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Why Word Of Mouth Marketing Is The Most Important Social Media

Word of Moth Marketing or WOMM for short, is exactly what it sounds like, an oral or written recommendation by a customer to another potential customer.
It is regarded as the most effective form of marketing.
For example, the Nielsen global advertising survey, said that in 2013, 84% of the people participating trust in recommendations they hear from people they know (today the number is closer to 92%).

According to Mark Zuckerberg; People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.


How to get good word of mouth advertising?
Word of mouth marketing is most successful with brands that are working really hard to do right by their customers. This means a great offering partnered with exceptional customer service. The product needs to be strong, but it is just as important that the staff’s interacting with customers and clients is the best it could be.
Another way to create a good word of mouth is to be unique, have a one of a kind product or creative marketing ideas. Such as the Old Spice commercial on YouTube (below).

This commercial has over 52 Million views of YouTube and is so popular because it is funny and weird which people enjoy. This commercial became even more successful thanks to the power of word of mouth. One person saw it somewhere, and started to refer it to a friend or relative, and so on and so forth (Marrs, 2014).

The most time-consuming way to get good exposure of word of mouth is to become a industry thought leader, which means that a person is engaging in dialogue with existing industry leaders and power players while staying up to date on the latest industry news (Whitler, 2014).

One of the most important things to consider when creating good WOMM is to create a good name. Which means that people appreciate a business that is honest and treat their customers right. Using false advertising or trying to trick their customers will experience in bad WOMM and will ultimately lead to a decrease in sales (Bughin, et.al, 2010).

Lastly, a company needs to create an active social community and engage with their customers online.
The most efficient WOMM power brands, convince costumers that by buying their product, they are making a personal statement and joining special ranks.
The most devoted fans may even refer to favorite brands as “family” since certain products or services become part of a customer’s identity (Whitler, 2014).

Negative Aspects of WOMM?
With everything business do on a daily basis handling negative effects that some campaign or product have is probably one of the most common.
The disadvantages need to be taken into consideration before a company decides to rely on WOMM as their primary method of bringing in business.

WOMM can spread slowly, it takes time for employers and employees to spread the word about the product and it can take even longer to reach out to customers who can then keep spreading the word around. To help this a company can post things on their company blogs or social media platforms to reach out faster (Groeger, et.al, 2013).

Tracking issues is another factor that needs to be considered. It is almost impossible to thoroughly track the amount of business generated by WOMM. Asking customers to fill in a survey is one way to find out, but it does not usually cover as many people as needed for the company to make future marketing plans.

The most obvious negative effect of WOMM is negative feedback. If a customer have a bad experience with your business, it is very likely that they will tell other people of the bad experience and they will in turn tell more people and so on and so forth. It is a increasingly bad experience wave that will lead to a lot of potential customers not buying from a business. The only way to deal with this type of issue, is to prevent it before it happens. Every customer needs to be treated equally and never be treated badly by staff or other (Buttle, et.al, 2014).

Conclusion
In conclusion, WOMM is very effective but can be time-consuming, it is always a good marketing tool, even for online based businesses and it can help a business to get a lot of positive feedback and increase sales.
However, it can go the other way and create bad publicity, it is hard to keep track of and it can be a very slow process.
WOMM needs to be taken seriously by any business in today’s society. It either helps increase sales, but it can also rupture a business with one bad experience.

References
How Powerful Is Word-Of-Mouth, Exactly? – The Definitive Guide To Referral Marketing”.ReferralCandy. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 May 2016.

Bughin, J, J Doogan, and O.J Vetvik. “A New Way To Measure Word-Of-Mouth Marketing”. McKinsey & Company. N.p., 2010. Web. 9 May 2016.

Buttle, F and L Groeger. “Word-Of-Mouth Marketing: Towards An Improved Understanding Of Multi-Generational Campaign Reach”. European Journal of Marketing 48.7 (2014): p1186-1208. Print.

Groeger, Lars and Francis Buttle. “Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Influence On Offline And Online Communications: Evidence From Case Study Research”. Journal of Marketing Communications20.1-2 (2013): 21-41. Web.

Marrs, J. “5 Ways To Wield More Word Of Mouth Marketing Power”. Wordstream. N.p., 2014. Web. 8 May 2016.

“The Disadvantages Of Word Of Mouth Advertising”. Smallbusiness.chron.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 10 May 2016.

“What People Watch, Listen To And Buy | Nielsen”. Nielsen.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 May 2016.

Whitler, K.A. “Why Word Of Mouth Marketing Is The Most Important Social Media”. Forbes 2014: 1-2. Web. 8 May 2016.

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Is Ad-blocking killing the free web?

Ad block 1

AdBlock Plus is the most popular ad blocker on the web. This browser plugin has been downloaded and installed millions of times, and is available for a range of different browsers. Although AdBlock Plus is the most popular ad blocker, dozens of alternatives are available.
Why Ad-blocking is so controversial is because a vast majority of websites exist thanks to online advertising.
Millions of websites, from tiny blogs to huge corporate-owned magazines, depend on online advertising revenues in order to operate (Shewan, 2015).

 A recent study from the Reuters Institute for The Study of Journalism, suggested that only 13% of the internet users in the US, find traditional banner advertising useful, and near half find it distracting to their experience. 29% already say they avoid certain sites because of it. Furthermore, there is strong reason to believe that those attitudes are leading to faster uptake of ad avoidance techniques, in particular among millennials. 57% of those aged 18 to 29 say they would consider using ad blocking software if the number of ads they were served continued to increase (Mascioli, 2015).

ad-blockers-two

Quality online content comes with a cost. Authors, journalists, researchers, bloggers dedicate time and intellectual effort to provide you with news, insightful ideas and knowledge. The content which you can easily access online, costs the publisher money.

When you turn on ad blocking you minimize the content publisher’s revenue.
While ad blocking does have an indirect effect on publishers earning through cost per click based ads, many large publishers use ad-impressions (CPM) to earn from advertising.
Each time an ad is displayed it is counted as an ad-impression, irrespective of whether the user clicks on it. These ad-impressions turns in to money which is used by the content publisher to pay authors, journalists, researchers, staff and finally itself if presumably they have any profits left (Oberoi, 2015).

So why should you not be using ad blockers?
Well, first of all, it means that the authors and staff etc. does not get any money.
With less ad revenue, big and smaller content providers are financially damaged. The New York Times, Boston Globe and The Times use different paid digital content models in an effort to improve revenue and counteract losses, which ad blocking causes.
If websites and newspapers offer their content through subscriptions, the whole idea of ‘free access to information’ is gone.

The Internet is not going to be a fee-based service any time soon, but we’ll surely see publications getting more aggressive in their attempts to counteract their ad revenue losses. If online advertising no longer serves them, other money-making models will be discovered.

Ad blocking is urging publications and media giants to experiment with different revenue models as they realize online advertising is no longer a viable option. mainly due to the proliferation and enhancement of ad blocking technologies.
Using pay walls is not exactly a million-dollar idea, in fact many times it have had the opposite effect, with subscriptions being very poor and online visitors heading to alternative free newspapers for their daily news fix (Naughton, 2015).

Ad block 3

Even though a lot of people see ad blocking as harmless, it does harm a lot of businesses.
For a commercially sustainable Internet, advertising is essential.
Publishers will adopt new models for revenue, which will most likely mean less and low-quality content will be available for free.
The rest will be on a pay-for basis.

Ad blocking is a wake-up call for advertising agencies and the media who use them, it’s telling them that consumers are becoming more discerning and demanding, but this could backfire as big news media and publications adopt more invasive advertising approaches including sponsored articles, back-links and so on.

In the end, it is not about feeling guilty for ad-blocking your favorite website, it is about realizing how your actions are to your disadvantage in the long-run.

References

Mascioli, G. (2015). Will Ad-Blocking Millennials Destroy Online Publishing Or Save It?. Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/giannimascioli/2015/09/20/will-ad-blocking-millennials-destroy-online-publishing-or-save-it/#66ca29616a6b. Last accessed 25th April 2016.

Naughton, J. (2015). The rise of ad-blocking could herald the end of the free internet. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/27/ad-blocking-herald-end-of-free-internet-ios9-apple. Last accessed 25th April 2016

Oberoi, A. (2015). 5 Reasons How Ad Blocking is Killing Information On The Internet. Available: http://www.adpushup.com/blog/ad-blocking-bad-news-consumers/. Last accessed 25th April 2016.

 Shewan, D. (2015). The Rise of Ad Blockers: Should Advertisers Be Panicking?(!!). Available: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/10/02/ad-blockers. Last accessed 25th April 2016.

 

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IKEA: Using modern technology to be able to change

IKEA is the company you either love or hate. They have become one of the most well known companies in the world thanks to their cheap self-assembly furniture line.

In a case study developed by Brandwatch, they said that recently IKEA wanted to embark upon a program to connect their different business units together using social media as a valuable channel across regions in a collaborative and intelligent way.
The business would benefit from not only discovering insights in real-time, but also sharing them swiftly with the teams that would be able to act upon them.
Tasked with pioneering this positive change, the organization’s Digital Development team worked with The Socializers to outline a strategy to morph IKEA into a truly socially intelligent company.
The Socializers are an agency who are focused on people and technology and were chosen by IKEA’s Digital Development team to help them with social change in the organization.

Thanks to insights and learning’s taken from the social media command center and with the help of Brandwatch, IKEA found the value and importance of being more social.
Information is being shared and directed to the appropriate departments for action, and a culture of wisdom and experience sharing is emerging.
As this area of the business matures, other challenges around techniques for efficiently distributing information are surfacing, but with the Digital Development team, IKEA are well prepared for the future and will be ready for it.
 I wish I had more information to put in here that would show how IKEA went about all of this, but it was interrupted by the tutor.