My recent interview with Sam Decker provides additional facts that support the post from Guy Kawasaki on word of mouth advertising and email. 92% of word of mouth conversations take place offline, with 71% of word of mouth taking place in person and 21% taking place by phone - according to a study by Keller Fay Group as posted originally by Sam Decker. Email, instant message and online chat rooms/blogs comprise 6% of word of mouth according to the study. Incredible stuff.
Guy's post provides some new information (via an NYU graduate school blog) that bolsters this interesting fact that WOMA is dominated by face to face communications:
Surprisingly, the study found that less than 40% of consumers use e-mail to make recommendations to others, including via personal e-mail (37%), by e-mail forwarding (32%) or through mass e-mails (12%). While slightly higher percentages of Influentials use e-mail (personal e-mail 53%, e-mail forwarding 39% and mass e-mails 18%), face-to-face communication still far outweighs this medium.
While the statistics stated may vary, the end conclusion remains the same. The power of word of mouth marketing resides in the low-tech world of coffee chats and telephone calls.
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