The UK’s Marketing magazine this week posted an intriguing article outlining how Unilever was “shifting focus from social media to word of mouth”.   In fact, as the piece acknowledges, it’s not that Unilever is turning its back on social media as such, but that the global fmcg power is demanding more from it.  Unilever’s  Debbie Weinstein is quoted as saying “We are now looking to develop broader social CRM programmes and trigger advocacy through word of mouth.” – with outcomes such as ‘Likes’ being insufficient.

Unilever is right to demand more from social media.  We’ve noted recent strong evidence that engagement levels in social media are very low for most brands, and that the primary driver of social media conversations is social signaling on the part of consumers;  when emotional ties are key, offline WOM provides more impact for brands.

So, how much advocacy can social media realistically trigger for fmcg brands?

If we take the US, Unilever’s Dove is among the 50 most talked about brands, and with 79%  positive sentiment the advocacy levels are good.  But social media was referenced in just 1.8% of Dove conversations – much less than many other media/promotions channels.  In the digital space, our data shows consistently that brands’ own websites are often more powerful in driving advocacy, even for fmcg brands where there is relatively little transactional content.

This does not mean that social media is incapable of driving advocacy – but it’s far from the only or most effective channel if scale is required.  Of course it may still deliver good ROI – but if that’s the issue then measurement needs to be broader than social media itself.  Our data shows that in personal care for example, over 80% of advocacy from social media occurs offline.

So, Unilever’s impressive brand portfolio can and often does benefit from strong advocacy – and the evidence is clear that there’s still a big role for traditional paid-for media and promotions alongside digital;  as we’ve noted before, there is a clear warning from robust empirical research about  over-reliance on social media.

With this week’s Facebook IPO filing, a lot of big numbers are being bandied about:  An estimated $5 billion initial offer, and perhaps between $75 and $100 billion for the total market valuation.

Facebook also represents big numbers to brand marketers: An audience of nearly 1 billion consumers, and the growing legions of brand fans – often tens of millions –marketers have accumulated on Facebook.  Social media pundits often liken them to an army of brand advocates, ready to engage on a moment’s notice.

The only problem with this scenario is that it turns out most fans are quite unenthusiastic about playing this role.  After the initial click to “like” the brand, they rarely interact again with the brand on Facebook.  That’s the headline finding from a new study, just released by the prestigious Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science in Australia.  The Institute summarized the findings as follows:  “Big Brands Snubbed by Fans on Facebook.”

According to Dr. Karen Nelson-Field, who led the study, “many brands moved quickly onto Facebook when it emerged as the new frontier for reaching an audience but it has since proved a challenge to engage with who claim to ‘like’ them.”

More specifically, the researchers looked at Facebook’s “People Talking About” metric to better understand consumer involvement with brand pages for which they are considered fans..  “People Talking About,” which was launched in October 2011, is designed to be an engagement metric for Facebook fan pages.  It measures people who contribute any type of content to a fan page, including initial liking, liking specific content on a page, posting to a wall, commenting, sharing a post or other content, answering a question, photo tagging, sharing a deal, or any other way a user can share interactions with brand pages.  The Ehrenberg-Bass study analyzed these consumer interactions for the top 200 brands on Facebook during a six week period last fall.

The result?  Only a very small number of fans–1.3% according to the study–engage with the fan pages during the course of a week.  And many of these are the result of an initial “like.”  Among those who have already liked the brand in the past, engagement drops to a mere 0.45%.

The results are consistent with research I have written about previously, which also showed “of the ten brands with the largest number of Facebook fans – 20 million fans on average – just 0.45% are active fans.”

As I wrote then, “Facebook has tapped into a powerful social need of consumers around the world, and has amassed an extraordinarily large audience.  But it has not yet unlocked the secret to engagement with advertiser brands.”

Dr. Nelson-Field agrees, calling 0.45% “not a totally miserable figure,” but rather, “a sobering one, particularly given engagement is supposed to be what differentiates Facebook from other mass reaching media.”  And, she continues, “This doesn’t mean we don’t think Facebook is an important part of the marketing mix – we do – we simply encourage marketers not to spend a disproportionate amount of time and money trying to facilitate engagement or drive loyalty when we know that’s not going to happen with the push of the ‘like’ button.”

This is further evidence that brands must think holistically about social engagement, and consider all the media/marketing channels that drive consumer word of mouth and brand advocacy.  Driving fan engagement on social networking sites is one vehicle among many.  As we have said before, “all media are social,” suggesting there are multiple touch points that can be deployed by marketers to unleash advocacy. And the behaviors that define engagement need to be looked for offline as well as online.

Posted by Graeme Hutton

Have you ever wondered how to maximize the word of mouth from your Super Bowl ad? The Super Bowl remains the most watched annual TV event in the United States – an average of 44% of all homes watched last year. It’s not so much a TV show as a major cultural phenomenon. Its ability to boost a brand’s word of mouth has reached almost mythical proportions ever since Apple’s 1984 commercial heralded the launch of the Macintosh computer.

Let’s assume for one moment that we have a great ad, a creative asset that resonates well with the consumer. Is that enough? Our initial regression modeling suggests that besides a great ad, just maximizing the audience rating may not be enough. Critically, the quarter of the game that the ad appears in and securing the first position in the pod also count. In addition, :5 billboards, those announcements often seen at the beginning or end of an ad pod, may be an unnecessary luxury and, from the perspective of WOM value, possibly not worth the additional investment.

In 2010, UM won the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s (WOMMY) Gold Award for Research for its paper quantifying how Sony Electronics’ media advertising helped boost its word of mouth. Through a multivariate analysis, we determined two key insights that had never been publicly demonstrated before:

1. Brand advertising has a direct effect on the effectiveness of word of mouth. In this instance, 14% of all Sony Electronics’ WOM was attributable to its own media activity.

2. A brand’s word of mouth is not just affected by its own ad activity. Competitive share of voice is also a critical factor. In the Sony Electronics model, 23% of Sony’s potential WOM was eroded by the impact of competitors’ advertising activity.

If we apply this type of modeling approach to ads in the Super Bowl, what can it reveal? To determine this, we analyzed the reported word of mouth from Keller Fay’s Talk Track Super Bowl study conducted in 2011. Keller Fay takes a unique approach in the world of buzz trackers in that it captures both online and offline word of mouth. Keller Fay was the data source fuelling the award winning WOMMY study. For the Super Bowl, Keller Fay specifically tracked 42 ads in the game with sample of 3000 individuals boosted during the week after the game with a custom survey.

It is well-known that word of mouth levels vary substantially by market category. Additionally, since several advertisers had multiple placements and various commercial time-lengths in the Super Bowl, we decided to focus on one category where these variables would be minimized. We chose to probe the movie sector since not only did this eliminate any cross-category effects, we were able to substantially reduce the variations from ad to ad. For example, there was only one ad for each film title and 30 seconds was the only commercial time-length utilized by all movie marketers. This enabled us to isolate the core media drivers of movie mentions as a direct result of their Super Bowl advertising.

To analyze the effects of the Super Bowl, we built a database of factors such as 18-54 TV rating, the game quarter in which the ad appeared, ad position in pod, use of billboards plus the word of mouth for each movie in the week after the Super Bowl that we applied to each ad. Interrogating this database via regression analysis, this is what the model revealed:

The model’s projection is very encouraging with a 99% fit between predicted and actual word of mouth. While one core factor was audience rating, it was also bolstered by the quarter in which the ad appeared – the earlier the better. We also saw that being first in pod provided great impetus to an ad’s WOM. By contrast, the often highly prized position of last in pod did not materially help WOM; indeed it actually reduced the ad’s effectiveness!

The jury remains out on billboards. In our best model, displayed in this column, billboards did not help word of mouth reach, i.e. the net number of people discussing the ad, but in other models, the gross volume or frequency of conversations were helped by billboards.

For UM, the surprising reveal of this analysis is the low value of word of mouth derived from being placed last in pod – a media position which, otherwise, can often be highly regarded. We hope to build and share on this analysis in future years. 2012 should be another great year for Super Bowl advertising and its legend ability to motivate consumers to talk about brands.

Graeme is SVP, Director of Consumer Insights & Research, Graeme is responsible for ensuring that all appropriate proprietary and syndicated research tools and resources are applied in the development of consumer insight strategies, for a total communications research platform–from TV to chat rooms–which informs the efforts of Universal McCann and its agency partners. Graeme can be reached at Graeme.hutton@umww.com

I have written previously about a groundbreaking academic study that highlighted how fundamentally different online conversation is from offline word of mouth.  The headline finding from that research, released in late 2010 at a conference convened by the Wharton School and the Marketing Science Institute (MSI), was clear:  “Online data does not reflect well the offline behavior. Word of mouth is not channel neutral. One cannot automatically generalize the results from online to offline.”  This is particularly relevant in light of the fact that social media – despite its rapid rise to prominence – still accounts for less than 10% of all word of mouth.

The authors of that research have now released a new working paper that sheds further light on the question of offline versus online word of mouth, and why it matters to brands.  In this analysis the focus is on brand characteristics and how those relate to the word of mouth channel consumers choose to deploy.

According to the authors, Professors Renana Peres, Ron Shachar, and Mitch Lovett, “consumers spread the word on brands for three fundamental purposes: functional, social, and emotional. In brief: the functional driver is the motive to provide and supply information; the main social driver is the motive to send social signals to the environment [such as expressing uniqueness, self-enhancement, and a desire to socialize or belong]; and the emotional driver is the motive to share positive or negative feelings about brands in order to express these emotions or balance emotional arousal.”  Each of these drivers, the authors argue, “is composed of different needs, or motives that play a role in consumer decision making. Each of these motives, in turn, suggests a set of brand characteristics that play a role in stimulating WOM.”

The analysis is based on a very large set of data including online word of mouth (provided by NM Incite, the joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey), offline word of mouth (provided by the Keller Fay Group), brand equity (provided by Brand Asset Valuator), and custom research on brands (conducted by Decipher). Approximately 700 US brands in total were analyzed, spanning 16 product categories, covering the period from 2007 – 2010. So this is a very comprehensive and robust research undertaking.

The primary drivers of online word of mouth, the authors find, are (in order):  social, functional, and emotional.  The primary drivers of offline word of mouth are the reverse:  emotional, functional and social.  “Offline conversations, which are mostly in one-on-one settings, are more personal and intimate by nature and thus allow people to share emotions such as excitement and satisfaction. Online WOM, which usually involves ‘broadcasting’ to many people (e.g. twitter), is more appropriate for social signaling (e.g., uniqueness).”

These results about the motives associated with WOM via different channels may explain why the breakdown of brand categories varies so widely by online versus offline.  Media, autos and technology dominate online – all three carrying with them significant social currency in terms of what’s new, interesting, and worth sharing with others if your goal is to show that one is “in the know.”  Meanwhile, numerous other categories are heavily underrepresented in online venues relative to offline.  And yet the value of recommendations in those categories, which come primarily offline, is every bit as important and related to business success.

Category Distribution of Offline and Online Word of Mouth

What does this research mean in practical terms? It means that marketers can’t choose a “social strategy” without first understanding the motivations of consumers to share.  Online social media will be most effective if you have a new product or a new message for which social currency will be gained by sharing. But if you are seeking to tap the emotions that come with strong brand satisfaction and excitement that comes as a result of a recent purchase or exposure to an advertisement, then look for ways to help consumer share those stories offline where they will have their best chance for success.

Offline and online:  These are two different channels, requiring different marketing strategies.  They are not mirrors of each other, and by no means redundant.   Marketers who are searching for the best way to unleash consumer conversation about products, services, and brands, need to take a holistic view and create strategies that are appropriate to the drivers of brand WOM, both those that are expressed online and those that take place offline.

Posted 26 January 2012 – 3:32pm | by Ishbel Macleod

Consumer research on brand word of mouth (WOM) by the Keller Fay Group has found that Baileys Irish Cream had a 311% increase in conversations over the Christmas period, while there was an over 40% increase for Waitrose, John Lewis and Morrisons.

The research found that in November and December, average daily brand conversations rose 12% compared with July-October, even in areas not associated with Christmas, such as healthcare.

Keller Fay data suggested that while the John Lewis advert may have helped its WOM rating, which had a 43% increase, strong customer service and creative in-store merchandising also played a role.

Steve Thomson, managing director of Keller Fay UK, said: “Brands which generated significant positive word of mouth at Christmas were able to cut through the advertising clutter more effectively; outperforming your competitors for WOM in this crucial period has to be the goal for all brands.”

However, not all increases in the WOM rating came from positive discussions about the brand – a high proportion of X-Factor’s 103% increase came from negative comments.

UK department store John Lewis hit an apparent bulls-eye over the Christmas season, achieving the kind of viral success with its seasonal TV ad that all marketing directors crave, with four million hits on YouTube.   Most brands today are desperately figuring out how to create content which is also shared widely and quickly.

Is this a realistic strategy, or is it the marketing equivalent of hoping for a lottery win or X-Factor success, rather than setting your sights on a more attainable career plan?  Looking at the latest stats on what is being shared suggests the ‘lottery win’ analogy is the reality for many brands and categories – something obviously desirable, but you’d best not plan your life or brand strategy assuming it will work.  Moreover, it’s clear that the branded content which is shared is not a good indicator of which brands are talked about.

Thus, the John Lewis ad duly appears in Unruly Media’s viral video chart of ads shared in the UK during 2011, but the reality is that much of the content in this list is best described as ‘sponsored entertainment’ rather than messaging about the brand itself (e.g. T-Mobile’s Royal Wedding film, or Ken Block Gymkhana).  In a typical week only a handful of true ‘ads’ get shared by large numbers – this week’s UK chart shows ads for VW, Mr. Block & his shoes, and the Vinnie Jones/British Heart Foundation spot, but these top 3 only just manage a little over 10,000 sharings, and outside the top 20 you struggle to reach 1,000.  Even if one share generates 10-20 views, it’s hardly mass media for most brands.

For print media, Facebook data shows a similar pattern – the role of brands in the big shareable stories is limited, and apart from promotions/coupons, little print advertising gets shared.

The reality is that sharing is heavily orientated towards entertainment (especially music videos), and brands often play second fiddle.  Keller Fay data shows that most brand-related conversations cover a much wider range of brands/categories and topics, not reflected in these viral charts.  These more everyday conversations will have more impact than content-sharing for many brands.  This does not mean that these brands’ communications have no impact, or have no word of mouth effect – simply that online sharing is only one measure of viral impact, albeit a highly visible (for video) and desirable one.

Brands face a dilemma – whether to go all-out for viral success with some clever entertainment that may not support the brand very much, or focus on more straightforward (‘traditional’ if you prefer) brand messages that might not go viral as easily or overtly.  And that last part is the key – WOM impact goes beyond direct sharing of content online.  Our view is: make your brand the star, with a brand message that is shareable—online, of course, but offline too.  Give your brand fans something to talk about and share, and they will spread your message for you.

As the trade press continues to focus on the year that was in 2011 and forecasts for the year to come in 2012, social media remains a hot topic of conversation. Two reports have come out recently making the case that email remains a big and effective part of the social story.

In his keynote address to MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit, Tynt CEO Derek Ball noted that despite the growth of Facebook, sharing via email has gone up over 20% in the past 18 months.  “We call email the original social network because it really is social,” he says.  About a week later came a report in Marketing Profs that two-thirds of business leaders (68%) say they plan to integrate social media with their email marketing efforts in 2012, suggesting the value of a hybrid solution.

These two reports caused me to wonder where exactly email fits relative to other online media when it comes to word of mouth, and how has that changed over time?  Our analysis compares not only social media versus email, but also IM and texting given the growing importance of mobile in the social mix.  The basis for the analysis is my firm’s TalkTrack study, which provides a continuous monitor of people’s online as well as offline conversations about products, services and brands.  A number of interesting findings emerged:

First, brand-related conversations via social media have been on the rise, as one would expect given all the press about social media and that sharp rise in social media usage. However, on an absolute basis, people are still more likely to talk about brands via email than via social media. And, as it turns out, the proportion is even bigger (and still growing) for brand-related conversations via IM and texting.

Thus, 45 percent of technology-enabled brand conversations happen via IM/text, up a few points from the year prior. A third (32%) occurs via email, representing a 5-point drop since last year. Just under a quarter (23%) takes place via social media (up 3 points from a year ago).

There are important age-related differences here. The profile of those who use email to “talk” about brands generally mirrors the population as a whole, while youth (teens and 20-somethings) are disproportionately represented among those who talk about brands via social media and via texting/IM.

This all serves as a valuable reminder that social marketing comes in many shapes and sizes, and that the marketer’s social playbook needs to take advantage of any channel that helps to spark and support consumer conversation. Here we highlight the role of social networking sites relative to other ways people can communicate online; elsewhere we have broadened the discussion to include offline conversations as well, and the role that “traditional” media can play in driving conversation.

Taken as a whole, it’s important to remember that all media are social, as we’ve said before. It follows, as well, that all digital channels are social.

We know that our customers talk about us, brands.

The average American consumer mentions specific brand names 60 times per week in conversations, according to the Keller Fay Group. And since most of them happen online and, frankly, it is easier to track them there, we understandably are in awe of social media that focuses on online conversations. We analyze and pay attention to online influencers and focus on numbers of fans and followers.

But what we forget is that less than 10% of word of mouth conversations happen online. Keller Fay stats dating back to 2006 have consistently shown word of mouth conversations disproportionately happen offline in face-to-face and voice-to-voice settings. That 90% of all conversations Americans have about products and brands take place offline is a startling statistic. Is it possible that we are focusing too much on influencers and ignoring a ‘regular’ consumer?

We all hear those amazing stories of extraordinary customer service. Zappos, for example, is continuously cited as the leader in this department. Whether you are looking for shoes or the closest pizza joint, you will get help in finding it if you call Zappos. However, the unfortunate truth is that most of us have not experienced it very often. What’s more disappointing is that some of us have never experienced it.

For my mother-in-law, it took 68 years to encounter amazing customer service.

A couple of years ago I bought my mother-in-law, Lauri, a bra from Soma Intimates. It was exactly what she was looking for. This year, Lauri decided to replace it. The store was three hours away for her house, but not far from where I live, so I offered to take her next time she was in town. Which I did, without success. We went to the store only to find that Sofia bra that she was looking for was discontinued. Lauri was disappointed. For some of us, it’s the little things that matter the most. And so it was for my mother-in-law.

Unbeknownst to me, Lauri wrote a letter to Soma to express her sadness. It was a handwritten letter–Lauri is in her 60s and doesn’t use social media.

Imagine her surprise when two weeks later, she received a call from the company’s representative informing her that they received her letter and discussed it at the corporate office’s weekly meeting. The result: They were going to look in every store across the country and see if they can find the bra she was looking for. And a week later, she received a package containing seven bras–the last seven left in the country! With it came the handwritten letter from one of the store managers, an appropriate way to communicate with the woman of Lauri’s age. It said:

“Dear Lauri,

Our corporate office called saying you had been searching for a Sofia bra. I was happy to find these at my outlet for you! They have been discontinued and perhaps are the last ones in our company. I hope you enjoy these. They are being sent to you complementary from our corporate office.

Our love and best wishes,
Sue Peters
Store Mgr #5287, Jersey Shore Premium Outlets”

“I started being rather disappointed with the company,” my mother-in-law told me afteward. “Now, I would never say anything negative about them. Actually, I will be recommending it to all my girlfriends. What a delightful experience!”

To me what is most remarkable about this story is the company’s attention to an elderly woman from a small town–a woman who isn’t an ‘influencer’ with thousands of followers, and the fact that it didn’t matter to them. They treated Lauri with the same respect and consideration as they would give to their elite customers. That is the true definition of an amazing brand.

Lauri’s satisfaction is first and foremost with Soma. Lauri’s daughter-in-law sharing her experience with thousands of other people through this post is just icing on the cake for them–as are all of the additional customers our family will refer to this brand in future.

By Jeff Koyen
Posted November 22, 2011
Adweek

Is the mouse mightier than the mouth? That’s the debate that’s taking place in word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing circles. On the one hand, social media has altered the landscape of WOM, helping spread buzz faster and more efficiently than face-to-face communications. On the other, most conversations about products and brands still take place away from the Internet. Word-of-mouth marketing is based on the simple premise that a recommendation from a friend carries more weight than an ad message. But social media has blurred what that means. Is a “like” on Facebook as valuable as an unsolicited recommendation shared in person or on the phone? Are fans and followers as trustworthy as friends (the real-life kind)?

It’s not an either/or situation. When combined together, word of mouth and social media become a dynamic duo. Conversations begun online continue in person and recommendations spread more quickly, allowing communities built around brands to gain traction. Influencers have broader reach. That’s how a web-driven campaign such as U by Kotex (see page W12) could turn the brand into the leader in feminine care word of mouth among women 13 to 44. Or why Coca-Cola is turning to social media to turn up the volume on stories its customers will be sharing around the upcoming London Olympics.

“You start conversations in one channel, continue them in a second and finish them in a third,” says Karin Kane, vice president of client services for evolve24, a Maritz Research company, which uses business analytics and research to measure brand perception, reputation and risk. “When the communication is happening in so many channels, it becomes almost impossible to separate online and offline.”

Moreover, social media has given WOM marketers a clearer way to measure the impact of their campaigns. Certainly “likes” and tweets are a start. But social media can also help marketers see how far an influencer’s opinion spreads by analyzing retweets or shares. It also becomes easier to see if an influencer’s discussions are relevant and in line with positioning. Plus, all this can occur in real time.

Social media has done more than simply turbocharge word of mouth. It has also brought this “alternative” form of marketing into the mainstream. Brands, in their effort to engage users, now routinely use WOM tactics to bypass traditional ads and go directly to influencers and consumers. Public relations firms, once charged with focusing on pitching professional influencers in the media, are now spending as much time going directly to bloggers, tweeters, YouTubers and general consumers, who are becoming powerful brand advocates. Media buys and messaging can change quickly depending on what topics are trending at any moment.

With more brands recognizing the direct impact WOM has on brand image and product/service success, spending on buzz marketing has increased substantially over the past several years. For 2011, WOM spending in the U.S. is forecast to hit $2.48 billion, according to PQ Media, whose econometric models are used by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and media investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson. That’s a growth rate of 21.5 percent from 2010’s $2.04 billion. By 2015, spending on word-of-mouth marketing could hit $5.5 billion.

DEFINING A CONVERSATION

Social media chatter has become the bellwether of word-of-mouth engagement. Today, Facebook’s servers handle upwards of 50 million “likes” each day. Google indexes some 200 million tweets every 24 hours. Tweets and “likes” are being used as measures of marketing efficacy because they promise to go beyond mere followers; they are proof positive that a brand’s message is getting across.

But according to Keller Fay Group, whose TalkTrack has become a de facto standard in measuring brand conversations, the overwhelming majority of word of mouth still involves, well, a mouth. The New Jersey-based research firm continues to claim that more than 90 percent of brand-oriented conversations are held face-to-face or over the phone.

“It’s not that the online numbers are wrong or unimpressive in any way,” says Ed Keller, Keller Fay’s CEO. “It’s that the offline numbers are much, much bigger than most people realize.” With more than two billion brand impressions created by word-of-mouth every day, he says, “You can see that the 50 million Facebook ‘likes’ is indeed just a small percentage of that total.”

Not everyone is convinced. “I’ve been hearing that exact same percentage for the past 10 years,” says Pete Blackshaw, global head of digital and social media for Nestlé, “and it just doesn’t make sense in light of the explosive growth of social media conversations. I do agree offline plays a dominant role, but can we at least agree the online conversation owns a growing share of the mix?”

Delivering accurate WOM figures is still more art than science. Foremost, there’s the question of definition. For example, are brand-generated tweets really word of mouth just because they’re delivered through social media platforms or are they ad messages masquerading as conversation? What if that same tweet is retweeted by a consumer?

Kane of evolve24 goes a step further: “Is a ‘like’ really a conversation?”

Whereas marketers once worried about multitasking consumers, they now wrestle with multi-channelers. “An online newspaper article may influence a number of readers to discuss the brand online, to experience the product in a different way or to discuss it with their friends offline” says Kane. “The key to truly understanding brand perception is to recognize all of these—posts and comments, customer experiences, news stories—as important contributors, and measuring and weighting them all appropriately.”

The preponderance of online reviews and other customer-generated content further extends the concept of word of mouth. “User-generated content is insight-rich social data that enables analysis at every level of focus and all degrees of granularity,” says Erin Nelson, CMO of Bazaarvoice, which provides platforms for managing and analyzing customer reviews. “But these learnings are only as powerful as the actions they drive and the customer-centric choices they inform. The companies who can truly integrate their social insights across the business are the only ones who will fully capture the value of social data.”

In itself, data isn’t necessarily the challenge; never before has such highly granular analysis been so widely available to marketers. Chat Threads, for example, tracks consumers in real-time as they come into contact with brands; Keller Fay’s TalkTrack—which is based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of some 36,000 Americans each year—gives shape to nearly one trillion annual brand conversations. The issue for many is choosing the right metrics.

For Keller, large offline volume carries more weight than smaller online engagement. In the U.S. every month, he says, an estimated 860 million offline conversations involve Coca-Cola; about half (442 million) are active recommendations to buy or try products. Meanwhile, the brand boasts close to 36 million Facebook “likes” on its page, but only a relatively modest 56,000 are active Facebook fans, he says. “Which one sounds more like ‘word of mouth on steroids’?” he asks, referring to Facebook’s description of social media.

Blake Cahill, president of Banyan Branch, a Seattle-based social media agency, considers yet another variable. “While the number of offline brand conversations is likely still occurring, what has certainly changed is the nearly two hours per day that people are spending online in social platforms communicating with each other instead of face-to-face.”

Social platforms, he adds, “have made it easier for people to like, love and dislike brands at a more prolific rate.”

NURTURING ADVOCATES

The real challenge for word-of-mouth marketers is finding and nurturing the right voices, online and off—whether they’re called advocates, evangelists or just passionate customers.

“There are many ways to identify influencers, both old-school approaches and new-school approaches,” says Nestlé’s Blackshaw. “Online, I pay lots of attention to who consistently indexes in search results. This tells me the influencer’s content is consistently shareable and worthy of links. Serious influencers often lurk in the first page of search results against a product query.”

But influencers are not always advocates—and vice versa. “True advocates might not have a huge following, have a high Klout score or be online much at all,” says Ekaterina Walter, a strategist at Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence, “but they have the power to spread their passion and change people’s minds or rally them around an idea or a brand.” Many marketers, she says, mistakenly focus on “influencers” and “neutrals” when instead they “need to be focusing on those few who truly love your brand and are willing to share that love with everyone around them.”

Moreover, companies need to avoid segregating online advocates and real-world influencers. Instead, they may be better served by ignoring labels and focusing instead on common activities. “It comes down to audience and behavior,” says Kevin Sangsland, sales and marketing director of Airfoil Public Relations. “An online community isn’t different from the people offline. It’s a mistake to put people in these neat little boxes in terms of channels. You get a different company voice and that detracts from brand value.”

Once advocates are identified, they need to be cared for and retained. Crowdtap, for example, maintains a community of influencers that its clients can target with content, coupons or product samples for word-of-mouth engagement. It keeps members interested using Foursquare-like features such as badges and other rewards. “The key to the technology platform is game mechanics so that people have more fun,” says Brandon Evans, Crowdtap CEO.

Nurturing online advocates in advance of problems can also aid with damage control. Just as satisfied customers share their insights quickly, negative word of mouth now travels at light speed. Dissatisfied customers can become situational influencers, defined by Blackshaw as “consumers who gained influence or notoriety because they happened to be the first ones to test a product or discover a product defect that went viral.” Blackshaw wrote a book on the subject of negative WOM, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.

Despite the digital world’s reputation for unrelenting snark, there’s actually more positive than negative brand feedback online. “That said,” Blackshaw adds, “extreme levels of dissatisfaction or anger can trigger extraordinary levels of pass-along.” To manage damaging WOM, “We all need to re-script our rules of listening and responsiveness. Online community management is a must. We also need to rethink customer service [as] a top ‘talk driver’ of both offline and online conversation.”

Intel’s Walter agrees. She’s keenly aware that “every single person out there is an influencer to at least 50 to 300 other people offline.” The best strategy, she says, is to “provide the best customer service and real-time response—online and offline—and your WOM/sales will take care of themselves.”

Above all, brands shouldn’t panic when things go wrong. She points to a January 2011 Retail Consumer Report from Harris Interactive that indicated that of those consumers who were contacted by retailers after posting negative reviews online, 34 percent deleted their critiques, 33 percent wrote a positive review and nearly a fifth (18 percent) actually became loyal customers.

“Customers wouldn’t be reaching out to you if they wouldn’t want to have a relationship,” Walter says. Whether the WOM occurs online or off, there’s always opportunity for real-world conversion.

Brands may not have a choice for much longer. As Ann Jurmain, principal at Miami-based MagicBuz, which specializes in online conversations, explains, “The precision of search engines, coupled with the willingness of consumers to become review publishers in their own right, means that participating in word of mouth is now essential for all marketers.”

by Mikal E. Belicove

The now commonly held notion that social media-related marketing is a requirement for business success may not carry as much water as once thought.

Despite all the technological advances in recent years, especially in the realm of social media, a recent study suggests that the vast majority of public discussion about products, brands and services occur in everyday word-of-mouth encounters with others, not online.

A yearlong study from the New Brunswick, N.J.-based research firm the Keller Fay Group, which included more than 32,000 participants, found that 91 percent of respondents’ information about brands came as a result of face-to-face conversations or over the phone. Just seven percent of word-of-mouth conversations about brands occurs online.

The report shows that a well-rounded approach to word-of-mouth marketing and consumer participation is every bit as important as blogs, Facebook posts and tweets in getting the message out, says Chris Laird, CEO of Tremor, Procter & Gamble’s in-house word-of-mouth marketing organization, which commissioned the study.

Your customer or potential buyer needs a reason to engage, a reason to care and a reason to tell others about your brand. It comes down to having something sharable that you can get out there, Laird says. Here are his three tips for getting the most out of word of mouth:

1. Drive real-world conversation. Laird suggests that companies use social media tools to drive conversations out into the real world. In other words, discover ways to find and engage customers in online and offline conversations. As an example, the survey shows that 60 percent of respondents said they were “highly likely” to make a purchase based on an offline word-of-mouth interaction about a brand. Match that figure against engagement brought about by your social-media tools and you start to see why offline word of mouth is so much more valuable.Not only that, but the study shows that 67 percent of references to brands in offline conversations turn out to be positive in nature — yet another good reason for businesses to promote such personal engagements.
2. Have a plan for on and offline. A well-defined marketing plan should include a multi-channel approach with blueprints for both online and offline elements.
3. Know how your products or services measure up. In the report, respondents described their past day’s person-to-person conversations about brands, with food and dining topping the content list at 56 percent, and travel services at 22 percent registered as the least likely topic for discussion. Among other topical products and services were media and entertainment at 51 percent, beverages came in at 45 percent and shopping, retail and apparel came up in 36 percent of conversations.

Other findings in the study include:

• At 59 percent, the majority of word-of-mouth conversations occur at home, whether offline or online.
• Offline conversations occur most among females, those with a higher education, older consumers and married respondents or those living with a partner. Online conversations are more likely among males and younger consumers.
• Online word-of-mouth advice is more likely to come from younger consumers while those over 40 years of age are providing such advice offline.
• Most offline advice is likely to come from spouses, family or co-workers.

What does your business do to encourage offline or online discussions about your products or services? Leave a comment and let us know.

Mikal E. Belicove is a market positioning, social media, and management consultant specializing in website usability and business blogging. His latest book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook, is now available at bookstores. For more information, visit MikalBelicove.com.