Nate Eliott Forrester presentation for WOMMA

How to Fix Word of MouthNate Elliott, VP and Principal Analyst

@nate_elliott

November 3, 2015

© 2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 3

Word of mouth marketing

isn’t working.


Agenda

› WOM marketing isn’t working

› The state of the market

› How to fix word of mouth


Agenda





WOM is a top driver of discovery


Word of mouth is trusted


WOM generates reach brands can’t



But word of mouth marketing

isn’t working.


But word of mouth marketing

isn’t working.

MARKETING


Too many brands post and pray

But this does not

generate word of

mouth


Or try to hijack hashtags


Mistakes are piling up








Brands say it’s not delivering


Both marketers and

vendors must do better.


Agenda





Today, we published a WOMP landscape

• WOMP = Word of Mouth Platform

• Our vendor landscape reviewed 40 vendors

• Each filled out a questionnaire

• We interviewed two dozen of them

• We also interviewed and collected data from two

dozen word of mouth marketers

• Including some of the biggest brands in the world


Forrester sees three kinds of WOM

1

Customer

Advocates

Use existing,

satisfied customers

to spread brand

messages.

2

Employee

Advocates

Use your employee

base to spread

brand messages.

3

Category

Influencers

Use people influential

among your key

audiences to spread

brand messages.


And we looked at three types of WOMPs

1

Customer

Advocacy

Platforms

2

Employee

Advocacy

Platforms

3

Category

Influencer

Platforms


Marketers love to chase influencers


But most vendors work on advocacy


Vendors focus on activation


Social marketers rarely run WOM efforts


Measurement is a mess

The average WOM

vendor offers

marketers 8

“success” metrics


I asked 14 large brands if they

would recommend their WOM

vendor to a colleague.

Only 4 said they would.


Agenda





Marketers have work to do.


Fix 1:

Marketers must start

taking WOM seriously.


Resolve to never again post and pray


Never again hijack an irrelevant hashtag

Wrong Right


And for goodness’ sake, put some resources into this strategy

• Most marketers we spoke to said they had zero

or one person dedicated to WOM.

• Only half the marketers we spoke to said they

had increased their WOM investment in 2015.

• Most marketers I’ve spoken to don’t use any

external vendors to help with WOM.


But if you fix the vendors,

you fix the industry.


Fix 2:

WOM vendors must offer both

advocate and influencer services.


Most vendors offer advocacy products


But it’s time for WOMPs to consolidate


WOM vendors must offer both advocate and influencer services

• We’re not looking for end-to-end social suites.

• No vendor can do ads, organic, and WOM well.

• Clients of end-to-end social suites are less satisfied.

• But marketers can’t justify hiring three WOMPs.

• The vendors that offer complete WOM services will

win the market.


Fix 3:

WOM vendors must offer

useful success metrics.


Measurement is a mess


WOM vendors must offer useful metrics

• Measure business outcomes, not operational

metrics like contacts and posts.

• Only one-quarter of vendors focus measurement on

business outcomes like awareness or sales.

• Integrate with the tools marketers trust.

• CMOs already use mix modeling and attribution

tools; make sure these vendors can use your data.

forrester.com

Thank you

Name

[email protected]

@nate_elliott

Nate Eliott Forrester presentation for WOMMA

Marketing