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Word of Mouth Marketing & Metrics

There have been several good marketing strategy articles recently discussing Word of Mouth Marketing including one in this month’s issue of CMO Magazine focused on P&G’s internal efforts to understand and stimulate word of mouth discussions. While the idea of using technology and research to generate supposedly ‘natural’ word of mouth discussions is controversial, the more marketers can do to understand how and why word of mouth works the better they will be able to communicate with finely segmented audiences in meaningful ways.

WOM is not experimental marketing that should only be tested by outlier companies. WOM should be a part of the marketing mix for most marketing organizations. Many surveys and research reports have shown that recommendations from users of products or services have tremendous influence on other buyers. At the first WOMMA Conference (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) NOP Worldwide’s Ed Keller, CEO of NOP World Consumer, presented some interesting datapoints including the fact that in 1977, Americans relied on word of mouth 67% for their best sources of information and ideas to make decisions. Today that number has risen to 92%.

Ed’s presentation and many others from the first WOMMA Summit in March are available for download at http://womma.org/summit/agenda.htm. The second summit is being held in Chicago tomorrow focused more specifically on measurement and metrics.

Cymfony is a member of WOMMA and a sponsor of this event. We believe that understanding what customers and prospects perceive and desire, today, through benchmarking and analysis enables companies to create better products and communicate their benefits more effectively. Blogs, message boards, discussion sites and forums provide a wealth of input to marketers that shouldn’t be ignored.  Metrics and ongoing analysis of campaigns provide marketing with immediate feedback on what people like and dislike, competitive or complementary campaigns and who and what the influencers are that help viral campaigns take off.

Posted by Julie Woods on July 11, 2005 at 10:25 PM | Email this post Permalink

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