
Breaking Down the Methodology Behind Word of Mouth Marketing - vijayjeyapalan
http://blog.clarity.fm/breaking-down-the-methodology-behind-word-of-mouth-marketing/
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kposehn
"the glamour of paid advertising is a total illusion"

Not quite. What appeals about paid marketing is very simple: definable,
scalable success.

"word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in
categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones."

While I cannot attest to this being true or false, I can say that word of paid
marketing can have a very appealing success rate.

For example, after 5 years of marketing online with my own money I can say the
following:

1\. 73% of all campaigns failed

2\. 22% of all campaigns that did _not_ fail became a moderately profitable
success (~50-100% ROI)

3\. 5% of all campaigns became absolute smash hits, earning over their
lifetimes well past many times the investment I made to find them.

(NOTE: ROI for this example means the amount invested to test & optimize the
campaign at the start ($1k-$10k) as opposed to the actual ROI of earnings over
time, which is entirely different)

With a 5% smash hit rate - and a 27% success rate, that is a pretty damn good
risk factor. This isn't to say that word of mouth doesn't work - it most
certainly does - but paid advertising definitely has its place.

If you've got your wits about you, use paid to jump start word of mouth, and
capitalize on word of mouth with paid. There is a myriad of opportunity and I
would not leave either one out of the mix.

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weeksie
Total fluff piece. Word of mouth marketing? Just sounds like PR to me. And
yes, depending on your product, it helps to have a personality behind
it—that's just called having a brand.

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danmartell
The research is real. Real data. Real numbers. I've used this approach for
many launches and it works. Thought I'd finally share with the world.

~~~
weeksie
What research? Perhaps I have poor reading comprehension but I don't see any
data. Other than hand-wavey stuff which is branding 101, I don't see any
particular insights.

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thomasknoll
Could sum this up with Steve Martin's quote from the Charlie Rose show:

    
    
        Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it's not
        the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear 
        is "Here's how you get an agent, here's how you write 
        a script,"... but I always say,
    
        "Be so good they can't ignore you."

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joshdance
A lot of the ideas come from -
[http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1451686579](http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1451686579)

~~~
danmartell
@joshdance 100% .. Jonas Berger is a genius. Also need to give credit to Ryan
Holiday [https://clarity.fm/ryanholiday](https://clarity.fm/ryanholiday) / one
of the best out there re: media manipulation to amplify WOM.

