Word of Mouth Marketing Is Becoming Incredibly Important
Powerful Trend Reinforces Need for Effective Content Marketing Strategies
Word of mouth marketing has carried marketing messages since the time of cavemen. Back then, it didn’t get your message more than a few cave doors down.
Thanks to the impact of the Internet, changes in buyer behavior, and the power of blogging and social media, it will be among the most important ways to market your content and your company.
That makes the creation of relevant and compelling content even more important than ever as buyers and prospects spread the word about you and your organization. Intuitively, we know this to be true. Solid research now reinforces that intuition.
New research from the Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Association(WOMMA) indicates that expenditures for this powerful brand of spreading the word will grow tenfold from 2003 to 2013.
According to the research, conducted by PQ Media, spending on word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing rose 14.2% to $1.54 billion in 2008, despite the worst economic recession in 70 years, accentuated by secular and structural trends battering traditional advertising and marketing media. While year-over-year growth is expected to slow in 2009, WoM spending is on pace to grow another 10.2% this year, placing it among the fastest growing advertising and marketing segments. This contrasts with the dramatic decline in the US and global economies.
“All of our members – the major brands, agencies and technology companies – have felt this new surge in word-of-mouth marketing,” said John Bell, President of the board at WOMMA. “Recession or not, our research and our experience clearly tells us that marketers see word-of-mouth marketing and social media marketing as essential. Done well and ethically, the trust, credibility and impact it builds is unsurpassed.”
Here are video highlights on the word-of-mouth research from John Moore at AllThingsWOM.com:
Effective word-of-mouth marketing can level the playing field between giant multinationals and small entrepreneurs. By creating well targeted, relevant, and memorable content, you will motivate your Web visitors to spread the word about the benefit of doing business with your company. You don’t need a giant marketing budget. Your visitors will be doing the work for you–willingly and enthusiastically. I would call that user-generated content marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing? It’s so easy that even cavemen used to do it. And, now it’s so important that you need to do it, too.
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Comments [5]
No doubt that budgets are shifting as returns from trad marketing decline while WOM entry points are relatively inexpensive. Question: How do we distinguish WOM from social media or social networking efforts? Are they part of the same spectrum of activity, one live and one virtual? Where do you see the distinction?
Jonathan, I believe Word of Mouth is the “original” Social Media. Word of mouth happens in physical ways (in person, on the phone) and digital ways (online, through email). Both ways are media. Both ways are social. Yet, both aren’t equal.
According to a Keller Fay study, 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations take place every day in the United States. About 90% of those conversations occur physically (in person, on the phone) while no more than 10% occur digitally (online, through email).
Today’s marketing world continues to behave a lot like yesterday’s marketing world where people share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other through word-of-mouth. Nothing has changed there. Only the tools people use to pass along interesting information have changed, they’ve changed to include digital ways.
The truth is that word of mouth has ALWAYS been massively important. I don’t think the internet has changed why we buy things. It’s just changed HOW we buy things. Marketers need to connect with the human element of their business to make word of mouth work for them. It’s a big reason why there’s so much poor use of Twitter and other social media. It’s a bridge to be crossed but a very worthwhile one.
Christian, I appreciate your thoughtful comment. You are right. It’s all about buyer behavior in terms of the ‘how’. Unfortunately, there are tons of people who either don’t get social media–or try to exploit it for nefarious ends. Thank heavens for the good guys.
John and Jonathan,
We all have plenty of in person W-O-M conversations and they may well outnumber the digital variety. But, I’m pretty certain that the online version has many times the impact because of the Internet’s infinite reach. Moreover, what we talk about in person often relates to what we see on the web.
One thing for sure, W-O-M marketing is here to stay. I wish I was as certain about the rest of business and marketting.