different ways to do word-of-mouth advertising in the future as well.

Their CEO and Founder, Dave Balter knows the agency may not win every challenge, but he has no doubt the program will have a lasting impact on every marketer that takes part.

He stated that, "Our success may come with a little hair on it," he said. "Our batting average may not be perfect on this, and we may miss one or two. But even if that happens, we are going to show marketers that [word-of-mouth] works."