Increasing the effect of advertising on word of mouth

Did you know that only 3,4% of actual face-to-face Word-of-Mouth conversations are stimulated by the marketing organisations promotional effort? Given the fact that from the top-5 Word-of-mouth stimulants, more than 50% of WOM is determined when one partner in a conversation feels a need with the other conversational partners, and more than 18% is just merely coïncidential Word-of-Mouth.

If this teaches us one thing, than it's definitely the fact that we should pay a lot more attention to understanding the context of WOM conversations and how the messages are woven into everyday conversations. One of the implications for this is that marketingcommunication should pay a lot more attention to the level of talkability of the commercial message. If there could be a better match with this conversational context, in which conversational partners address felt needs, than we might increase this 3,4% dramatically.  Let me make this tangible: I got two people in my social network into buying an ipod. The first one was complaining about being in traffic for more than 3 hours a day, so I told him I survive traffic frustration thanks to listening to podcasts. The second person told me she got bored quickly at the gym. She needed distraction in order to keep running. I told her that my ipod with pumping techno music keeps me running for an hour. So she bought one herself.  (remark: you can also buy another mp3-player, i'm not endorsing Apple. I'm really pissed off with their lousy customer service)

Link: http://www.womma.org/metrics/pres/womma_research_carl.pdf

Presentation by Prof. Dr. Walter Carl at the Measuring Word Of Mouth conference. More presentations here.