Commentary
What People Are Saying About Word Of Mouth
- by Seana Mulcahy , May 21, 2007
They say there's nothing better than word of mouth (WOM) buzz. However, most digital advertisers and marketers don't know where to begin when considering WOM. I'm keeping a close eye on some recent studies that came out. Let me first say, they were a bummer.
According to data compiled by two Nielsen services -- BuzzMetric, which measures word of mouth, and ACNielsen Bases, which tests new-product concepts with consumers -- consumer package goods (CPG) companies are rarely talked about online. However, those CPG companies with some heavy ad dollars behind them saw significant online buzz. Seems ironic to me. I always perceive buzz as being spawned aside from, not in tandem with, advertising.
Detailed results were released last week at the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference in Florida. As reported in Ad Age, Rob Mooth, vice president-product development at Bases, said at the conference, "What we found were that the products that get the most buzz were the ones that were paying for it. ... Advertising agencies are probably more relevant than they've ever been for your business." He continued, "Marketers haven't really lost control of their brands just yet."
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Mooth also said online and offline ratings, media support and factors like how often consumers were likely to buy a given product or whether or not a product was unique, were pretty good predictors of buzz.
Some additional findings included:
As a media gal, I'm often used to depending on fuzzy math to make predictions on behalf of brands. However, much of this seems ever fuzzier. Just think about it, how can anyone predict how much buzz a product will get prior to its launch?
One of the key elements of creating buzz is to determine and garner engagement.
Monitoring online conversations can be tell-tale of what is expected to happen in regard to sales. I remember reading that BuzzMetrics watched the number of conversations related to calorie-counters and the low-carb-conscious increase. To no surprise, a few weeks later sales of a product meant to appeal to those groups went up. A lot of the company's findings are available to the public on Blog Pulse. Right now there are 47,275,175 blogs identified on the site. By the time this article is published, I'm sure the number will have gone up.
BuzzLogic has some pretty cool software that helps marketers track social influence among blogs and other Web sites. According to the company, influence is the most meaningful way to distinguish signal from noise in a social media landscape characterized by millions of blogs and often hundreds or thousands of conversations on any given topic. Through the lens of influence, social media is less complex and far more understandable. And it becomes a channel that can be defined, measured and managed.
The bottom line is that we all search for efluencers who can talk about, spread the word, amplify and promote our brand messaging. However, the big question is, where do we find them?
