Traditional Media Falls Behind Marketing By Word of Mouth Buzz
In many respects marketing by word of mouth can be said to be the “hidden statistic” for all programs, as it’s well near impossible to actually gauge the effectiveness of marketing done this way. However, it also should be noted that most every product in the digital age has used this method to enhance puclic and corporate awareness of the product.
A recent study showed that fully two thirds of online marketing is expected to be done on this basis alone in the coming year, which when coupled with the advent (in leaps and bounds) of Web 2.0 social networking and social marketing sites point towards promoting your product by word of mouth may be both more cost effective, and have an increasingly better ROI than more “traditional” online advertising media.
Consider the business model of any of the current online social networking sites. There has yet to be a successful site of this type that charges, instead relying as they do on advertising income to turn a profit. While there is no metric that can be used to measure marketing by word of mouth, there is one method of knowing if your campaign is worth while – sales.
A company should know from their output volume exactly the change between before a campaign, during a campaign and after a campaign. This in itself gives businesses a measurable statistic to show effectiveness of this marketing methodology. It is true that not all businesses need or desire this form of sales technique, but is also through that not one business turns away prospects garnered from the by word of mouth method either.
Whatever you sell, a great study completed by Hill and Knowlton in February this year showed that decision makers are largely influenced by personal experience’s (58%), with recommendations and industry reports coming in at 51%. Coming in at a smaller than expected third was direct marketing at 21% with internet advertising lapsing to 17%. These figures may only reflect the purchasing habits of key decision makers, but a young lady in Oregon deciding to buy one car insurance or another IS the key decision maker for that purchase, and her buddy Becky telling her to go with this company over that company will have a greater influence than any gravel-voiced actor pushing the product in a TV advert.
Essentially, this statistic can reflect any industry, any segment, if each purchaser is the key decision maker. This makes the resurgence of the world’s oldest sales tool easy – get vocal or start tweeting, but tell everyone!
