Thursday, July 22, 2010

Power of Word of Mouth (WOM)

An article in the Creating Results blog has some interesting stats about the effectiveness of referrals in the Health, Travel and Financial Services Industries
  • 50% of the 17 million adults who found a new primary care physician in the past year relied on recommendations from friends and relatives. More than 25% used such recommendations as their only information source.
  • At AAHSA in 2008, a presenter shared statistics from Shouldice Hospital which counted 49% of new patients as referrals from past patients.=
  • 34% of UK vacationers told consumer research group Mintel that they chose their destination on the basis of a face-to-face recommendation. Another 27% used online word of mouth sources such as user reviews.
The power of WOM was also illustrated by the research from Meredith’s Better Homes and Gardens reader panel that I blogged about in June.

This form of product promotion/product endorsement is not something that should be an after-thought to a marketing campaign but an integral part of it. Dick Stroud

1 comment:

Roy Morejon said...

Check out this clever word of mouth dentist ad: http://roymorejon.com/word-of-mouth/