Breathe Life Into Your Campaigns - Online Word of Mouth
In many respects online word of mouth is as effective as any other medium to convey the worthiness of a product or service. The method works this way – someone blogs somewhere that they had and interaction with something or someone, this post or entry is then read by numbers of others who know that this person or the place the entry is a particularly reliable method of gaining opinion on something .
It all begins with trust – the audience must trust the source of his or her online information before forming the opinion that will ultimately have them vote for or against the subject. Studies have shown that consumers are much more likely to be influenced by online word of mouth than by radio or TV advertising, with print ad’s falling to a much lower level than that prior to the advent of the internet.
The under 30 crowd has become highly focused on consumer generated media, having not only viewed the content, but have also been influenced by it and in turn influence others by posting their own online commentary in response. This form of social commentary has been found to be most influential on areas about health, transport and consumer electronics, each of which could be considered a major capital outlay.
For online word of mouth sales to really soar, marketing methods need to be focused towards the demographic most likely to be influenced by it, once again. The exponential growth of social networking has relied on this sort of advertising, with a number of sites and indeed multimillion dollar businesses enhanced by increasingly complex ways of targeting the right segment of the population, at the right time with the perfect product.
So how do you get the idea out there online that WidgetX is an outstanding product? Nothing has changed, having a high quality product at a market bearing price point is key (why buy WidgetX if it’s 3 times the cost of a comparable other WidgetY?), which paired with an understanding of exactly who the target market is and why it’s of benefit to that group is paramount.
Contrary to popular belief, consumers are on the whole smarter than too many marketers give them credit for, which is why some companies may spend fortunes on high cost advertising campaigns, both on and off line, still to see their product fail totally or fail to bring an acceptable return on capital outlay, all because consumers decided that the product in question was unworthy of their purchasing.Then they begin to tell others the same. This is why online word of mouth is enormously successful for those who succeed with it, and why it exerts so much influence over just about every market there is.
Tags: Internet Marketing, online word of mouth, word of mouth marketing