I just spoke at the VerticalResponse Spring Marketing Conference, about the power of social media and word of mouth marketing in affecting brand perception and purchase intent. Afterward, lots of people approached me and asked me to email them some of the statistics I discussed. They wanted to use these as ammunition to help get budgets for social media marketing. They really are powerful, so here's some of the most compelling:
- "59% of consumers consider customer reviews to be more valuable than 'expert' reviews." - BizRate
- "The are over 75,000 new blogs created each day, updated to the tune of over 1.2 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second." - Technorati
- "3/4 of consumers rate Word of Mouth as the #1 influencer of purchase intent." - Nielsen
- Facebook has 35 million uniques per month, and growing.
- MySpace has 69 million unique users per month
- More than 35 million US adults regularly share their opinions online about products and services. And that doesn't even count people who passively read these opinions without commenting.
- P&G recently stated that a social media campaign on Beinggirl.com was 4x as effective as TV ads.
So embrace social media and word of mouth marketing! I hope these help. Start your own blog, forum or Facebook group and participate on other social media venues. And most importantly do something positive that gets people talking about you on other blogs, forums, message boards and social networks.
How are you using social media in a clever or cost-effective way to reach your customers? Let us know!
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