Online Word of Mouth – Use The Social Movement To Your Benefit
In many respects online word of mouth is as effective as any other medium to convey the worthiness of a product or service. This methodology can be illustrated simplistically – someone writes that they had a certain experience with “X”, this comment is then read by other individuals who believe that this person or the place the comment is being made is a trustworthy way of collecting opinions on something that.
Trust is key in this situation – the person must trust the source of his or her online information before forming a judgement which in turn will have them vote for or against the topic of interest. 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.
This form of consumer generated media has increasingly become a favorite among younger generations, people in their thirties and below, with teenagers the most likely to have both read about and being influenced by online commentary, and to have added their own comments. This type of social commentary has been found to be extremely powerful on areas about health, transport and consumer electronics, all of which could be viewed as high expense arenas.
For online word of mouth sales to be capitalized on, marketing needs to be targeted towards the demographic most likely to be influenced by it, as mentioned above. 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 WidgetX known online as a good product? So, having a quality product at a price point that targets the masses is important (why buy WidgetX if it’s 3 times the cost of a comparable other WidgetY?), which coupled with an understanding of exactly who it’s aimed at and why it’s of benefit to that market is key.
Think about it, consumers today are more intelligent than many marketers may presume, so, some companies might spend tons of cash on high ticket advertising campaigns, offline and online, still to see their product bomb or fail to ring in any profit, simply because consumers were not motivated to spend money on the product.Then they spread the same dialogue to others. 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.

