December 2006
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Technorati is tracking more than 57 million blogs, and Q3 2006 figures show that number is growing steadily, with 100,000 more blogs being created every day, according to Technorati's October 2006 State of the Blogosphere report. The company also contends that, while it appears that blog growth is slowing, better splog (spam blog) control measures are to blame for the dip.
Also reported:
* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 230 days.
* In Q3 2006, Technorati reduced the overall percentage of splogs indexed from 8% to 7%.
* More than 70% of pings are from known spam sources, which Technorati blocks before they become splogs.
* About 4% of splogs do get past Technorati's filters -- even if it's only for a few hours or days.
Learn more
A staggering number of U.S. (74%) and U.K. (63%) shoppers claim they turn to friends, neighbors, and colleagues for advice on their purchases, according to a recent study by WOMMA member company Millward Brown. Shoppers in both countries claim that personal opinions are very convincing, ranking them higher than online sources.
Other findings:
* 34% of U.S. shoppers and 45% of U.K. shoppers claim to use online sources to make purchase decisions.
* 11% of U.S. shoppers and 10% of U.K. shoppers say they use informal sources of online information (chat rooms, blogs, message boards, etc.) when making purchase decisions.
Visit Millward Brown
Retailers got in touch with their inner techies in an attempt to reach the two-thirds of adults who intended to do their holiday shopping online this year. According to the 2006 eHoliday Mood Survey conducted by BizRate for Shopzilla and Shop.org, 41.6% of retailers intended to use blogs or RSS feeds as part of their holiday marketing mix, while 79.5% planned to use viral marketing at social networking sites.
Once they lured shoppers to their sites, an increasing number of online retailers were willing to offer free and discounted shipping in order to "seal the deal." Two years ago only 64% of online retailers offered shipping incentives, while this year 83% used shipping-based promotions.
Learn more (DM News)
Learn more (NRF)
Learn more (Business Blog Consulting)
While customer satisfaction by itself doesn't necessarily up the odds of word of mouth success, incentives prompt satisfied customers to spread the word, according to Jochen Wirtz and Patricia Chew's 2002 International Journal of Service Industry Management article, titled "The Effercts of Incentives, Deal Proneness, Satisfaction, and Tie Strength on Word of Mouth Behavior."
Other findings:
* Deal-prone customers generate more word of mouth -- independent of incentives.
* Satisfied customers are a "necessary but not sufficient" component for positive word of mouth generation.
* Incentives might be an effective way to induce satisfied customers to make recommendations.
Learn more
Matthew Stradiotto -- Matchstick
Nicholas Lamplough, Carrie Tropeano, & Ken Wieczerza -- Northeastern University
As part of a Northeastern University class on word of mouth marketing -- taught by Dr. Walter Carl, who is a member of WOMMA's Advisory Board -- Nicholas Lamplough, Carrie Tropeano, and Ken Wieczerza were given the opportunity to analyze and learn from one of Matchstick's product seeding programs (specifically their work with the Wince Council of Ontario).
The students -- who submitted a paper to WOMMA's newly released book "Measuring Word of Mouth Vol. 2" on behalf of Matchstick -- were able to evaluate the program, in which Matchstick identified a pool of 100 influencers from the wine category, "wined" and dined them, and helped them host a wine tasting party (in the name of spreading the word about Ontario wine).
The students were able to get involved in a real world example of word of mouth marketing as a result of this class, which indicates that the next batch of "ready and able" word of mouth marketers and word of mouth market researchers are being groomed and given the tools they need to hit the ground running.
According to Brant Barton -- with nods of approval from the rest of the room -- when it comes to marketing endeavors, instant gratification is what everyone wants, and it's the hardest thing to get. But by implementing customer ratings and reviews into the websites of such consumer retailers as Petco, Burpee, CompUSA, Golfsmith, and Basspro Shops, BazaarVoice was able to show these clients how allowing consumers to provide the "marketing voice" to other consumers was the best way to leverage satisfied customers and improve conversion rates.
According to Brant, some of the distinguishing factors about customer reviews and ratings -- the things that make it more effective than your average marketing babble -- are that the reviews are:
* Unique: They lack the "polish" of marketing copy and are, therefore, more reliable to other consumers.
* Authentic: Consumers can say things about the product that marketers simply can not.
* Sought by consumers: People like to gauge the opinions of their fellow consumers ("people like me") before making a purchase.
* Focused on the purchase task
* Highly measurable
Also, consumer reviews increase search engine ratings, making the product in question more visible.
Brant claimed that using a customer ratings are reviews feature on a retailer's website:
* Reduces return rates and increases post-purchase satisfaction
* Allows companies to use feedback as a way to redesign or improve products and respond to consumer concerns
* Build deeper relationships with influencers
* Use participation to drive loyalty
Just as spam became the kind of nuisance that prompted tighter standards and resistance techniques in the world of email, so is the "splog" (spam blog) epidemic spoiling the blogosphere and making it necessary to provide automated systems for blocking and deleting them from the web. According to Howard Kaushansky, part of the problem of rampant splogging is that there is no economic incentive for sploggers to stop.
During the Q&A session, Howard was able to explain that, no matter how detrimental (and annoying) splog producers are to others in the blogosphere, as far as they are concerned, they are simply marketers, doing whatever it takes to sell one more ring tone, one more cell phone, or one more piece of property in Florida.
The truth is that sploggers have an extremely detrimental effect on the entire blogosphere. Because so much time and energy has to be put into blog monitoring to thwart their efforts, splogs are a drain on resources. Instead of working to make the blog world better and more deft, time and attention has to be spent (wasted) on splog control. Also, the proliferation of splogs has "a chilling effect on bloggers," Howard said. The more splogs there are, the more legitimate bloggers turn away from the format. The splog epidemic is a toxic cloud in the blogosphere, and each one detracts from the legitimacy of the genuine bloggers.
After detailing just how awful (horrible, nasty, revolting, obnoxious) splogs are, Howard went on to explain some of the currently accepted methods for filtering splogs out with a particular focus on out-smarting glued words in URLs ("buyarolexrightnow.com" is an example of a glued URL).
Meteorologists aren't always right, but they've got the predictive systems in place that help them make extremely educated "guesses." David Wiesenfeld explained Nielsen BuzzMetrics' similarly styled trend prediction solution. By tracking the "buzz" among online influencers and integrating that data with sales data, David explained, Nielsen BuzzMetrics is able to use online influencer buzz to predict future purchasing trends.
This kind of predictive model, David said, is the "Holy Grail" of marketing research and marketplace prediction.
Other marketplace prediction models are able to indicate "what kind of product," but he contended that they are still unable to say:
* How Big
or
* How Long
We turn to meteorologists if we're deciding whether or not to wear a jacket, bring an umbrella, or plan a picnic, but we don't bet our life savings on whether or not it's going to hail. The Nielsen BuzzMetrics predictive model works in much the same way. Based on influencer discussion patterns, it is able to predict what is likely to happen, but doesn't claim to be a crystal ball into the future of consumer marketplace behavior. Its goal is to sort out short term indications with direct market applications.
For instance, according to David, a prediction that "the United States is becoming very ethnically diverse" is not a statement that would come from the predictive model. It is too broad and has no direct market application. A better example would be "lime is becoming an increasingly popular flavor."
Jim Nail opened by explaining that Cymphony chose to explore the online buzz around breakfast cereal to demonstrate that WOM conversations happen about even the most innocuous of consumer products (because what's less provoking than oatmeal?). If breakfast cereal can generate measurable WOM, anything can.
Cymphony compared their online "share of voice" measurements directly to the market shares of the top ten cereals -- and was somewhat surprised when the top ten most buzzed about cereals were not necessarily the same as the top ten most purchased. This finding prompted Cymfony to dig a little deeper into their data to discover why certain cereals with relatively little market share were able to generate so much online buzz.
Why certain cereals get more PC time:
* Cereals that fall into "health" discussions are talked about very frequently because health is a topic that gets people talking.
* Parents tend to do a proportionately large amount of online conversational research into which breakfast cereals they should be feeding their children. It's not that parents are particularly enthusiastic about cereal; they are, however, very enthusiastic about their children.
* And (Jim's favorite) there are certain conversations that revolve around nostalgia and extreme brand loyalty, which accounts for some cereals having a very high share of voice without a correspondingly high market share.
Finding out these more niche online buzz influencers and their motivational profiles points to new opportunities to grow the market share, according to Cymfony. Advocates are out there for every product category, the key is to find them, capitalize on their established advocacy, and grow that niche.
The last session I attended was led by Harald Eltvedt from Informative. Harald presented some findings from some research that Informative had conducted related to advocates.
WOM is about people. You can't motivate WOM until the advocates are identified. There is a difference between advocates and customers. Often the largest advocate may not be the largest customer from a revenue perspective.
Advocates are connected, seems like a given, but their research has shown that an advocate on average will know 3x more people than a traditional customer. Advocates of course advocate, but an advocate will provide a greater number of recommendations on a consistent basis. Advocates are usually passionate, 95% of advocates will volunteer their opinion.
A consumer's brand advocacy value is measured by:
1. The ability to reach potential customers (influencer)
2. Willingness to promote your offerings over a competitor's (Promoter)
3. The influence over the purchase decisions of others (Credible)
From their testing along the three items listed above they identify that 10 - 15% of brand customers are advocates.
The SPI Report is hot off the presses. SPI stands for Social Persuaders and Influencers. It is a collaborastive effort by Start Sampling, and Larry Burns is CEO of Start Sampling and McElroy Interactive..
The SPI data comes from the 2000 plus Start Sampling data base. The one area where there is complete agreement, I believe, is the desire to understand and be able to control the dynamics of influence. Defining the influencer and reachng the influencer was an ongoing topic at WOMMA in sessions after session.
Influencers share certain characteristics regardless of the category in which they are influential: They are hyperconnected, joiners and participators. They spend time getting new information and researching it. They are aware of their influence and other regard them as experts.
Here is the SPI reports data on the profile of the Influencer:
*SPI's are 4 times more likelt to belong to 5 or more organizations
*SPI's are 4 times more likely to be considered experts by others
*They are 2 times as likely to recommend a product they like
*When they recommend, they are 4 times as likely to tell 11 people or more
The second afternoon breakout session was led by Steve Hershberger, Principal, ComBlu. Steve's session looked at evangelists and how to measure their impact. Steve says he's often asked the same thing by companies looking at WOM. They say, we're interested in WOM, but it has to show up on the P&L, it has to help me reduce my ad spend and we want to be able to increase the lifetime value of every profitable customer.
All customers are not created equal. Some customers are worth more than others. There are evangelists, they are customers that help you market your products/services to other customers. It's important to be able to identify these evangelists and measure their impact on your customer base.
Steve is a loyal Dell customer, but direct mail doesn't influence him. For three months he tracked the number of direct mail items he received from Dell. In three months he received 173 pieces. At what point does he get turned off because he gets saturated with mail? Things like this need to be tracked.
The life blood of evangelists are social networks. These can be online, but many times it's offline.
Customers always have a pattern of patronage. How do they want to engage with you/the brand? As marketers we must research this. When you do this, your evangelists will rise to the top. The more you work with your evangelists, the more you'll give them experiences and stories to pass along.
Focus on outreach, what are the communal elements that you can build discussions around the product that are relevant? Be sure to build your measurement tools into your outreach efforts though.
Sean Glass founded his company, Higher One, while still a student at Yale. Higher One provides financial services for college students. They began the session by discussing their program called B4...this is their volunteer agent based WOM program.
Chris LaConte explained that Agents are recruited prior to the launch of a program on a college campus. The agents provide demographic information and a card is created. The Agents receive a card and are told their "missions." College students are heavy communicators and are trusted by other students more than other sources.
In fielding their research they wanted to examine the ROI of their volunteer agent based program outside of the marketing benefit. Speicfically:
Are participants higher usage customers?
Are there demographic differences between particpants and non-participants?
Their hypothesis was that their agent based program actually helped them identfy their best customers. The results supported this hypothesis. The B4 Agents had a higher transaction rate than non B4 students. The question for future research is to further define the direction of the correlation.
Sean writes a blog, Thoughts in Time where he has posted about one of today's earlier WOMMA sessions by William Mosher.
One of the questions that Sean was asked was about the use of social networks. He provided the url for their MySpace site.
Tags: Sean Glass, Higher One, WOMMA, WOMMA Research MySpace
The first break out session of the afternoon made the important point that meaurement begins at the beginning, not the back end...and for new products, this means before the launch. The speakers from Decision Analyst empahsized that to insure that a new product is "wothy" of word of mouth it is necessary to use word of mouth principles to build the new product. The message is in a new media world, success will come by looking at things in a new way and starting from a new point.
Tags: Decision Analyst, WOMMA, WOMMA Research
The breakouts right after lunch allowed attendees to choose from three different options. I chose the session titled: Media Consumption and Consumer Purchasing: A Word of Mouth Media Plan by Joe Pilotta PhD, VP of Research, BIGResearch. This was a quick session with Joe bypassing his slides and just talking from the podium.
Joe talked about some of the research and data they have done related to media and purchasing. One of the things they looked at was Communication Consumption Clusters: Are there distinct groupings of people related to how the consumer media? Some of the clusters include: New Media X, of course is up on new media, Independents, touch me with advertising, I dare you. The Ravenous will take in anything that is wrapped in advertising.
People who give advice spend more on purchasing than those that don't give advice.
The customer is the asset, not the product. Align your ROI against the customer and begin to measure that way.
All the attendees streamed back into the Atrium Hall for lunch and a keynote. Ron Fournier, Co-Author of Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community spoke about a variety of topics including the use of WOM in media, politics and church. Ron noted that churches are often the best users of viral marketing and WOM.
Ron says his book just scratched the surface of WOM and to this audience it's old hat. However, Washington D.C. is just learning about WOM. The type of communication that we practice just helped the Democrats win the 2006 election. The internet and the sharing of information is becoming critical in political races. In this past election a number of races were influences by blogs and other social media such as YouTube.
Ron and his co-authors began to look at how people have changed in the past few years. They knew things were changing, but how?
A lesson he has learned is that any politician is not as they seem when you first meet them. They may be better, or they may be worse, but you can't always judge somebody on a single experience.
We're living in an era of immense change:
1. The move an industrial economy to an information economy
2. Globalization
3. Terrorism
4. Vast Immigration and Migration
5. Rise of women in the workforce
People are re-centering. They are changing how they look at each other and themselves. This was happening before 9/11, but it really took off after the attack in New York. People are placing importance on their own needs in jobs rather than advancement. People are changing how they communicate and who they look to for advice. Niche media is becoming increasingly important.
From a connection standpoint we're creating new communities and organizations like never before. The internet facilitates these communities.
We can look at a few concepts:
Gut Values: Your policies matter, but people don't vote on values. They vote because the product or policy represents a higher value.
Lifestyles: Before somebody makes a purchasing decision they make lifestyle decisions first. Where are they going to live? What do they do with their free time?
Community: We turn to each other. The mega-churches don't run a 20,000 member church, they run 2000 groups of 10. They learned that it's not the turnout on Sunday that matters, it's the smaller groups meeting every night of the week.
Authenticity. People are more informed than ever. You can't say one thing and then a few days later say something else, you will be found out.
Peter Kim from Forrester Research moderated a panel on Brand Monitoring that was noteworthy for the different opinions of how to measure word of mouth...Josh has a great write up of the specifics.
Peter Kim presented a wonderful introduction and has posted his slides on his blog, Being Peter Kim.
His theme was: If you can measure it, you can manage it. Highlights were:
*A time line of brand monitoring beinging in 1960 when "mass media mattered" through the emergence in 2006 of social computing. With each move forward, brand monitoring has become increasingly more complex as well as increasingly more important.
Mall intercepts and focus groups are just not going to capture the necessary data. A three ring binder would need dividers for : Tradtional media, print media, broadcast media, live presentations, and misc.
*Peter presented data from Forrester studies
that support the statement that consumers love to hate advertising and place their trust with each other: 72% say they trust their own experiences and 56% say they trust freinds and family to influence their perceptions of companies and brands. Importantly, the percentages of consumers that learn about products through advertising or buy products because of advertising is decreasing precipitously...trust in advertising is down to 6%.
Taking into account Peter's statement, "consumers love to hate advertising" combined with the existence of social computing and you can see clearly that the consumer has a solution to the problem and the need for a new model of brand monitoring.
Peter's defintion: "Brand monitoring is the ongoing analysis of mainstream media and consumer generated media to identify trends relevant to a company's marketing activities and competitive landscape."
Forrester has conducted a study of vendors that conduct brand monitoring services. The report is available for download
from Buzzmetrics who purchased reprint rights.
Peter outlined the three characteristics that should define brand monitoring vendors:
1. Focus on holistic business strategy.
2. Collection of broad and deep data from multiple media types.
3. Secondary data sources, unprompted and unfiltered.
And importantly, Peter reviewed what the necessary activites are to provide valid brand monitoring:
Data collection, Information processing, data analysis, and insight delivery
As the panel discussion that followed highlighted, there is NOT a concensus among vendors as to the components of the above acitivities....
Peter Kim, Forrester, Brand Monitoring, WOMMA Research Summit, WOMMA
It was good to see Idil Cakim, Director of Knowledge & Development, Burson-Marsteller leading the session on Mom Power. At a recent event I attended one of the sessions that focussed on marketing to women was given by an all-male group.
After doing an extensive amount of research on blogs, B&M began to look closer at female/mom bloggers. This was triggered by seeing that one of the Technorati Top 100 bloggers was a mommy-blogger. The term they've come up with is 'mom-fluentials'.
E-fluentials frequently:
- Send emails to companies
- Send emails to politicians
- Send e-mail news and media
- Make friends online
- Make business contacts online
- Provide feedback to companies
- Forward news and links to others
etc...
Mom-fliuentials are a subset of E-fluentials. Their research has shown that moms are approached for advice and often give purchasing opinions. They find that when a mom-fluential does give advice it is followed. Mom-fluentials will give an average of 13 positive recommendations per week.
How can marketers target the mom-fluentials? First, what are the key media sources that digital moms are using? The internet is obviously a large portion of their media habit. They also spend twice as much time on print media than offline moms. They are information consumers. Who do they trust? Each other, family, friends are the highest trusted sources.
How do blogs fit into the mix? About half of mom-fluentials have a blog, more than three quarters have friends that blog.
They are open to conversations with companies. They will sign up for that e-mail newsletter or some other type of online relationship. However, this might only be after building trust in the brand.
Generally, mom-fluentials shop around before making final decision and they prefer getting personal assistance while shopping.
Mom-fluentials are interested in learning about new products, however they do have long-lasting brand relationships. On average the longest relationship they have had with a brand is 17 years.
How do you measure success when marketing to mom-fluentials? Here are a few things to look for:
- Number of people interested in the WOM unit by clicking on an open e-mail, visiting a web site or downloading a clip
- Increased sales by targeting tech-savy women with families
- % of people who have heard/talked about the WOM unit
- Number of inquiries a brand's phone line or online customer service center gets about the WOM unit.
Check-list for mom-fluential communications:
- Be visible online
- Galvanize mom-fluentials with grassroots campaigns
- Link offline and online CRM efforts
- Target online and print media
- Listen to customer stories
- Measure WOM
John Goodman, Vice Chairman, TARP led the breakout session I attended on Service Process as a Word of Mouth Management System to Produce Measurable Results.
Customer service is a major touchpoint and drives much of the WOM around a brand. It's important to monitor/measure customer service.
When dealing with customers in surveys the customer will often not mention problems, why? the number one answer provided is, "it wouldn't do any good." We call that trained hopelessness.
Now, when dealing with customer surveys, we present them a list of problems. At first companies feared this type of 'problem-list' but the response from the customers is that the survey isn't a BS-Feel-good survey, they really want to know what they think. With that, they are able to discover more problems/customer-service issues than before.
Aggressive solicitation of complaints is a great way to improve the bottom line.
TARP looked at: Impact of Delightful Experience on Top-Box Loyalty by Type of Action. Here are some highlights:
Friendly 90-second staff interaction 25%: When a customer service rep would make a personal connection with the customer in the phone. Perhaps they were talking about a shared interest of hobby.
Tell me of a new product or service I can really use 30%: We used to call this cross-selling, but the caveat is that you're providing me with something that I can actually use, rather than something you're trying to sell me.
Proactively provide information on how to avoid problems or get more information out of your product 32%: This involves reaching out to your customers and helping them. In the flooring industry, Armstrong customers will sometimes use an abrasive cleaner on their new floors and ruin them. Now they consistently prompt the customer to contact them upon install, when they do talk to the customer they educate them on which cleaners they should use. The $5 phone call avoids the loss of a $12,000 customer in the future.
Issues to address in incorporate WOM into marketing. John is shocked that when dealing with many CMO's they don't ask/know these questions.
- Percentage of new customers from referrals
- Current WOM magnitude and polarity
- Percentage of those told who act on WOM
- Inexpensive experiences that lead to high positive WOM
- Cost of traditional marketing per new customer vs WOM
John jokingly said, If you get your product and services to the highest quality then you can eliminate your marketing department....but I don't think that anybody in marketing should worry about their jobs yet, there is plenty of poor customer service out there.
The Net Promotor Score has become a standard of measurement and is frequently presented as the only measurement needed. A study done by Echopinion! for a Wildcard Enterprises product, The Dustbunny, highlights the risk in using only one measurement....the devil is in the details.
In this case the devil was in customer expectations for the product. The Dustbunny was designed to pick up dust and pet hair. It is very small, yet customers expected it to be able to clean an entire room. The Net Promoter score was a negative 32%. The comments indicated disappointment in the fact that the Dustbunny did not work in large spaces. People liked the product and were talking about it, yet their expectations of its performance were unrealistic. In looking at the high Polarity of responses of the WOM episodes (75%), in contrast with the low Net Promoter Score, Echopinion! dug deeper.
The insight was that people loved the product if it was used to clean in small, hard to reach places. Expectations needed to be managed to the limittations of the product.
This data was used to re-position the product and became the basis for great success for the Dustbunny on QVC.
"The Dustbunny invention combines a 3-inch battery (AA) operated ball and an electro-static sleeve that picks up pet hair and dust in hard-to-reach places such as behind the refrigerator, under beds and cabinets, and in between your washer and dryer." The key words "hard to reach places."
Lesson Learned: Manage expectations and use a holistic approach.
Tags: Echopinion!, William Mosher, Dustbunny, QVC, WOMMA, WOMMA Research, Net Promoter Score
Matt McGlinn from BzzAgent reported results of the Latte Lite Bz Campaign for Dunkin Donuts. The results were quite positive...as was the overall message: ROI can be delivered and word of mouth can be isolated.
Between the control markets and the test markets there was a definite lift in sales during the 12 week, 3000 BuzzAgent campaign: 25% in the test and 8.9% in the control markets.
Matt said that great progress has been made in worod of mouth measurment as evidenced by the face that Volume @ of the WOMMA research study is available. What is needed, he believes is universal metrics and a more precise understanding of the value of a recommendation.
Tags: WOMMA, WOMMA Research, BzzAgent, Matt McGlinn, Dunkin Donuts
I am becoming somewhat of a Peter Kim groupie. I blogged Peter's session at Mplanet in Orlando, now I'm in DC blogging his panel at WOMMA. Peter is serving as the moderator of a panel talking about monitoring brand WOM. Joining Peter on the panel are:
Jim Nail, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Cymfony
Brian Glover, Senior Manager, Market Strategy, Biz360
Maxine Friedman, VP, Marketing, Brandimensions
Howard Kaushansky, President, Umbria
Max Kalehoff, Marketing & Communications Director, Nielsen BuzzMetrics
David Rabjohns, President, MotiveQuest
My flight from Florida arrived a bit late so I walked in just as the panel was introducing themselves. As always, this is live-blogging so excuse the typos and other little bits. They'll be cleaned up shortly.
Peter's first question: From Forrester's perspective they feel that the brand monitoring matters, so can the panelists give some recent case examples.
Max: Top three food manufacturer had to make a $100 million decision to determine what type of vegetable oil to include in all their products. As we've seen with food ingredients something can suddenly This is a major decision. What they looked to was nutrition and food experts to tap into their insight. This goes beyond traditional media monitoring and other types of media, it's really a consumer focussed. The big decision was which
David: Working with Motorola and the cell-phone industry it's not always the immediate sales, it's more about long-tern loyalty. Many times the long-term loyalty is based upon emotional connections.
Maxine: Working with a major studio they had a film that was being promoted, a comic-based movie. The trailers were out, but there was little buy-in. The fan-geeks didn't like the film and the traditional consumer didn't understand it. They re-cut the trailer based upon consumer feedback and the film performed well. Maxine pointed out that the target audience isn't always the ones talking about a brand.
Howard: In the videogame space they'll look at discussion trends and sometimes the revenue does not matched established discussion. In one case they had a title that was more of a cult title, they changed their marketing and converted the cult-title into a mass-appeal audience.
Peter Kim: How is brand analysis different then traditional pr monitoring or some of the other free tools?
Brian: There are many free tools out there, but many time the free tools can only collect and display raw data, the firms that are differentiating themselves are the ones that deliver how/what can be done with that data.
Peter Kim: Let's talk about the intersection of traditional media and social media in brand monitoring...
Max: It's not to say that mainstream media is not important, however we're moving towards and era of consumer-centric media. Rather than looking at the media, we should look at the consumer. There is this buzzword called engagement.
Jim: Agrees with Max, but all the big WOM examples comes from a jump from CGM to traditional media. The trick is finding out what need to be monitored.
David: Beyond all of the media stuff that's going on, the real driving force is stories. Stories are what cause people to pass things along.
Peter Kim: In the end we're all pulling from the same content pool, how much does technology matter, specifically looking at automated analysis versus personal interpretation.
Maxine: The technology is critical. They spend quite a bit of time making sure that their spiders and bots are working well. Yes they have the technology down, but the human element is critical. Machines can't understand the contextual or cultural influences in text. Humans understand what other humans say. They have 400 data analysts categorizing the information that the computer have already found.
Howard: This world is a mess, all these vendors all crawling blogs and it's difficult to classify things sometimes. What is a verb? Technology does give you an edge to scale routine processes, but the human element is still important. Technology is also very important for speed.
Max: You don't reach scale without technology.
Brian: Technology also helps take the point of view of the client. Some brands wants to be associated with certain words, while others do not. For example, 'Aggressive'. Orcale might want to be protrayed as aggressive, while State Farm will now.
Peter Kim: What is the key question that a potential customer needs to ask a brand monitoring company
Brian: What are the goals we're trying to accomplish? And what are the tools needed to accomplish these goals?
Howard: How do I turn the numbers into ROI.
Jim: First is technology, do you have the right balance of technology and people. Second, content, do you have access to all the content that I'll need? Third, services, do you have services to train and educate me how I can use this?
Maxine: How can you help us make decisions based upon this information? I don't just want a report that will sit on my desk. How do I know the data is valuable/reliable?
David: What flavor are you looking for? Some of us on the panel share clients since they're looking for more strategic thinking. Others are looking for more of a dashboard solution.
Max: How do you sell this internally? Sure we can get a meeting with a CMO or somebody else, but how do you sell in to the rest of the team?
Open Q&A: Is there such a thing as B2B WOM and is it being measured?
David: We work with HP in the B2B space, and yes it is out there and we're measuring it.
Jim: We see it and measure it, from manufacturing to heavy industry.
Brian: They're working with Sun to track the impact of Jonathan Schwartz's blog.
A welcome by Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Group and president of the WOMMA board, started the session....17 presentations will follow. It will be a full day.
Walter Carl, PhD., from Northwestern University is giving the state of word of mouth research. He says that in 30 Minutes he will give the history of word of mouth research and finish with where we are and what we need to know.
There is a five step word of mouth terminology framework for research: who, how, what, where and result.
More to follow....
Tags: WOMMA, Ed Keller, Walter Carl, Word of Mouth Research
A-Blog-a-Day Countdown to WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
From WOMMA's soon-to-be-released book, Measuring Word of Mouth Volume 2:
Marketer, Beware: The Threat of Blog Spam ('Splogs') to WOM Marketing and Market Insight
Umbria sounds a cautionary note to companies and market researchers about the threats posed by spam blogs. Howard Kaushansky, David Howlett, Nicolas Nicolov, Franco Salvetti, and Michael Sevilla from Umbria, Inc., and Willow Baum of Small Planet Partners show how spam blogs create "noise" in the blogosphere and make it difficult for researchers who are analyzing online word of mouth, either for market and brand insight or as a proxy to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. These researchers present case studies that demonstrate why splogs represent a problem for word of mouth researchers, as well as what intelligent spam filtering can do to successfully address this problem.
Want to know more? Come see this paper presented at WOMMA's Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
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A-Blog-a-Day Countdown to WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
From WOMMA's soon-to-be-released book, Measuring Word of Mouth Volume 2:
Using the Service Process as a Word of Mouth Management System to Produce Measurable Results
John Goodman and Dennis Gonier of TARP Worldwide assert that word of mouth advertising can be managed and measured in the same manner as traditional advertising. Goodman and Gonier demonstrate that word of mouth is a source of new customers, and they contend that word of mouth accounts for anywhere from 20% of new customer acquisition at the lowest end, up to 70% of customer acquisition, depending on the industry.
Goodman and Gonier report on research that illustrates that managing the service experience successfully can reap big dividends -- specifically a 25-32% lift in the number of customers who make a positive recommendation. They also demonstrate how to accurately measure four key elements of word of mouth episodes: word of mouth impact, polarity, number of relays, and number of conversions. They offer six important questions that companies must answer in order to successfully manage and measure word of mouth effectively.
Want to know more? Come see this paper presented at WOMMA's Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
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WOMMA is proud to announce the winners of its first annual Wommie Awards. The Wommie Awards were created to recognize amazing word of mouth campaigns and the fabulous people who create them, and everyone who submitted to WOMMA's Case Studies Library was automatically entered in the Wommie Awards Competition.
The ballots are in, and the Wommie Awards go to WOMMA member companies:
* Brains on Fire -- Creating Teen ViralMentalists for an Anti-Tobacco Use Movement
* The Coca-Cola Company -- Sprite/LOST Experience
* Yahoo! -- Yahoo! Answers: A Global Exchange of the World's Knowledge
* Hass MS&L -- Creating Buzz for the Canary Project
Wommie Award winners will have an opportunity to present their case studies at WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit in Washington, D.C., Dec. 12-13.
Register today to attend the Wommie Awards Ceremony
And don't forget to check out WOMMA's Case Studies Library
Social networkers are moving away from traditional media and are increasingly consulting peers for information and recommendations, according to a recent Compete Inc. study. The study shows that, when it comes to purchase decisions, online "socialites" are influenced more by peers and colleagues than any other source.
Other findings:
* 78% of people join a social network to meet people, 47% to find entertainment, 38% to learn something new, and 23% to influence people.
* Online socialites' annual discretionary income is nearly $8,000 -- 20% higher than that of consumers who don't use social networking sites.
* Online socialites spend nearly 25% of their disposable income on online purchases, versus 17% for non-socialites.
Learn more: (Compete)
Learn more: (ClickZ)
Learn more: (BizReport)
Gamers consult many sources, including advertisements and game websites; however, their decision to buy a game is shaped primarily by experience and word of mouth, according to a recent NPD Group study.
A comScore Media Metrix study released in September had similar results. While most gamers named experience as the top influencer, 11% of console users, 8% of PC users, and 15% of mobile users named "I heard good things about it" as their top reason for purchasing a game. Recommendations from friends swayed 9% of console users, 12% of PC users, and 8% of mobile users.
Learn more (comScore)
Learn more (NPD)
Learn more: (1Up)
Taking into account the active work that retail consumers do, and even going so far as to view them as "partial employees," goes a long way in reminding organizations how valuable their customers really are. In their 2001 International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management article, titled "Retail Customers as Partial Employees in Service Provision: A Conceptual Framework," Hean Tat Keh and Chi Wei Teo assert that, by relying solely on store employees to provide services to customers, retail organizations are missing out on a valuable hidden asset: other customers.
The authors contend that by doing the work of driving to a store, cooperating with employees of the organization, and sharing their positive opinions with others, customers establish themselves and should be viewed as partial employees. They are vital links in the supply of labor and knowledge to the service creation process and should be treated as such.
Learn more
A-Blog-a-Day Countdown to WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
From WOMMA's soon-to-be-released book, Measuring Word of Mouth Volume 2:
Sneaking a Peak Outside of the WOMMA Framework: Effects of Traditional Media on WOM Creators
Dr. Max Kilger and A. Jolayne Sikes from Simmons Market Research Bureau offer a critique of the WOMMA Terminology Framework on the grounds that it needs to better address the sources of influence for word of mouth participants -- specifically word of mouth creators. The authors examine the relationship between involvement in traditional and new media on the propensity to create WOMUnits, paying special attention to the role of product placement as a source of word of mouth.
Results suggest that media involvement -- especially within newspapers, TV, radio, the internet, and, most importantly, magazines -- is correlated with a propensity to be a WOM creator. The researchers also found that word of mouth creators are more receptive to advertising and are more likely to notice, remember, and try new products featured in TV shows -- though they are less likely to do so for product placement in movies. Finally, other people also serve as sources of information for WOM creators, suggesting that targeting people who are receptive to advertising might be a way to influence people who have a high propensity to share messages via word of mouth.
Want to know more? Come see this paper presented at WOMMA's Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
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A-Blog-a-Day Countdown to WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
From WOMMA's soon-to-be-released book, Measuring Word of Mouth Volume 2:
Buzz to Basket: Using Word of Mouth Data to Forecast the Impact of Marketplace Trends
David Wisenfeld, Kate Niederhoffer, Michael Duffy, and Jonathan Carson of Nielsen BuzzMetrics explore the feasibility of using online consumer-generated media to predict marketplace trends, comparing their proposed methodology to a 5-day weather forecast. Just as meteorologists are able to predict the weather with some accuracy based on weather patterns, market researchers can analyze publicly-accessible online word of mouth to find patterns and answer such questions as: How long will a given phenomena last? How significant and widespread will it be? How do various trends and ideas relate to one another in the marketplace?
The team's approach focuses on correlating the volume and timing of online buzz among "influencers" with the volume and timing of "mainstream" participants and then correlating the trend's buzz volume with sales of trend-related products. They use the low-carbohydrate diet trend to exemplify this process and express measured optimism about the viability of this methodology.
Want to know more? Come see this paper presented at WOMMA's Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
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--> Who: Ron Fournier, editor-in-chief of HOTSOUP.com and co-author of the best-selling "Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community"
--> What: Exciting, must-see keynote speaker
--> When: Dec. 11, 2006
--> Where: WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium, in Washington, D.C.
--> Why: Hear best-selling author Ron Fournier weigh in on the state of word of mouth marketing while rubbing elbows with all of the industry's most influential researchers
--> How: Register at http://www.womma.org/research2
More presentations you don't want to miss:
* Does Participation in an Agent-Based Word of Mouth Program Cause or Predict Future Elevated Product Usage?
-- Sean Glass, Higher One --
* Individual Differences, Social Networks and Word of Mouth Influence
-- Harald Eltvedt, Informative --
* Single-Source WOM Measurement: Bringing Together Senders & Receivers; Inputs & Outputs
-- Brad Fay, The Keller Fay Group --
* Using the Service Process as a Word of Mouth Management System to Produce Measurable Results
-- John Goodman, TARP --
* Marketer, Beware: The Threat of Blog Spam ("Splogs") to WOM Marketing & Market Insight
-- Howard Kaushansky, Umbria --
See these presentations, and more; sign up today.
Seventy-seven percent of online shoppers depend on consumer-generated product reviews and ratings, and shoppers who find them useful are more loyal to stores that feature reviews and ratings, according to Patti Freeman Evans of JupiterResearch. Evans' August 2006 research report, "Retail Marketing: Driving Sales Through Consumer-Created Content," reveals that the number of online buyers who cite customer ratings and reviews as the most useful feature of a site more than doubled between 2005 and 2006.
Other findings:
* Online shoppers who find user-generated product ratings/reviews useful spend more money online than average buyers.
* Online buyers who write a lot of product reviews make up 20% of the online shopping population but account for 32% of online sales.
*Shoppers that find reviews useful say they are more loyal to stores that feature reviews/ratings; they buy more frequently and return products less often as a result.
Learn more
Using affinity social-cause marketing techniques -- as opposed to sports/entertainment affinity marketing -- increases consumers' perception of brands' trustworthiness, according to a recent MIT Sloan Management Review article. That said, the research indicates that, when it comes to attributes related to functionality or performance, the type of affinity marketing partner does not sway consumer perception.
Learn more
Scholars may have been pondering word of mouth 2,400 years ago, but it was only as recently as the 1940s that marketing research into the phenomenon began in earnest, at least according to Francis A. Buttle's 1998 Journal of Strategic Marketing article, titled "Word of Mouth: Understanding and Managing Referral Marketing." The problem with the research done thus far, Buttle contends, is that most of it has been from the customer-to-customer perspective, which neglects influence, employee, and recruitment contexts -- something that he attempts to correct in his analysis by identifying researchable gaps in knowledge.
Buttle's research reveals a slew of unanswered questions (some of which still haven't been adequately addressed, eight years after the publication of his article):
* Which is better at predicting intention to spread WOM/actual behavior: the disconfirmation or attitudinal paradigm?
* Which andecedent marketing conditions are more closely associated with word of mouth?
* How is intention to spread word of mouth connected to actual performance? What conditions, if any, enable or constrain performance?
* How can we better understand the focus of WOM in influence, recruitment, and internal markets?
Learn more
A-Blog-a-Day Countdown to WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
From WOMMA's soon-to-be-released book, Measuring Word of Mouth Volume 2:
Analyzing the Metrics and Lessons Learned from an Organized WOM Marketing Program: Matchstick's Wine Council of Ontario Product Seeding Program
Northeastern University students Nicholas Lamplough, Carrie Tropeano, and Ken Wieczerza, while enrolled in a special topics class on word of mouth, buzz, and viral marketing communication taught by Dr. Walter Carl, performed a case study analysis of a word of mouth marketing program contributed by Matchstick. The students' analysis provides a detailed description of the Wine Council of Ontario WOM program, its methodology, how word of mouth marketing principles were leveraged, how ROI metrics were used, and offers suggestions for future application.
Want to know more? Come see this paper presented at WOMMA's Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
Register Today
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