WordSpreadsQuickly.com

I’ll be speaking at the upcoming Word of Mouth Marketing Conference in January about creating word of mouth marketing plans. Here’s the link to the WOMMA announcement.

It’s a timely topic.

We’re in the middle of major research project surveying organizations across the United States about word of mouth marketing plans, ethics, importance to overall organization and whether or not they have a formalized plan among other things. The research findings will be released during my panel at the conference along with a proposed WOM plan. If you want to receive a copy of the research report, drop me an email at todd at boldmouth dot com with the subject line WOM REPORT REQUEST.

The early responses have surprised the hell out of me.

When you ask an organization that says WOM is extremely important, that the approach is used all the time, and is about to or has recently launched a word of mouth campaign, I was expecting organization to tell us that they have a formalized WOM plan in place. Wrong.

It appears as if most organizations from our early research don’t have a word of mouth marketing plan.

This is a little frightening to hear and it’s scary from the standpoint of not being able to gain knowledge from a campaign and apply it to future efforts to generate the same results. Developing solutions that can be repeatedly applied is real value of having a plan. It also helps you avoid the potential barriers that can derail a campaign.