Interesting Results
Word of Mouth
Many marketers have long believed in the effectiveness of word of mouth and that belief has only strengthened in the age of social media. A recently published article describes research designed to rigorously quantify the effect of word of mouth for one popular (but unnamed) social networking site and compare it to media mentions and events as means of acquiring customers. The results support the conventional wisdom: word of mouth was significantly more influential than events and media mentions in customer acquisition over both short and long time-frames, and the results for word of mouth were also significantly better than those traditionally reported in studies measuring advertising effectiveness.
1 Trusov, Michael, Randolph E. Bucklin, and Koen Pauwels (2009), “Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social Networking Site”, Journal of Marketing, 73(5), 90-102.