Conversational marketing and word-of-mouth marketing are different; if you think they're the same, then you suffer under broadcast thinking's corrupting influence. Underscore Marketing's president explains.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in this case, I think I'd rather the imitators keep their distance.
The word-of-mouth marketers have latched onto a term that was gaining traction in the blogosphere -- conversational marketing -- and they're trying to turn it into something that it's not. 

I don't know if it's marketing's penchant for sucking the deeper meaning out of things or what, but I think we're at such a critical stage in the marketing industry's development that I'd rather plant a stake in the ground than surrender a perfectly legitimate marketing concept to those who would corrupt it.

Where it comes from
"Conversational Marketing" was a term that entered into the lexicon on the coattails of "The Cluetrain Manifesto;" it described a fundamental shift in thinking that needed to take place. The gist was that companies needed to start thinking of marketing as a bottom-up operation rather than a top-down one.

The internet was bringing a new dynamic into play, changing the ways in which people connected with one another, and Cluetrain helped to highlight opportunities for companies to connect directly with their customers online, in lieu of taking a broadcast approach to the marketplace. Conversational marketing emerged as a favorite term to describe the notion of connecting directly to customers online, in part because the first of the 95 Theses within the manifesto is "Markets are conversations."

Losing its meaning?
Since the term emerged, a few of the word-of-mouth marketing companies have latched on to conversational marketing and simply won't let go. They use it to describe a decidedly top-down concept-- using compensated agents to influence the market.

This concept takes the original meaning of conversational marketing and flips it on its head. 

It tries to make the idea of connecting directly with the marketplace compatible with the broadcast thinking typical of large corporations, mainly by taking the conversation away from the people working at the corporation and giving it to a group of paid agents.

In doing so, they're stripping conversational marketing of its meaning.

Really, the two concepts are polar opposites. It's almost comical that they might try to use the same language to describe themselves. Conversational marketing was founded on ideas that came out of The ClueTrain Manifesto and the basic rules of human communication that we observe in action every day in the blogosphere and in online communities in general.

One of those rules calls for complete transparency-- something that's not exactly compatible with the idea of paid agents spreading a marketer's message, even if relationships are disclosed.

Another of those ideas is the commitment to something other than broadcast thinking. The fundamental unit of human communication is the individual conversation, not a one-way message originating from a marketing department. Conversational marketing understands this. Word-of-mouth marketing does not. See the difference?

The difference between success and failure
So how do these differences manifest in the real world? 

Last week I wrote about Wal-Mart's poor track record in dealing with the blogosphere. To Wal-Mart, the approach to online marketing involves using a PR agency to help influence the blogosphere, rather than connecting directly with its customers.

When the opinions and pieces on the Working Families for Wal-Mart and Paid Critics websites turned out to be messages crafted by Wal-Mart's PR agency, the blogosphere and the mainstream media erupted.  Not only did Wal-Mart flagrantly violate accepted tenets of transparency, but they also executed their strategy using broadcast thinking. They used Edelman PR as an agent to spread a marketing message, taking a top-down approach rather than a bottom-up one. 

True adherents to conversational marketing would consider both lazy and disrespectful.

See for yourself what's happening to Wal-Mart as they continue to swing the broadcast hammer at the marketing nail. Perhaps if they changed their approach they might get closer to achieving their objectives.

This town ain't big enough…
So, get lost word-of-mouth marketers. While you're using broadcast thinking and paid agents to advance a marketing agenda, conversational marketing would like to distance itself from you. We'd prefer to think of word of mouth as a symptom of marketing success, and not as an objective in and of itself.

Meaningful online communication is a very human thing, and it can't be faked.

Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com. Read full bio.