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Tag Archives: word-of-mouth
New report pegs word-of-mouth marketing spend at $1.5B in 2008
PQ Media just released their Word-of-Mouth Marketing Forecast 2009-2013. It's also available free to WOMMA members. Highlights from the report: Spending on U.S. word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing increased 14.2% to $1.54 billion in 2008, as brands recognized the need to get involved in consumer and business conversations and allocate resources to WoM. Spending increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.6% from 2003 to 2008. Spending on WoM content and services increased 13.0% to $1.26 billion in 2008, as major marketers integrated WoM into the media mix and shifted to specialized WoM firms that help drive long-term campaigns. Spending ... read more
Customer reviews are great, and word-of-mouth is still better.
Discgear.com just announced some dramatic success with customer reviews -- 74% increase in conversions within 5 months. Congrats to them and to their review system provider, PowerReviews. But I couldn't help noticing this quote from Michael Brown, their IT Director: “User-generated comments and reviews are second only to word-of-mouth as a purchase driver for web users.” So, by all means, invest in a customer reviews system. But don't forget your word-of-mouth system, too!
eMarketer: People trust friends more than they do bloggers
Word-of-mouth has a radically greater impact on purchase behavior when it comes from friends than from strangers (like bloggers), according to a Mintel survey of buying behavior, just cited in eMarketer, eMarketer says: "While bloggers may bring buzz to a product, converting the buzz to sales is another matter." “It’s interesting to find that as much time as we spend online, we still prefer a personal recommendation from someone we know and trust,” said Chris Haack of Mintel. Here's their data:
Person-to-person product recommendations: most influential on buyers, prefered by recommenders
A couple recent studies by BIGresearch that look at purchase influence factors across all media - traditional and online - shed further light on the importance of the personal advice network. As a pair, they paint an interesting picture: person-to-person product recommendations are the #1 influence factor on buyers (at least for a number of product categories), and they are the preferred way for recommenders to deliver their advice. One study, conducted for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, shows that word-of-mouth is the top influence channel for electronics (44.4%) and apparel purchases (34.3%). In electronics, product reviews came in second ... read more