Interesting Word-of-Mouth Marketing Study

Earlier today, BoldMouth and Osterman Research published an interesting study on word-of-mouth marketing. You can download a complimentary PDF copy of "Perceptions, Practices and Ethics in Word-0f-Mouth Marketing at this link.

“The goal of the study is to provide organizations interested in, or even intimidated by, word-of-mouth campaigns with data and guidance designed to help them integrate this exciting strategy into their marketing and media plans,” noted BoldMouth CEO Todd Tweedy.

Until now, the bulk of published research on WOM has been piecemeal, or appeared as a small section of a more general survey, or was conducted too long ago to still be useful. Given the rapid changes in the marketplace, not to mention recent industry buzz around artificially engineered viral marketing (e.g., incentivized agents) organizations needed a comprehensive view of this emerging industry.

Nevertheless, a cursory review of the data from BoldMouth’s study, Perceptions, Practices & Ethics in Word-of-Mouth Marketing uncovers some interesting findings:

• A second wave of organizations appear to be waiting on the sidelines, preparing for the right moment to launch WOM efforts: 34.7% of study participants stated that they plan to use WOM marketing, which could expand the industry to the realm of more than one billion dollars in activity.
• Nearly 90% (89.9%) of all study participants noted that WOM was ethical. 
• Based on campaign examples provided by 24.6% of survey participants it appears as if organizations have a “devotion to promotion” bias when it comes to WOM.
• 51.2% of organizations are unable to track performance and 20.9% of organizations lack in-house talent to properly manage WOM campaigns.
• 65% of respondents noting they don’t have a WOM plan or are in the process of creating one, it’s likely that their organizations may have been relegating WOM to only support tactical marketing duties.
• • Nearly 64% of all survey respondents noted that WOM is either “very important” or “extremely important” to their overall marketing plans.
• Close to 60% of all respondents noted that they never use outside experts. This reliance on in-house talent can lead to confusion over campaign success metrics and contribute to future barriers to secure adequate campaign budgets.
• Face-to-face communications received the highest WOM effectiveness rating (86% or “extremely effective”), however, when online WOM marketing strategies are combined, this aggregated category of responses under the heading of Online WOM Marketing Strategies suggest as high, if not a higher, cumulative effectiveness rating than face-to-face communications.

Tweedy noted that, “The lack of more widespread attention to planning implies that a systematic approach to WOM marketing does not exist. Perhaps the greatest risk to not having a WOM plan in place is how organizations will deal with the likelihood of negative word-of-mouth. Based on study data, we believe the percentage of organizations that note “criticism from customers about campaigns” (7%) as a problem is likely to increase over the next twelve months as more organizations experiment with WOM.”