Word Of Mouth In The Wild: Online Reviews

January 5th, 2009 by Nick Gonzalez

Back in October, Rubicon Consulting released an interesting report related to word of mouth, but I didn’t have a chance to cover it. I’ve embedded the PDF below, Marketing Charts has an html version.

The study fascinated me because it helped manifest one of the most important aspects of marketing, word of mouth. In this case, Rubicon dug into the ability of online reviews to drive product purchases. Although Rubicon delineates word of mouth from reviews (word of mouth is the leading driver), I consider reviews type of word of mouth. Reviews leverage the essence of word of mouth, a person conveying their opinion about a product to others. They simply differ in the magnitude of their effect.

Key findings from the September 2008 study of 3,036 US web users 13 and up included the most influential messages on purchasing behavior and the dynamics of participation within social media communities.

Key lessons from the articles include:

Participate within communities - While about 10% of a site’s users participate, 100% of them are listening. About 20% of respondents said comments by users online influenced them strongly.

Monitor conversations - Keep track of conversations happening about your brand online. Google alerts and services like Who’s Talkin help anyone do this easily.

Young people are more influenced by information online - 60% of young people said they were strongly influenced by online information, compared to less than 40% of web users over 40. Heavy content producers also tended to be younger, but these users will grow up and likely maintain their habits.

Community sites lead online engagement after search - Social media properties are the second most trafficked sites online. Having a footprint on them is essential.

Community sites enable trusted messages - The messages that influence purchasing behavior the most come from trusted sources. Social media properties enable users to easily broadcast these trusted messages.

Rubicon Web Community

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.