Challis Hodge’s UXblog

BoldMouth just released an interesting new study on WOM Marketing (PDF). It’s worth checking out. The report is good. Judging from their website they just skipped right past online marketing!

Social networks and community sites have changed the rules of marketing. The thing is, most of your competitors just don’t know it yet.

Businesses of every size from large enterprises like Microsoft and Panasonic to small companies like MyKumari.com and Verity Blue are, or soon will be, adopting word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing at an incredibly fast pace. The implementation of WOM marketing may be enthusiastic, but it often results in ineffective or misguided campaigns.

The rules for marketing are changing at such a fast pace—and that fact was reinforced—when 65% of organizations that participated in the study told us they did not have a formalized word-of-mouth marketing plan.

We believe that industry stakeholders need formalized processes to assess how referral conversations are initiated, modified and terminated, and to better understand the relationship dynamics that develop as a result of individuals making independent referrals.

The study includes a comprehensive overview of where the word-of-mouth industry is now, and shows you how to create a word-of-mouth marketing strategy for your own organization that will help you avoid missteps than can detail your success to build buzz and revenue.