Spreading the word
Spreading the word
Roger Parker
Marketers have long known it’s very important not just what you say about your brand but what others say about it. Internationally, in recent years, research has ramped up on how word of mouth works. This is a knowledge boom for marketers.
In a new era of high-pressure on advertising spend, spend on word of mouth marketing is growing. Here’s a brief round up of key research findings you can use.
Why is word of mouth important?
The big issues are: credibility, geometric progression and unpaid promotion. People believe messages from other consumers (within some limits), more so than what your company says. These messages can spread rapidly, in geometric progressions in some cases i.e. exponential rates of growth (mathematically how some viruses rapidly spread). Unlike most marketing which is expensive, much of this can be unpaid for promotion.
How pervasive is word of mouth?
In the US, the Keller Group has run a long-term project measuring and calculating the volume of word of mouth in the overall market. They did it by interviewing a fresh, nationally representative sample of 700 Americans aged 13 to 69 per month, over several years. They calculated, “there are 3.3 billion brand impressions created each and every day in America via word of mouth.” That’s around 10 messages, per person, per day.
What kinds of things do people talk about?
The big issues are intensity of surprise, experience, marketing or media communications and tonality. People talk most about intense surprises. The intensity of surprises is significantly correlated with the frequency of word of mouth. Experiences create around half of word of mouth and media or marketing messages the other half. The tone of most word of mouth, 65%, is positive. People are supportive of brands, companies, products or services, more than they run them down.
Where are people talking?
Typically social media is the focal point for understanding word of mouth in marketing now. However, this isn’t where most word of mouth happens. As recently as 2009, 76% of word of mouth took place face to face and 16% by phone [over 90% took place offline]. 8% was taking place online. Social media has growth significantly since 2009, yet the vast majority of word of mouth is still most likely to be occurring offline.
How do people talk?
The three key issues here are stories, memes and recommendations. People tend to relate word of mouth via stories about their experience, or media or marketing. Things easily encapsulated in story form circulate more. A related issue, memes, are ideas or behaviours that circulate (e.g. like the spread of planking or catchphrases). Memes are ideas or behaviours than can replicate more easily than others. For marketers, a crunch in how people talk is recommendations. This happens in over 40% word of mouth.
What motivates people to talk?
The main motivators for word of mouth are peoples’ desire for social interaction, desire for economic incentives, concern for other consumers, and potential to enhance their own self worth. Notice, the traditional friend-get-friend word of mouth program (economic incentive) is secondary. Word of mouth is firstly about social interaction. People also want to advise others. And they also want to talk about things that are meaningful to them (to build their self image).
How is word of mouth received?
In traditional buyer behaviour one of the first things you learn about is ‘source credibility’. A message from an un-credible source is not persuasive whereas one from a credible source is. Exactly the same holds true with word of mouth. People also take more notice of messages they feel are more relevant to them. The greater perceived risk – e.g. a house versus a chewing gum purchase, or a trip to an obscure overseas destination versus a local trip – the more influential the word of mouth.
How is word of mouth amplified?
The three big issues are seeding strategies, tools for sharing information, marketing linked to word of mouth. Seeding strategies refers to having word of mouth seeded with those with a greater social network. There are various terminologies within this, like hubs (large networks) and bridges (people who bridge networks). Good seeding strategies amplify word of mouth 8 times more than with no / poor seeding strategies [note, there are ethical issues in this area]. Providing tools to enable people to share information, and linking to other marketing (see below), is also successful in amplifying word of mouth.
How do advertising and word of mouth interact?
Marketing 101 is all about integrating elements of the marketing mix, yet word of mouth often gets held up now as a new alternative to advertising. In reality, marketing 101 is right, both work better together. Word of mouth that’s “ad-influenced” is 20% more likely to bring enthusiastic brand recommendations. 46% of ad-influenced word of mouth involves a strong recommendation to “buy or try” the brand versus 39% of other word of mouth. 31% of word of mouth without a reference to advertising comes without a recommendation, versus only 18% for ad-influenced word of mouth.
Roger Parker is a director of New River Ltd.