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Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing findings from a recent study of US organizations and their word of mouth marketing practices and ethics. The research was conducted in partnership with Osterman Research and BoldMouth.com. I’ll start with an overview of usage and planning.

When asked “Which of the following best describes your organization’s use of word-of-mouth marketing?” it appears as if many organziations are likely to identify themselves as part of the “in crowd” when it comes to word-of-mouth with 50.5% of organizations stating they are already using WOM with another 20.7% noting they plan to do so. Interestingly, 9% of all respondents indiced that their organization has no plans to use word-of-mouth. Here’s the chart:

Not especially surprising but a good benchmark none-the-less. So, as was expected a majority of organizations are using or indend to use WOM, but how important is word-of-mouth marketing in an organization’s overall marketing efforts? Well — 62.1 percent of all respondents noted that word of mouth was either extremely or very important. It’s group hug time, I’m getting that warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s more of a commitment question to validate usage and to establish priority. Here’s the chart:

Now time for the wake-up call. As an industry, there is looming problem on the horizon for word of mouth advertisers related to planning and implementation. While a majority of organizations claim they are already using word of mouth and, with even higher numbers noting WOM is either extremely or very important to the organization’s overall marketing plan I was surprised to learn that 71.4% of all organizations that responded to the survey don’t have an established word of mouth marketing plan. This spells trouble and could very well create the kind of barriers to growth that slows spending and adoption. Take a look:

TAGS: Word of Mouth Research