Formation/Cours

At the end of the course the student should be able to :
1. Understand the fundamental aspects of Word of Mouth Marketing and how these provide the foundation for today’s Social Media Marketing environment.
2. Develop an analytical mindset of the origins of word of mouth as a concept – drawing across various disciplines and integrating concepts to do so
3. Effectively communicate the evolution of word of mouth into Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)
4. Provide demonstrable evidence of WOMM in a real-world marketing environment
5. Demonstrate a direct link between WOMM and social media / social media marketing
6. Utilize the learnings from WOMM to develop an effective Social Media Marketing campaign
7. Determine how to best use contemporary social media tools such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. in such campaigns

The concept of Viral Marketing draws its inspiration from Word of Mouth Marketing and finds its best expression through Social Media Marketing. It is the intention of this course to focus on both these marketing approaches and to highlight the link between the two and how such a continuum gives rise to the overarching concept of Viral Marketing. A fundamental understanding of how word of mouth can be utilized as a marketing strategy (Word of Mouth Marketing) is critical to marketers for two reasons:
Firstly, and in itself, it presents as a useful marketing tool for marketers to include in their repertoire of strategic options. Secondly and in a very contemporary sense it underpins much of what we know regarding the mechanisms of social media. Indeed the very way the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram operate have their foundations in the concept of Word of Mouth.