Marketing is the process of taking a message to the right people - the challenge is finding the right message, getting it to the right people, getting them to listen to it, and then convincing them to act. This is a simple theory: if you get the right message in front of the right people, they will do all the hard work for you. "The most important thing is getting people to talk about you," said George Silverman, author of "The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing" (AMACOM) and president of Market Navigation Inc., a consulting firm in Orangeburg, N.Y. Salli Rasberry, co-author of "Marketing Without Advertising" (Nolo Press), said that, while advertising might seem like the most natural way to get your company known, "the best way to make the highest lasting impact on people is to stimulate other people to spread the word about you.".
Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Word of Mouth is basically, informal communications about products, services or ideas between people who are independent of the company providing the product or service, in a medium independent of the company.
Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions. It has also been referred to as "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," and "network marketing- (Rosen, 84). Word of mouth is the oldest form of marketing. Essentially, consumers find something they like, then recommend it to others; it's not so much a marketing tactic as it is human behavior. However, it also works in the opposite direction consumers finds something they dislike and does not recommend it to others. But now, with consumer complacency and skepticism growing, it's becoming a crucial marketing tool. The basic formula for WOM is means + motivation = pass-along.
