Posted on May 12, 2009 by Brett

In many respects marketing by word of mouth can be said to be the “hidden statistic” for all programs, as it’s well near impossible to actually gauge the effectiveness of marketing done this way. However, it also should be noted that most every product in the digital age has used this method to enhance puclic and corporate awareness of the product.

A recent study exemplified that two thirds of online marketing is expected to be done this way next year, which when coupled with the advent in leaps of Web 2.0.0 social networking and social marketing sites point towards promoting your product by word of mouth may be both more cost effective, and have an increasingly better ROI than more “traditional” online advertising media.

Consider any of the current online social networking site's business model. There has yet to be a successful site of this type that charges monthly, relying instead as they do on ad generated income. It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of marketing by word of mouth, but it should be noted that there is a method of measuring if your campaign is working – increased sales.

A company must know from their output exactly the difference between pre campaign, during a campaign and post campaign. This gives businesses a measurable statistic to show effectiveness of this type of marketing. It is true that not all businesses need or desire this form of sales technique, but is also through that not one business turns away prospects garnered from the by word of mouth method either.

Whatever your business, a study completed by Hill and Knowlton in February of this year showed that decision makers are more influenced by personal experience’s (58%), with recommendations and industry reports tied at 51%. Coming in at a smaller than expected third was direct marketing at 21% with internet advertising lapsing to 17%. These figures might only reflect the buying habits of sole decision makers, but a woman in Oregon deciding to buy a specific car insurance or another IS the key decision maker for that type of purchase, and her friend Sue to deal with the same company will have a greater influence over Sue than an actor selling the product on TV.

In essence, this statistic may be calculated into any industry, any niche, if every person is classified as the key decision maker. This makes the resurgence of the world’s oldest sales tool a given – so get talking or tweeting, but tell everyone!