Marketers just love positive news spreading about their product and services. Leave alone marketers; who doesn’t like it! Even political campaigns or Bollywood producers target Indian jantha to share good views about them by word of mouth.
An excellent example of the power of word of mouth and its viral effects would be the 58Mn + views of Why this Kolaveri Di video on YouTube. Well little did the producers know that their song was an instant blockbuster months before the movies even released! Now that is the power of a positive word of mouth.
Positive word of mouth proves advantageous in many ways. Ask any rock concert organizer, a major chunk of the crowd wouldn’t have made it to the concert had they not been told by their friends about the concert. But then this is a one off case. The restaurant industry or Bollywood for that matter relies big time on word of mouth to sustain for a pretty long time! In these cases the consumer is in control and can just make your day! Businesses don’t complain much as this becomes quite cost efficient as well.
No wonder AC Nielsen placed word of mouth marketing more powerful than conventional methods of marketing. Now here’s some numbers – at least 50% of buyers of cars in India rely on information shared by word of mouth especially by friends and relatives. Even mobile phone buyers are somewhere close to that mark at 52% – however relied on information by forums and blogs – again a form of word of mouth in the electronic format. In fact, one can safely assume that any product or service is influenced to a certain extent by word of mouth.
The word of mouth marketing is spreading its wings to different formats and is having its impact on the consumer behaviour. Viral marketing rests on the shoulders of social media to fire and creates rippling effects in the minds of the consumer. Another area of the word of mouth marketing world is by creating a buzz around a particular product. This may be in the form of getting some happy customers to speak about it, or maybe some tv programs/news to create some buzz. I’m sure all you gadget freaks would rely on information in NDTVs Gadget or Cell Guru!
Well there’s no end to this and perhaps this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as word of mouth marketing. With the advent of social media, the word of mouth juggernaut will never stop and will continue influencing the consumer behaviour!
