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Bethesda · Site Admin Joined: 01 Jan 1970 Posts: 225

<a href="http://www.emergencemarketing.com/images/Boldmouth%20report.png"><img alt="Boldmouth report.png" src="http://www.emergencemarketing.com/images/Boldmouth%20report-thumb.png" width="200" height="251" align="right" hspace="10" vspace="10" /></a><a href="http://www.boldmouth.com/">Boldmouth.com</a> has recently released a research report on perceptions, practices & ethics in word of mouth marketing (<a href="http://www.boldmouth.com/studies/word_of_mouth_marketing_research_boldmouth.pdf">pdf here</a>).

Some interesting findings from the study include:<ul><li>34.7% of study participants stated that they plan to use WOM marketing</li><li>Nearly 64% of all survey respondents noted that WOM is either "very important" or "extremely important" to their overall marketing plans</li><li>Interestingly enough, nearly 59% of respondents said that they had active WOM plans with an active WOM campaign in market</li><li>Nearly 90% (89.9%) of all study participants noted that WOM was ethical</li><li>80% of organizations reach out to both customers and prospects</li></ul>The numbers are probably a bit skewed in the positive direction, as a majority of early WOM efforts involve the the launch of a corporate blogging strategy - which fairly often does not result in any real word of mouth activity because of poor implementation. 

Another interesting finding, reinforcing the need for companies to integrate their customer service into their overall brand communications strategy, is that 82.2% of respondent said that the "type of service that customers received" is what gets people talking, while 53.3% thought it was "satisfied customers." Contrast that to 35.6% who think that what gets people to talk is "advertising they've seen."

<a href="http://www.emergencemarketing.com/archives/2006/05/can_word_of_mouth_marketi.php">BzzAgents may have proven</a> that you can "manage" the word of mouth channel for simple products - but can you really "manage it" for complex B2B products? 

One thing is for sure - if your post-sale customer experience is not a good one, you will get a ton of negative word of mouth, and in this business, the mantra "any news is good news" clearly does not hold true.

[Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/word+of+mouth" rel="tag">word of mouth</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/wom" rel="tag">wom</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/onlinviral+marketing" rel="tag">viral marketing</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/boldmouth" rel="tag">boldmouth</a>]
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