Measuring
the Grapevine
Early adopters put hard metrics in place to measure word-of-mouth media impact
BtoB Online, May 08, 2006 By Lynda Radosevich
Word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent (www.bzzagent.com) typically services consumer
brands, but b-to-b
companies are starting
to take notice.
Joe Cordo, VP-marketing
at Bullhorn, an
on-demand software
vendor, is planning
a BzzAgent campaign
to create incentives
for customers to
spread the word
about Bullhorn's
product for the
recruiting industry.
"Our customers are fanatical about our product, and they're not shy or reserved
about sharing their
experiences with
other people in
the industry," Cordo said. "In our business, word-of-mouth is a game-changer, more so than advertising or
trade shows, so
it makes sense
for us to leverage
that."
Bullhorn
is not alone. Interest
in word-of-mouth
marketing-sometimes
called consumer-generated
media or social
media-appears ready
to pop in b-to-b
as loudly as it
has for consumer
brands.
Consumer-generated
media (CGM) is
content that people
publish of their
own accord on Internet
discussion boards,
forums, Usenet
newsgroups and,
most notably, blogs.
Fueling interest
in CGM is recognition
that recommendations
are a key driver
of purchase behavior.
Offline word-of-mouth
is hard to measure,
but when the talk
is online, companies
in the forefront
of the trend believe
they can listen,
learn and influence
what's being said
and spread.
But
what exactly are
the early adopters
trying to accomplish?
How are they measuring
and valuing what
people are hearing
through the grapevine?
What metrics do
they use to gauge
impact and justify
programs?
It
depends whether
companies are interested
in listening or
talking.
Listen and learn
The
immediate payoff
from measuring
CGM is market insight.
Customers, clients
and influencers
on the Internet
are sharing their
unvarnished opinions
for free. Market
researchers can
simply type their
product or company
names into Technorati
(www.technorati.com)
or BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com)
to find the latest
blog postings on
their brands.
"Marketers
make the measuring
too hard sometimes.
The beauty of word-of-mouth
is all this stuff
is being directly
written down by
customers," said Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (www.womma.org).
For
simple quantitative
measures, companies
can count the number
of company, product
or brand mentions
over time and compare
their numbers to
competitors' numbers.
Another simple
next step is to
categorize comments
into positive and
negative categories,
and track those
measures over time
to provide feedback
for product development,
marketing and public
relations programs.
Companies
in cluding Biz360,
BuzzMetrics and
Cymfony offer more
sophisticated (and
more expensive)
analysis of what's
being said. The
services collect
data and use software
and human-based
analysis to tailor
metrics to clients'
needs. The media
mix varies. For
instance, BuzzMetrics
focuses exclusively
on CGM. Biz360
measures mainstream
media and blogs,
and Cymfony measures
mainstream media
and many types
of CGM.
The
services' reports
offer dozens of
metrics, but a
simple example
is share of voice,
or the percentage
of times a product,
company or brand
is mentioned out
of the total coverage
of an industry
or topic. By comparing
share of voice
with market share,
companies can identify
risks and opportunities.
"Share
of voice should
equal share of
market," said Jim Nail, chief marketing and strategy officer at Cymfony. "Apple is the poster child [of companies in which] share of market is small but
share of voice
is huge. That means
it has more buzz
than revenue. If
that's happening,
something is wrong."
Talk and influence
Hard
metrics for outbound
word-of-mouth campaigns
are in the early
stages of development.
The recently published
WOMMA Terminology
Framework (http://www.womma.org/terminology.htm)
suggests common
terms and metrics-such
as topicality and
timeliness-for
describing and
measuring word-of-mouth
marketing, but
examples of b-to-b
applications are
rare. Also, companies
apply traditional
public relations
metrics, such as
impressions (the
number of people
exposed to a message)
or prominence (where
in an article the
company is mentioned)
to measuring the
effectiveness of
campaigns.
Bullhorn
is looking to link
word-of-mouth programs
to more direct,
bottom-line impact.
In Cordo's planned
BzzAgent campaign,
customers will
receive rewards
for sharing their
experiences on
a company blog
or Web site that
links to the customer
relationship management
system. "We can tie what happens on the site with lead tracking, track back to customer
record,"Cordo said. "That is how we can measure it."
In
the long run, marketing
and PR departments
will have to tie
CGM metrics to
bottom-line impact
to justify their
programs' value.
But for now, just
getting some quantitative
measures in place
is a good start.
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