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Look Smart, Be Smart: A daily compendium of what you need to know to be effective as a word of mouth marketer
The title of my post today may sound a bit off topic, given the WOM research/metrics focus of the WOMMA blog, but still I think it may partly explain why WOM is so powerful. Let me explain... WOM is all...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS CONTACT Michael Rubin, Director of Content and Programs Word of Mouth Marketing Association 312-335-0035 editor@womma.org http://www.womma.org WOMMA LAUNCHES DEFINITIVE SITE DEVOTED TO WORD OF MOUTH RESEARCH AND MEASUREMENT Experts contribute to new research blog and newsletter...
Here's a philosophical question for a Monday afternoon: why does word of mouth exist? Human behaviors all evolve from some kind of need. They begin to be dressed up into various forms and traditions, but--at their core--they simply enable people...
Really interesting that Idil just posted about the importance of knowing who influence "influencers", I was about to post about the importance of involving the right consumers at the right time in the "innovation diffusion". So I decided to slightly...
Just wanted to point out a discussion going on over at Walter Carl's blog. Dr. Carl's original post was on the balance between positive and negative WOM online (vs. off). CGM Guru Pete Blackshaw chimed in and the discussion is...
Influential is the most frequently repeated term in public opinion research to refer to those key audience members who synthesize messages and spread them to their networks, shaping their peers' views. In a never-ending quest to find smarter marketing solutions...
The debate regarding PWOM vs NWOM (see comments from Gary Stein, Pete Blackshaw, and Walter Carl ) is one that has emplored me for years, and others for decades. What follows here is some of what others have contributed to...
Almost one-quarter (24%) of theater-goers in the Washington, D.C. area said word of mouth from friends and acquaintances was their main source of theater information. Those were the key findings of the League of Washington Theatres study "Washington Audiences: 2000...
Viral marketing is the most popular tactic that email marketers plan to implement to grow their lists in the next twelve months. This is the key finding of Silverpop's 2006 E-mail List Growth Survey. Marketers believe it has great potential...
While men make more daily contacts than women, women are more likely to engage in WOM activities, according to a new study from Lucid Marketing entitled "U.S. Adults: Word of Mouth Communications". The key findings include: * Men contact more...
Word of mouth is more effective than advertising for spreading information about a product, even if the ties between participants are weak. That's the key finding in the study "Talk of the Network: A Complex Systems Look at the Underlying...
Cymfony and Porter Novelli are conducting a research survey on blogging best practices -- and you're invited to participate. If you maintain your company blog or monitor other blogs for your company, you definitely need to be a part of...
Back when I was at Jupiter, we did some research on the composition of search engine results pages (SERPs to the cool kids) for the most valuable brands. The result was that just over 25% of the results on the...
Great new report out today from (my alma mater) Jupiter Research on Word of Mouth practices. Brand new Ad Analyst Emily Riley found that large companies generally lag behind small companies when it comes to WOM, both in terms of...
Rob Braun of Masstricht University is looking for some help to complete his thesis regarding WOM in offline and online environments and its influence on consumer attitudes. He has prepared a short questionnaire and will share the results with WOMMA...
For WOM Wednesday #10, WOMMA hosted a teleconference with two experts on using WOM to launch their books into the best-selling stratosphere -- Greg Stielstra, author of PyroMarketing and the marketing guru behind Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life and Bryan...
When a consumer hears about a negative shopping experience from a friend, it is likely to prevent them from setting foot in that store altogether. The Customer Dissatisfaction Study conducted by the Verde Group and Baker Retailing Initiative at Wharton...
New drugs with even limited amounts of buzz before FDA approval tend to experience an enormous increase in online discussions once approved. That is the key finding of a May 2006 report on WOM in the pharmaceutical industry from Nielsen...
One way to get started in word of mouth is to listen to what your customers are already saying about you. But according to the April 2006 Select & Connect survey conducted by the CMO Council, implementation of formal customer...
What are some of the emotional motivations for consumers to engage in positive or negative WOM? In a 1998 study published in Advances in Consumer Research entitled "Word-of-Mouth Communications: A Motivational Analysis", consumers were found to conduct positive WOM for...
I had lunch the other day with a friend who started an online rating website for home renovations, building, maintenance, etc. She told me that a significant majority of the reviews on the website are overwhelmingly positive, and she was...
As some of you that may have already read it, an interesting and provocative article about the value of Consumer Generated Media Research posted recently at Marketing Profs (Is there something rotten in CGM Research?), rather than posting my personal...
I was recently asked via e-mail about the connection between WOM and the youth demographic and if I had any insights from my academic research in this area. The specific questions were as follows: does WOM travel differently among youth? Does technology acceptance impact connections? Are there more conversations happening online vs. live for youth? Are their networks wider, deeper or have no difference to the average 40 year old? Are there different categories of discussions?
I was thinking about Sundaram et al.'s 1998 motivational analysis of WOM-- an investigation of offline communication-- and I wondered whether the same principles apply to online WOM. One might argue that the valence of the WOM does not operate...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS CONTACT Michael Rubin, Director of Content and Programs Word of Mouth Marketing Association 312-335-0035 editor@womma.org http://www.womma.org WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES OFFICERS TO LEAD NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS CHICAGO, June 19, 2006 -- The Word...
BtoB: Gary Spangler on WOM Ethics Learn more Fastlane: Chevy Exec Responds to CGM Critics Learn more Detroit News: "Don't Make it a Commercial" Learn more...
Small companies do a better job leveraging word of mouth tools such as blogs and message boards -- and often allow company employees to engage with customers more freely and directly -- than large companies with more ad dollars to...
Have you heard about NOSCRUF, the National Organization of Social Crusaders Repulsed by Unshaven Faces? Created by Gillette as part of a viral campaign to promote its new electric razor, the fictional organization "protests" men who go unshaven (encouraging them...
How do you get people so excited about a product that they'll tell their friends and spread the word? It starts with an interesting story that people will want to talk to each other about and pass along to their...
Dunlop Tires is the latest brand marketer to use podcasts to connect with customers. Instead of merely using audio, however, Dunlop is going full-throttle with video. The site features clips following the action at the Drivers Cup and includes interviews...
Christopher Carfi, who blogs over at The Social Customer Manifesto, has a really interesting post on this notion of Familiar Strangers and Pogressive Trust. The concept is fascinating and has some real clear ties to WOMM, especially online. Here's the...
Learn WOM in 16 real-world case studies from big brands including: Clorox, Disneyland Resort, DuPont, Goodyear, Harvard Law School, Intuit, KFOG Radio, The Learning Channel, Microsoft, Pedigree, Sara Lee, Sprint Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Tide Coldwater, TiVo, Virgin...
Couldn't make it to WOMBAT 2? We're blogging it! Come to the WOMBAT blog for write-ups on speakers, how-to's, case studies, and other conference goings-on. We've asked three fantastic writers -- Jennifer Nastu, Marianne Richmond, and Olivier Blanchard, to cover...
A new global study by GfK Roper Consulting reveals that people are considered to be the most “trustworthy” source for consumer information. Around 70% of consumers across the world trust friends, family or other people when searching for information or...
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