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[Click for a PDF Complete 2006 WOM Industry Map]

Dave Balter’s created a good snapshot of the current word-of-mouth vendor space. The next logical step as I pointed out in our study on word-of-mouth back in May is likely to be a vendor guide either produced by WOMMA, VMBA or another organization like Anne Holland’s Marketing Sherpa.

As for the continuum, I believe customers are looking to understand how vendor services play out from the standpoint of providing customer-focused, acquisition-focused or some hybrid services that support word-of-mouth. In fact, one of the first questions we generally get asked during presentations is “What do we do with our customers and how can be get them involved?” Media format differentiation from the standpoint of text, audio and video is also likely to valuable

In addition, Dave tips his hat to Ed Keller of Keller Fay Group. His firm’s TalkTrack audience research platform is an interesting guide for advertisers to mirror especially advertisers that are seeking ways to not only expand corporate customer knowledge and share of voice but also as a potential new advertising platform that is based the actual recognized interests of participants identified by via the panel. The result is less untargeted advertising messages that cause interruptions and more relevant marketing-based communications that panel participants can control. Damn! This is an exciting time….

Thanks again to Dave Balter for sharing his industry map.

TAGS: Dave Balter, WOM, Ed Keller, TalkTrack, research panels, Anne Holland, VBMA, WOMMA, BoldMouth