While at the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association’s conference in Chicago earlier this year, the title of this post came to me. I sent a tweet on the idea while both the Content Strategy (#Confab) and Word of Mouth (#WOMMA) conferences were still going on.
Here’s why I like this analogy that the combination of Content Marketing and Word-of-Mouth Marketing best practices are the “Reeses Peanut Butter Cup” of contemporary marketing and public relations:
The premise of Content Marketing is that marketing and public relations professionals need to think like marketers and act like publishers to engage people by providing content that is relevant, educational, compelling or entertaining (or any combination thereof).
The “5 T’s” to focus upon for word of mouth marketing, extrapolated from Andy Sernovitz’s book Word of Mouth Marketing, are:
- Talkers: People who are more likely to relay your word of mouth message, online and offline
- Topics: Portable concepts for people to talk about, simple ideas that are word-of-mouth friendly, online and offline
- Tools: Techniques and technology that make it easier for word of mouth conversations to take place, online and offline
- Taking part: Participating in the word of mouth conversation and engaging in a genuine two-way dialog, online and offline
- Tracking: Measuring the online conversation
So, stretching the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup analogy about as far as I can possibly stretch it, content is the core, the substance – i.e. the peanut butter.
Word-of-Mouth is the chocolaty shell that carries and transports the content.
Just like you can’t have one of the best candy inventions in the world without both ingredients, in contemporary communications you can’t win without the best practices of both Content Marketing and Word-of-Mouth marketing.
Combined, they’re “two great tastes that taste great together.”