When I ask new or established businesses how they plan to market their products or services they answer “…mostly through word of mouth”. This answer drives me a little crazy!  Word Of Mouth(WOM)  doesn’t just happen!  Just like everything else, businesses need a plan and need to work the plan to generate WOM. In fact, some large corporations dedicate thousands and even millions to their WOM efforts. Julie Mierau focused a past post on serving up great customer service to help

Everywhere you turn for marketing advice, you’ll hear how important word-of-mouth marketing is. Start-up business owners even list this as their only approach to marketing a new product or service. Why? Simple: They think it’s free. In fact, you can manage your word-of-mouth marketing. And it’s effective. But it ain’t free. There are experts, like BzzAgent (www.BzzAgent.com), who can help you, if you have the money. Or you can sign up to be a BzzAgent, test some products for

It may be  a stretch to say that President Elect Barack Obama’s Web 2.0 tactics during his campaign was the single factor in his win, but many experts have expressed that it certainly played a big, big role. President John F. Kennedy is readily recognized as the President who revolutionized television as a medium to reach constituents.  President Elect Obama will most certainly be credited with revolutionizing politics through the use of the World Wide Web. President Obama’s

Okay, choir, heads up. The sermon is about to begin. A marketing plan is more than an advertising campaign. All together now, a marketing plan is more than an advertising campaign. This weekend, I reviewed a marketing plan created by a group of college students for a nonprofit theater. Great idea, giving students real-world, hands-on experience in creating marketing plans. Bad idea not to require that they complete any meaningful research or that their final product actually