More Word of Mouth

Opening the WoM Communications con­fer­ence, Steve Barton of Keevil Barton Kershaw [now defunct] talked about the reasons word of mouth matters more than ever. He cited research that states we receive over 3000 messages a day about products and services (source unknown, but I can believe it. Here is some info). We’re not able to process that amount of input, of course, so when we need to make decisions about what to get, we turn to friends.

Some 78% of people turn to their friends as a basis for decision-​​making; as opposed to 38% of people saying that they turned to advert­ising. [Very dif­ferent from the 14% figure for advert­ising from my previous post, which tells you some­thing about trusting research stats. However, both show the declining role of advertising.]

Taking into account other forms of word of mouth, 92% of people use it as a basis for decision-​​making. This has risen from the 67% found in a similar study con­ducted in 1997. As the amount of ‘noise’ increases, the more important the inform­a­tion our friends can give us becomes.

Where does this word of mouth take place? According to research from the Keller Fay group, the outlook looks bleak for web evangelists.

Face-​​to-​​face com­mu­nic­a­tion accounts for 71% of word of mouth recom­mend­a­tions and cri­ti­cisms. 21% takes place over the phone; 3% comes from main­stream media edit­orial; 2% comes from instant mes­saging. Just 1% of word of mouth advice comes from informal web sites like blogs. (but read on…)

Among younger audi­ences, there’s less need for face-​​to-​​face which sinks to 61% while instant mes­saging rises to a 10% influ­ence. I take instant mes­saging to mean SMS messages from mobile phones in most cases.

These initial figures might make it sound as though we should all pack in our blogs and take to the streets if we want to have any influ­ence. Brands would seem to be chasing a chimera if they think starting blogs will help them. However, Steve’s later present­a­tion on how people choose fin­an­cial services sheds a ray of hope.

Generally speaking, you can divide people into broad­casters and fol­lowers when it comes to fin­an­cial services. Most of us are fol­lowers. Thinking about which mortgage to buy, insur­ance policies and the like is a massive headache. We want to get the choice out of the way as quickly as possible. We’re panicky and frightened by the choices and worry that we’ve made the wrong decision. We’re not likely to recom­mend things expli­citly, because we suspect we’re probably wrong. What we really want is someone to tell us the right decisions to make.

Broadcasters are the experts. They’ve researched the subject and are keen to share their expertise. They trust the word of mouth of their peers, though. Broadcasters tend to look for inform­a­tion that no-​​one else knows — the inside track. They probably won’t talk about the inform­a­tion that appears on a company’s adverts — because everyone knows that — they want the spe­cial­ised inform­a­tion that reaf­firms their position as expert. Other broad­casters are seen as trusted sup­pliers of that knowledge.

This makes the inform­a­tion spread by broad­casters sub­versive. They won’t talk about brands’ main­stream messages, that there’s 0% interest on this credit card like the advert­ise­ment says. Because of this beha­viour, lesser-​​known facts are more likely to travel.

And because they want spe­cial­ised know­ledge, broad­casters are more likely to pass along inform­a­tion gleaned from privately consumed media. They won’t talk about inform­a­tion they saw on a TV program, but they will talk about inform­a­tion from the Internet.

That inform­a­tion means that the 1% figure for blog influ­ence I gave at the begin­ning of this post is slightly mis­leading. Maybe only 1% of the pop­u­la­tion will use blogs as a decision-​​making tool, but they are exactly the sort of people who will want to spread the inform­a­tion they learn to the other 99%. That 99% being sort of people who are des­perate for guidance from experts.

Translating this research into web policy, brands should be aware that it isn’t the main­stream that’s likely to read their blog. It’s the informed enthu­siast influ­encer. They are looking for the stuff they can’t learn from main­stream media, the inform­a­tion that gives them an edge over their unin­formed neigh­bour. This means hints and tips, detailed tech­nical inform­a­tion and links to other resources are useful to the sort of person who makes it to your blog or website. What they cer­tainly don’t want is the same inform­a­tion that’s in your brochure and adverts.

Share this post:

Possibly related:

• What I Learned About Word of Mouth
• Everybody’s Heard About the Word
• ROI Revisited