Latest Buzz on Online Marketing: Word of Mouth Marketing--Friend or Enemy?

We all know that word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. Referrals are often the best sales prospects we can have in our pipeline. And, we also know that bad word of mouth can be even MORE powerful. The adage goes "a happy customer tells five people, an unhappy customer tells 100."

But today it is exponentially worse. With technology...a happy customer may still tell five people, but an unhappy customer may tell thousands, or perhaps millions.

And, perhaps more importantly, today's buyers are turning to these "reviews" in droves. In fact, a study from The Society for New Communications Research indicates a majority of buyers use social media to share customer care experiences and research a company's customer service reputation. The top findings of the study include:

59.1% of respondents use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience
72.2% of respondents research companies’ customer care online prior to purchasing products and services at least sometimes
84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care at least sometimes in their decision to do business with a company
74% choose companies/brands based on others’ customer care experiences shared online
84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care in their decision to do business with a company at least sometimes
81% believe that blogs, online rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice regarding customer care, but less than 33% believe that businesses take customers’ opinions seriously
Search engines are the most valuable online tools for this research, according to respondents. Those rated of no value include micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Pownce (39%), YouTube (27%) and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (22%)

Given these stats, you can see online word of mouth is an important piece to any marketing effort. To make it work for you, encourage your happy customers to talk about you online. And, perhaps more importantly...be sure to monitor your word of mouth buzz and address your unhappy customers quickly and without defensive tones.