Connected Marketing

The viral, buzz and word of mouth revolution

edited by Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden

First Edition
Published by Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006
Paperback, 320 pages
ISBN:0-7506-6634-X

With the advent of the Internet and the opportunities offered by online marketing, this book reveals how business can harness the new ‘connectivity’ and stimulate brand talk between clients, customers and consumers – tapping into that powerful marketing media to drive demand and business growth.

It’s one of the hardest areas of online marketing to get right, but once it does, this can be an immensely powerful form of marketing that can bring benefits over months or years. Viral marketing is the most established form of this activity, whereby a creative idea or concept persuades people to spread the message online, through email or other routes. Word of mouth is a similar concept that helps to spread positive messages about a company, product or service, and ‘buzz’ marketing is the technique of involving the media in this process as well.

Edited by marketing consultants Justin Kirby and Dr Paul Marsden, Connected Marketing is a collaborative work written by 17 opinion-leading academics, consultants and practitioners working at the cutting edge of viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing.

Through a wide range of solutions and case studies, the book demystifies viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing and demonstrates that managing successful connected marketing activity is possible through an organised series of decisions and approaches – it’s not a hit-or-miss quest for that one groundbreaking idea.

Each chapter is broken down into easy to digest sections and there are plenty of examples and case studies used throughout, to demonstrate that this form of marketing can work – sometimes with the simplest of ideas.

The book is not just about online, but covers offline techniques and examples as well, but with chapters on viral marketing and blog marketing, it does provide a valuable set of concepts and ideas for anyone wanting to market their business online.