The Myth about Word Of Mouth
In every business strategy, there is a big part that needs to address acquiring customers. It’s about how you plan to market your idea and generate revenue. I found that business owners don’t thoroughly think about this part which could cost the business a lot of money with little to no result. It’s even more complicated if you have a mediocre product.
That’s why many people “hope” to have a successful word-of-mouth campaign. Unfortunately, it’s easier to say than do to have a successful and meaningful word-of-mouth campaign that actually makes money.
Why do we all crave Word-of-mouth? World of mouth is more effective than traditional advertising for two reasons:
- It’s more persuasive. You tend to believe your friends more than companies that advertise their products to you.
- It’s more targeted. Advertising is, for the most part, a mass marketing technique. Word-of-mouth is naturally directed toward an intended audience.
What if I ask you — what per cent of word-of-mouth do you think happen online? If you are like most people, your answer would be something north of 50% to 60%, correct? That number does make sense, considering that these technologies have made it faster and easier to share things quickly with a large group of people.
Would you be surprised if I told you that you were wrong? It’s not 50%, far from it. The actual number is 7%. Research by Kellar Fay Group finds that only 7% of word-of-mouth happens online. You might argue that it’s not possible. Many people spend more and more time online. You are right, but you might have forgotten that those people also spend a lot of time offline — more than eight times as much. We are also likely to overestimate online word-of-mouth because it’s easy to see. You may believe that online conversations could reach a much larger audience. However, offline, one-to-one conversations tend to be more in-depth, making this type of conversation more impactful and prevalent than the online ones.
