Word of mouth dates

Word of Mouth World Tour

Tour by The Wanted
Associated album	Word of Mouth
Start date	14 March 2014
End date	7 December 2014
Legs	3
No. of shows	14 in Europe 30 in North America 44 Total
The Wanted concert chronology
Code Tour (2012) Word of Mouth World Tour (2014)

The Word of Mouth World Tour^[1] is the debut world tour by British-Irish boy band The Wanted. The tour is named after their third studio album Word of Mouth (2013). The band performed a total of 40 shows across Asia, Europe and North America.

There were 14 planned shows in Continental Europe; however on 10 December 2013 all 13 shows were cancelled. On the group’s official website, scheduling conflicts were given as the reason for the cancellation.

In January 2014, it was announced that the tour would be the group’s last for a while, as they want to take time out to pursue solo careers and other interests.

Opening acts

The Vamps (UK & Ireland)^[2]

1. Wild Heart
2. Girls On TV
3. Last Night
4. Can We Dance
5. Cecilia

• Elyar Fox (UK & Ireland)
• Midnight Red (US & Canada)
• Cassio Monroe (US & Canada)

Setlist

1. «Gold Forever»
2. «Glow In the Dark»
3. «In The Middle»
4. «Lightning»
5. «Running Out Of Reasons»
6. «Demons»
7. «Could This Be Love»
8. «Warzone»
9. Medley:
   1. «Behind Bars»
   2. «Say It On The Radio»
   3. «Replace Your Heart»
   4. «Lose My Mind»
10. «Everybody Knows»
11. «Heartbreak Story»
12. «Show Me Love (America)»
13. «Heart Vacancy»
14. «Walks Like Rihanna»
15. «Chasing the Sun»
16. «I Found You»
17. «We Own the Night»
18. «All Time Low»

Encore

1. «Glad You Came»

Tour dates

Date	City	Country	Venue
Europe[3]
14 March 2014	Liverpool	England	Echo Arena Liverpool
15 March 2014	Aberdeen	Scotland	GE Oil and Gas Arena
16 March 2014	Glasgow	SSE Hydro
18 March 2014	Manchester	England	Phones 4u Arena
20 March 2014	Birmingham	LG Arena
21 March 2014	Sheffield	Motorpoint Arena Sheffield
22 March 2014	Newcastle	Metro Radio Arena
24 March 2014	Dublin	Ireland	The O2
25 March 2014	Belfast	Northern Ireland	Odyssey Arena
27 March 2014	London	England	The O2 Arena
28 March 2014	Cardiff	Wales	Motorpoint Arena Cardiff
29 March 2014	Brighton	England	Brighton Centre
31 March 2014	Bournemouth	Windsor Hall
1 April 2014	Nottingham	Capital FM Arena Nottingham
North America[3]
8 April 2014	Huntington	United States	Paramount Theater
9 April 2014	Silver Spring	The Fillmore Silver Spring
11 April 2014	New York City	Beacon Theatre
12 April 2014	Upper Darby Township	Tower Theatre
14 April 2014	Boston	House of Blues
15 April 2014	Montreal	Canada	Métropolis
17 April 2014	Toronto	Sound Academy
18 April 2014	Detroit	United States	The Fillmore Detroit
19 April 2014	Chicago	House of Blues
21 April 2014	Minneapolis	State Theatre
23 April 2014	Denver	Ogden Theatre
25 April 2014	Vancouver	Canada	Orpheum Theatre
26 April 2014	Seattle	United States	Showbox SoDo
28 April 2014	San Francisco	Warfield Theatre
29 April 2014	Anaheim	House of Blues
1 May 2014	Los Angeles	Wiltern Theatre
2 May 2014	Phoenix	Comerica Theatre
4 May 2014	Dallas	House of Blues
5 May 2014	Houston
7 May 2014	Atlanta	The Tabernacle
9 May 2014	Miami Beach	The Fillmore Miami Beach
10 May 2014[B]	Orlando	Universal Music Plaza Stage
11 May 2014	St. Petersburg	Jannus Live
14 May 2014	Columbus	Lifestyle Communities Pavilion
15 May 2014	Indianapolis	Egyptian Room
16 May 2014	Kansas City	Uptown Theater
17 May 2014	Shawnee	Firelake Arena
North America (Second Leg)[4]
5 December 2014	Monterrey	Mexico	Auditorio Banamex
6 December 2014	Mexico City	Pepsi Center WTC
7 December 2014	Guadalajara	Telmex Auditorium

Festivals and other miscellaneous performances

^A Dubai International Jazz Festival^[5]

^B Universal Orlando Mardi Gras^[6]

Cancellations and rescheduled shows

8 February 2014	Cologne, Germany	Live Music Hall	Cancelled[7]
9 February 2014	Paris, France	Le Trianon	Cancelled[7]
10 February 2014	Brussels, Belgium	Ancienne Belgique	Cancelled[7]
12 February 2014	Berlin, Germany	Huxleys Neue Welt	Cancelled[7]
15 February 2014	Oslo, Norway	Oslo Spektrum	Cancelled[7]
16 February 2014	Stockholm, Sweden	Fryshuset	Cancelled[7]
18 February 2014	Copenhagen, Denmark	Falkoner Teatret	Cancelled[7]
21 February 2014	Amsterdam, Netherlands	Heineken Music Hall	Cancelled[7]
23 February 2014	Vienna, Austria	Gasometer Halle	Cancelled[7]
24 February 2014	Munich, Germany	Kesselhaus	Cancelled[7]
25 February 2014	Zürich, Switzerland	Komplex 457	Cancelled[7]
26 February 2014	Milan, Italy	Discotec Alcatraz	Cancelled[7]
28 February 2014	Barcelona, Spain	Sala Razzmatazz	Cancelled[7]
1 March 2014	Madrid, Spain	Palacio Vistalegre	Cancelled[7]
17 May 2014	Shawnee, Oklahoma	Grand Events Center	Moved to Firelake Arena

References

Word of mouth marketing has influenced all purchasing decisions—from buying a new car to picking from a specific clothing brand and restaurant recommendations. Well, who doesn’t love to hear an opinion about products and services from reliable sources?

Most marketers understand that people depend on the surrounding environment more than they can even realize. For this reason, brands spend their time and effort improving customer acquisition through organic channels. 

The following word of mouth marketing statistics will give you a clear picture of how impactful this kind of marketing is and why you should consider it for your business. 

Top Word of Mouth Marketing Stats: Editor’s Choice

General Word of Mouth Marketing Stats and Facts

The word of mouth marketing definition can be seen as the process of actively encouraging other people to spread the word about a specific product, service, event, or brand people might be interested in. Based on customer experiences, businesses use this entirely free form of advertising to continuously boost sales, traffic, and leads.

1. 86% of consumers trust word of mouth recommendations and online reviews.

Considering that we live in a digital era, it’s only normal that so many people trust word of mouth and online reviews channels.

Nowadays, word of mouth effectiveness replaces all other marketing channels such as television advertisements, print ads, and, surprisingly, social media. Only one person’s experience with a product or service can impact positively or negatively your brand.

2. A staggering 92% of people trust recommendations from family and friends.

Although word of mouth marketing has been around for a very long time, this type of advertising has only gained the recognition it deserves in recent years.

According to Nielsen, the overwhelming majority of respondents prefer this traditional word of mouth marketing to any other. They agreed that they would trust their friends’ and family’s opinions more than any kind of paid advertisement. It’s only normal to trust your parents more than a brand that wants your money!

3. 85% of small businesses gain new local customers thanks to word of mouth referrals.

Thanks to the spread of opinions and online reviews, brands keep attracting new potential customers. This is especially true for local small businesses. For this reason, a word of mouth recommendation is the key for most small businesses.

If a person is happy with a specific product or service, a family member or friend will most likely become a new customer. Not to mention, the satisfied clients will spread the word, generating a chain of new potential leads.

4. Word of mouth marketing drives 13% of all sales.

A study found that online and offline consumers referrals constitute about 13% of the overall customer sales. At first sight, this percentage of word of mouth sales might not impress you as much.

However, you must consider that this type of marketing drives $6 trillion of annual consumer spending. As you can see, this is a significant number for businesses with hundreds or thousands of clients.

5. Apart from friends and family, 88% of people trust online reviews by other consumers.

It’s not surprising that seven out of ten people trust strangers’ opinions more than what the brand says about their products. While companies can trick you into buying a product to profit from your hard-earned money, consumers are the most reliable source.

6. As reported by word of mouth marketing statistics, 74% of consumers agree that word of mouth influences their purchasing decisions.

Although we live in a digital world, many people still broadly use traditional media. As a matter of fact, word of mouth has the biggest influence on people when deciding whether to purchase a product or not. 69% of buyers find retailers influential, and 64% think that YouTube how-to, product visualization, and entertainment videos help them make a purchasing decision.

7. 96% of customers who had a positive experience with a brand will return and tell others.

People love to share their experiences and give feedback through offline or online word of mouth marketing. Especially in our digital era, it’s easier to voice your opinion about a particular product or service online. Sharing your feedback has become an essential part of word of mouth marketing.

Word of Mouth Advertising

Every marketer needs word of mouth marketing advertising, as it’s the most effective form of advertising. This type of advertising is credible, reliable, and, most importantly, free. Surprisingly, positive reviews about your products or brand can steer more customers than a paid advertisement.

But, how to make sure that your potential ambassadors will recommend your brand? See what these word of mouth advertising statistics say.

8. 75% of people don’t trust paid advertisements.

People trust family, friends, and even random strangers on the Internet more than paid advertisements. 

A report by HubSpot proves that a whopping 90% of consumers trust family and friends, while 70% believe in online reviews based on customer experience. That’s why you shouldn’t take the power of word of mouth for granted.

9. In the US, only 4% of consumers trust brand-sponsored content.

There’s no doubt about it—only a small percentage of Americans trust the brand over other consumers’ experiences. At the same time, word of mouth statistics demonstrate that an astounding 96% of consumers mistrust brand-sponsored content and media advertisement. It’s only natural that people trust word of mouth promotion more than what they happen to see in the media.

10. Word of mouth marketing influences millennial voters 115% more than traditional advertising.

Word of mouth does not only influence sales decisions, but it also affects people’s political stances. 

We can easily understand that presidential campaigns are not as effective as word of mouth publicity. Millennials mostly trust people’s opinions on social media and blogs. For example, an Instagram post or a Tweet gets more consensus than a presidential campaign.

Negative Word of Mouth Statistics

It’s true that word of mouth is the most reliable kind of marketing out there. However, many businesses can witness the adverse outcomes of poor customer experience. As a result, this can significantly impact word of mouth marketing and, therefore, consumers’ purchasing decisions.

11. Nearly 53% of customers expect brands to reply to negative reviews within a week.

Nowadays, the most used and trusted word of mouth communication is online reviews. Especially if faced with a bad experience, customers do not hesitate to voice their opinion on some of the most influential word of mouth marketing sites, such as Yelp or Trip Advisor. For this reason, it’s crucial for brands to take accountability and respond to customers about their issues.

While most customers expect brands to reply within a week, a third of them demand an immediate response, in a frame of 3 days or even less.

12. Only 1 in 25 consumers will complain about their bad experience with the brand.

Unfortunately, almost every consumer will share their bad experience with their family, friends, and colleagues. 

So, how fast does negative word of mouth spread? As customers prefer to sit on those feelings of dissatisfaction instead of solving it with the brand, negative word of mouth spreads like wildfire. As a result, companies do not have the opportunity to fix their mistakes while gaining an awful reputation at the same time.

13. It takes nearly 40 positive customer experiences to make up for the damage caused by a single negative review.

Unfortunately, businesses can easily have their reputation ruined because of only one negative review.

Although word of mouth marketing has its advantages and disadvantages, customers don’t always register their complaints with the brand. In this case, most companies are not aware of how many customers they’re losing and won’t be able to undo the damage. However, that is not entirely impossible. For the most part, businesses can solve most of their negative reviews by being proactive and genuine.

Additional Trends on Word of Mouth Marketing for 2022

Now that you have a better knowledge of the positive and negative effects of word of mouth marketing on companies, take a look at even more fascinating stats and facts.

14. Consumers acquired through word of mouth tend to spend 200% more than the average customer.

Customers acquired thanks to word of mouth make twice as many referrals. As a result, word of mouth marketing helps you attract more people and make them spend more money at the same time. Statistics on word of mouth marketing demonstrate that people are willing to pay more for a brand they heard from family and friends.

15. 82% of Gen Zers trust family and friends the most with their purchasing decisions.

Gen Z is the generation representing the current digital era. You might think that they would use digital word of mouth marketing when buying a product. On the contrary, the majority of Gen Zers still use the traditional way and rely on family and friends’ recommendations.

16. Facebook holds 19% of all customer reviews.

According to the most recent word of mouth marketing statistics, it’s not shocking that social media is gradually becoming more and more influential.

Compared to other review platforms, Facebook is currently on top of its game. In fact, one out of five company reviews is on this social media platform, registering the highest number of positive reviews out there.

17. 96% of brands take a long time to respond to customers’ mentions on social media.

Only 4% of inquiries received an answer from brands within 15 minutes. Word of mouth statistics for 2022 show that 88.8% of brands fail to respond within 24 hours. Speed in response contributes significantly to customer care and positive reviews, so brands should focus more on responding to customers’ queries faster.

Word of Mouth Marketing Statistics: The Takeaway

When it comes to defining the benefits of word of mouth marketing, these stats and facts help you understand how influential this tool is when adequately implemented.

If you’re a business owner, you should keep in mind that an outstanding customer experience can make your clients more willing to spread the word. Happy customers can help you attract dozens of new ones.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

BBB, Big Commerce, Buyapowa, Forbes, HubSpot, Inc., Invespcro, Referral Candy, ReviewTrackers, Reviewtrackers, Sharpen CX, Semrush, Talk Triggers, Toptal, Verizon, Yieldify

How To Calculate Your Word of Mouth Coefficient

In our last post we introduced the metric of Word of Mouth Coefficient. There were a few critical points:

1. Word of Mouth is critical to growth as channel saturation, competition, and platform control are all increasing. 

2. WOM is typically hard to measure. 

3. Because it is hard to measure, it is therefore hard to influence. 

As a result, we wanted to define a way to measure WOM that met three criteria:

1. It’s tied to active users — a user metric every company tracks

2. It’s a stable metric — you can use it to forecast confidently

3. It can be influenced — you can break it down to its inputs and influence it with product and marketing activities

The end result was the Word of Mouth Coefficient.  

About the Authors

Output 1: Correlation Analysis for the Word of Mouth Coefficient

There are two outputs for this step-by-step.  The first is a correlation analysis.

One of the key assumptions for the WOM Coefficient is that active users are predictive of new word of mouth users.  To test that assumption, we will do a simple correlation analysis.  If the R^2 is high (close to 1) then we know that we can use the metric to forecast goals that are realistic.  If it is low, then we know that we need to do some additional refinement (which we’ll talk about later).    

Output 2: Word of Mouth Coefficient Over Time

The second chart that we want to produce is looking at the WOM Coefficient over time.  This will help us start to identify changes in the coefficient and understand what impacts it at a high level.  It may help us identify things like:

• Changes in the WOM Coefficient with seasonality. 

• Changes in the WOM Coefficient as we make changes in other channels like paid acquisition.

• Changes in the WOM Coefficient with product releases.

Calculating the Word of Mouth Coefficient Light To Heavy

As with most analyses, there are multiple ways to to get to the WOM coefficient, each with their pros and cons.  For the WOM Coefficient, there are three primary methods:

1. Light Version — Using Google Analytics with some basic filters/segments. 

2. Medium Version — Refining the definitions of Returning Users and New WOM Users using qualifying actions. 

3. Heavy Version — Using Econometrics and multivariate regression analyses. 

So how do you know which one to use?  This primarily comes down to how complicated your marketing channel mix is.  The more complicated your marketing channel mix, the more noisy your analysis can get, and as a result you need to use a heavier analysis in order to refine it to something predictable.   

In general, as companies grow, their customer acquisition journey often gets more complicated.  They start with using 1-2 major marketing tactics (e.g. Facebook advertising) and can scale up to 10+ channels or tactics.  

Some examples:

1. Series A company: Figuring out 1-2 main digital marketing channels (e.g. Facebook ads, Adwords) and scaling

2. Series B company: Advertising on 3-6 large channels. Paid and unpaid marketing

3. Series C+ company: Introduce Out Of Home advertising (e.g. billboards, TV, etc.). Can reach $10M+ per month in ad spend, as well as brand marketing, etc.

4. Large single channel outliers: Large companies that rely on single channels or product-driven growth.  Examples: Pinterest, Dropbox

In this post we will focus on series A/B startups and large single channel outlier products by doing walkthroughs of the light and medium versions of the analysis. Any company can and should start with the light version, though.

It’ll tell you where you stand in terms of how ‘noisy’ your data is, and maybe give you interesting findings right away. Later in this post, we’ll ramp up the sophistication and flag scenarios where more advanced analysis might be needed.

How to Find Your Word of Mouth Coefficient — Light Version

Measuring word of mouth doesn’t have to be complex — for many businesses you can replicate our findings in 10 minutes with Google Analytics. Note that if you aren’t using Google Analytics you can do something similar in Mixpanel, Amplitude or your analytics tool of choice.

We’ll walk through 3 steps to get the word of mouth data:

1. Define The Denominator — Returning Users

2. Define The Numerator — Direct + Brand Search

3. Run The Analysis

We’ll then walk through an additional 3 steps to validate your WOM Coefficient:

1. Highlight The Data You Need

2. Create A Scatter Plot

3. Add Trend Line and Analyze R^2

To get started in Google Analytics you want to click into the Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium report — we’ve found that to be the quickest, most useful page to export.

Step 1: Define The Denominator — Returning Users

For simplicity, we’re going to rely on Google Analytics’ definition of ‘Returning Users’, which is cookie-based, relying on a unique identifier storage on a New User’s first visit. If you have GA installed on multiple domains, you’ll need to aggregate data across all.

Our driving hypothesis in the light version is that repeat interactions with your brand drive referral behavior – every time someone visits your website, or uses your app, is a chance for them to decide to refer you. 

In practice, you might want to only count users who have completed some action, like signing up or purchasing, which we’ll cover later in this post. However, you may be surprised how predictive this simplistic approach of using GA’s definition of ‘Returning Users’ often is.

To segment your data for Returning Users, go to the Segments section and click on + Add Segment to the right of the default ‘All Users’ segment (or click this link to import).

Click save, and you have the first part, the denominator, for your Word of Mouth Coefficient calculation! This might seem too simple, and for some businesses it will be, but bear with us and you’ll be surprised at how far this gets you.

Step 2: Define The Numerator — Direct & Brand Search

To get the other half of the WOM Coefficient equation, we need an approximation of ‘word of mouth’ traffic. In Google Analytics we can simply choose ‘direct’ traffic, which is traffic without a marketing source, primarily consisting of sharing on ‘dark social’.

To do so, we click to create another segment, this time filtering for Source / Medium containing “(direct) / (none)” (start typing and it should auto-complete) and only New Users (click this link to import).

Even though we’re trying to keep it simple in this Light version, we know that direct traffic isn’t the whole picture — much of what we’d define as ‘word of mouth’ results in people searching for your brand name and clicking on the organic search result. 

But how do we separate ‘brand’ searches from general organic search traffic? Google has made it difficult, by removing the ability to filter by search term, but a good proxy is to filter for organic search traffic to the homepage. If they searched on Google and landed on your homepage, it’s a pretty safe bet they came in from your brand term.

To replicate, first filter for New Visitors, who came from Google / Organic, who landed on “/”, or the homepage (or you can import by clicking this link).

In this case we used ‘exactly matches’ just to make sure we don’t accidentally match to any other pages (given that homepage is denoted by just a forward slash). If you’re also running paid search ads on your brand term, then you’ll want to consider filtering for these too as an additional column for word of mouth (though you’ll have to adapt our template).

Of course the exact definitions might differ depending on your brand term and how you have your search campaigns set up (also remember Bing or other search engines!). For this analysis to work best, we want to explicitly separate out any marketing we’re doing intentionally, because by definition that’s not ‘word of mouth’. 

If you’re doing offline advertising like billboards or TV, it’ll tend to show up as branded search and direct traffic. Unfortunately that gets us into advanced territory, where we’d need methods like Econometrics to properly separate out the impact. If that’s you, reach out to us for support and we’ll help point you in the right direction. However for now let’s continue with the ‘light’ version of the analysis – for which we’ve now got all the data we need.

If you struggled with creating the segments, clicking these links will import them to your GA.

• Returning Users

• New Direct Users

• New Brand Search Users

Step 3: Run The Analysis — Filling In The Template

Now all we need to do is export the data, preferably with at least a year’s data (or as much as you have). You can find the export function on the top right just above where you chose the date range. Make sure you have the ‘All Users’ segment selected as well as the 3 new segments you made. Choose Google Sheets and make a copy of the WOM Coefficient Light Template so you can follow along.

Scroll down in the Google Sheet you exported to below the normal Source / Medium output — you’ll be ignoring that part. What you want is the daily breakdown by segment at the bottom. You have the Day Index (date), Date Range (not useful), Segment (your definitions for the different parts of the calculation) and Users (the important part!).

You just need to quickly transform this data into the right format by building a pivot table. Select the data (apart from the three total rows at the bottom) and go to Data > Pivot Table. Create it in a new sheet. Then put Day Index in the Rows section, put Segment in Columns and then Users in Values to get the data the way you need it. Totals rows aren’t needed so you can deselect them on the right hand side pivot builder.

From here you can simply copy and paste values (Paste Special > Values only, or CMD + SHIFT + V on a Mac, CTRL + SHIFT + V on Windows) across the different columns into the template. For example, day index goes in column A ‘Date’, and it should fill up to column D ‘Users’. The template should now be filled out completely, with all the calculations done for you based on the data you entered.

The completed template will automatically plot your WoM Coefficient for you, and do the correlation analysis for word of mouth vs returning. Note: if you have more rows than in the template, you’ll need to drag all formulas down, as well as change the range of the pivot table. You’ll have the raw data to manipulate, but will also see the functions we used to identify anomalies.

From this sheet, you should see whether the `light` version was predictive for your business. Look for a relatively stable green line (Word of Mouth Coefficient) on the chart on the left, and a high R^2 value for the trendline on the right chart (the blue dots should be mostly along the line). 

If that’s what you’re seeing, then great, this simple analysis should be enough to interpret your word of mouth coefficient. If returning users is predictive of new word of mouth users, that means the best thing you can do for word of mouth is to drive repeat visitors. If the Word of Mouth Coefficient is trending up or down, then you can forecast where that leaves you versus your growth goals. Finally, if you’re seeing spikes or dips in word of mouth coefficient, those are anomalies you should investigate – what happened at those times that could explain it?

How to Validate Your Word of Mouth Coefficient

In this section we will show you how to validate the Word of Mouth Coefficient using a simple regression analysis in Google Sheets.  We do this to make sure Returning and Non-WOM users predict the Word of Mouth driven users. This is reconstructing the template we shared with you from first principles. This will be a useful exercise for more advanced analysis and companies with a more sophisticated marketing mix, because you’ll learn how to build a custom model that works for your business.

The steps below will walk you through how to create a scatterplot and calculate R^2 in Google sheets for WOM Coefficient.  

Step 1 — Highlight The The Data You Need

Step 2 — Create A Scatter Chart 

1. Select ‘Scatter Chart’ as the chart type 

2. Pick ‘Non-WOM (Returning + Non-WOM New)’ as the x-axis

3. Pick New-Word of Mouth users as the Y-axis

Step 3 — Add Trends Line And Calculate The R^2

1. Navigate to the ‘customize’ tab

2. Open up ‘Series’ 

3. Select “Add Trendline”

4. Scroll down further and select “Show R^2”

And that’s it.  You can now analyze how well your data predicts new WOM users.  An R^2 > 0.7 is considered highly predictive.  Less than 0.7 requires more work and exploration – this means you’ll need to use the medium or heavy analysis to find better definitions for returning and new word of mouth users. 

Calculating Word of Mouth Coefficient — Medium Version

As mentioned, sometimes the light version produces data that is not very predictive.  This typically stems from a too simplistic definition of our numerator and/or denominator.  This will show up as a low R^2 because you are including users who are not likely to generate Word of Mouth, mixed in with the users who are more likely to refer.  To refine our analysis, we can think about how to define Returning Users or New Users more narrowly using qualifying actions. This link is a template for the medium analysis.

Refining Who Is Considered A Returning User

Let’s explore a few examples:

1. Visiting www.bananarepublic.com without buying anything — If a returning user goes to a store without buying anything, are they likely to generate word of mouth?  And if not, should they be included as an active user?  For many internet businesses, the default definition of daily active user (DAU) is someone who loads the website. Since there are many more users that visit and do not buy than those who visit and do buy, the non-buying visitors will dilute the Word of Mouth impact of the buyers.  In this scenario, a more valuable definition of active user is someone who makes a purchase

2. Visiting www.tiffany.com without buying anything — For other products (even in the same category) the bar could be lower.  Jewelry is a great example.  You might go into a store with no desire to buy and find a sale on a limited edition collection of rose gold rings.  Even if you do not have the means to buy it, you might want to tell your friends about it!  In this case, even window shoppers could generate word of mouth.

3. Visiting https://theathletic.co.uk/ and hitting a paywall — Because you need to subscribe before being able to access content, the standard definition of a User as having visited the website, would likely perform horribly to predict word of mouth. Instead we’d want to filter for only Returning Users who have an active subscription, in order to improve the accuracy of our models.

Other ways to filter your active user definition could be combinations. Continuing the jewelry example you could define an active user as someone who has done at least one of multiple qualifying actions:

1. Added to cart

2. Added to wishlist

The point is to look at additional definitions thinking about your specific product and consumer and then validate by measuring each definition’s R^2.

Refining Who Is Considered A New User

The definition for new users matters just as much as the definition for returning users.  We found this to be the case in Edtech, when we partnered with a $1B+ company and found very different results based on how we defined active users.

For this company, which generally supports a weekly use case, the qualifying actions a user can take to be considered active include:

1. Starting a study session

2. Signing up for an account

We then came up with three specific definitions for “New WOM users” to explore.  We did this to evaluate which was the most predictive — or had the highest R^2.  Here are the definitions, from least restrictive to most restrictive:

• Definition #1: New WOM Actives — All users who performed at least one of the qualifying actions (studying or signing up) for the first time during a specific week.

• Definition #2: New WOM First-Time Visitors — Same as Definition #1, but with a technical exclusion that removed logged-out visitors who were actually just returning users. More technically: the definition for “New WOM First-Time Visitors” was all distinct new users who performed at least one of the qualifying actions (studying or signing up) for the first time during a specific week based on cookie ID, rather than a user ID (or lack of user ID). This exclusion removed potential noise from returning logged-out visitors

• Definition #3: New WOM Sign Ups — All users who signed up during a specific week.

All WOM definitions: For all three of these definitions, only users traced to ‘direct’, ‘branded search’, ‘social sharing’, or ‘social’ acquisition were counted as WOM new users.

The company pulled data for each of these different definitions for New Active Users through Organic WOM, and inserted it into this data template, focusing on Weekly Active Users (WAU) to reflect the fact that their product generally supports a weekly use case. We then ran the same analysis as the light version separately for each definition.

This yielded the following results:

Insights from this:

• New WOM Sign Ups had the lowest R^2 (i.e. least predictive power). This makes sense because the product has a lot of usage from logged-out visitors who perform the qualifying action of starting a study session but don’t immediately sign up. Given that, New WOM Sign Ups is an overly restrictive definition of New WAUs from Organic WOM, because it excludes users who actively visited and used the product without signing up during that visit.

• The best definition did not have the highest R^2. The ‘New WOM Actives’ definition had the highest R^2, but for reasons that are not necessarily positive.  Specifically, this definition included some logged-out users who were actually returning users from prior periods — which we determined by examining their browser cookies. As a result, some of the same users were in both the numerator (New WAUs from Organic WOM) and the denominator (Returning WAUs). This artificially inflated the number of New WAUs from Organic WOM (since some of them weren’t actually new), and artificially inflated the definition’s R^2.

Ultimately, the company selected Definition #2: New WOM First-Time Visitors. This definition exhibited an acceptably high R^2 value while also making the most conceptual sense, in that it captured all new users who performed any of the qualifying actions necessary for the user to be considered “active” while excluding returning logged-out users with the same cookie. This is a perfect example of why it’s important to use both quantitative and qualitative criteria in determining which metric definitions to use for this analysis.

To be thorough, we also did this exercise again using “daily” and “monthly” as the active user definition but found that weekly was the most meaningful.

When Light/Medium Word of Mouth Coefficient Isn’t Enough

As a more mature business with higher marketing spend, multiple product lines or offline marketing channels, you might find neither the Light or Medium versions work as is. This is because as your business’ complexity increases, there’s more ‘noise’ in the data and additional variables need to be accounted for. 

Scenarios where this exists may include:

• Complex marketing mixes with multiple overlapping channels

• Businesses that run offline campaigns likely to drive word of mouth

• Multi-national companies with varying brand awareness by country

• Companies with multiple product lines or business models

• Exogenous shocks on word of mouth (global pandemic, competitor behaviour)

For example, companies running less directly trackable marketing campaigns (TV, billboards, podcast ads, content, PR) require techniques to tease out how much ‘direct’ traffic was really attributable to those campaigns. 

In scenarios like this, one method that has proven useful for us is Econometrics. This is essentially expanding the analysis to use multivariate regression. The template you used was single variable linear regression, and it’s possible even in GSheets to run multivariate regression (using the LINEST) function.

Typically used by large advertisers to predict sales (and therefore attribute performance to specific marketing channels), you can make new word of mouth users the dependent variable and regress against variables other than returning users that might drive word of mouth. Examples include flagging time periods when PR campaigns were running, separating out the impact of COVID-19 or incorporating product stock levels, pricing and availability.

Practically the work involves measuring more variables (not just performance but actions taken on campaigns), enriching and cleaning the data in creative ways, and then trying various models until you find a way to improve accuracy. Let the R^2 metric guide you, though the true test of the model will be how it performs in predicting future levels of word of mouth.

Start Simple

It’s likely that you’ll find measuring word of mouth difficult, particularly as your business scales in complexity. We recommend you start with the simplistic ‘light’ model we demonstrated earlier in this post as a good first step. You might find it surprisingly predictive, and can start to take actions to increase Word of Mouth. However if you find yourself dealing with noisy data, struggling to find good definitions for Returning and Word of Mouth Users, or don’t know where to start with Econometrics, feel free to reach out to us (Yousuf and Michael) for support.

Do you know what is word of mouth?

As all of us know that marketing includes so many methods.

So have you ever heard of the word of mouth marketing?

And if heard of it, do you know why it is so important?

Do you know why we should care about it?

And is it useful for your business growth?

As a business owner or someone who works in this field, you must know what is the best way to promote your business.

So before answering all of these previous questions, let us know about the definition and everything related to it?

The definition

Word of mouth (WOM) is all about information, which is being passed orally from person to person in an informal way.

It is more like storytelling and it is a kind of a promotion strategy.

In other words, people who have used a service tell friends, family, and strangers about their experience with your brand whether it was positive or negative.

You will know that you are doing the WOM every day without even noticing that.

The History of the word of mouth

In the early 1970s, George Silverman who is a psychologist created what he called ”teleconferenced peer influence groups”.

The groups were designed to attract physicians to talk about new pharmaceutical products.

But Silverman noticed an interesting phenomenon, where skeptics’ opinions on a drugmedicine were effected with the positive opinion from one or two of their peers.

It was very strange because even those people who had bad experiences with that kind of drug changed their opinions after a positive review about that drug with their peers.

Then and after this, the WOM was introduced to the world.

WOM refers to the oral communication between two people, the listener and the speaker.

The speaker who is in the deep meaning would refer to the product, the brand, or the service.

And the listener’s role is only about believing the speaker when talking about their experience.

And every one of both has a motivation in the WOM process.

The speaker: the motivation can be about self-involvement, like been experienced with a specific thing and they want to talk about it.

Also, it can be a message involvement like an ad and they want to tell everyone about it because of how interesting was the ad.

The listener: the motivation must be that they are interested in what they are hearing from another person.

So from this, we can figure out that the WOM happens because both the speaker and listener want something.

Types of the word of mouth

WOM has a lot of several common types such as:

Conversation

It is an oral kind of communication like which regularly happens between friends.

Communication

Such as messages or emails.

Media

Media creation such as public speaking, performances, graphics, radio, video, and etc.

Social media

Digital tools allow people to share and communicate together such as social media platforms.

Reviews

Reviews of products, services, or a specific experience.

What is the word of mouth marketing?

The word of mouth marketing (WOMM) is an oral or written recommendation by a satisfied customer to indirect convince other customers.

It is considered to be the most effective way of promotion.

According to HubSpot:

About 62% of consumers search online for reviews and information before purchasing a product and a whopping 90% believe brand recommendations from friends.

Is the WOMM considered as word of mouth advertising?

No, and even when it comes to the definition.

Advertising is paid and non-personal communication.

But we are talking about WOMM which is a completely personal and organic way of promotion.

WOM’s Audiences type

The road to WOM’s big success won’t happen suddenly.

It needs time and patience.

The first and most important step in your word of mouth marketing success is knowing your audiences.

And the best way to achieve that is to identify individuals with specific knowledge about your business brand.

It is very important to know the different types of audiences that exist.

Here are the three types of audiences:

Influencers

Influencers are those individuals in a community who affect our decisions.

Due to their influence, knowledge, and the relationship they have with the products.

Brand Advocates

They are individuals that spread word of mouth messages about a brand or business to other people in their community.

Brand advocates leave positive reviews about your product.

A brand advocate is anyone who positively supports your brand’s growth.

And this includes:

Customers: Customers who aren’t getting paid to make a review.

Employees: Employees advocate who knows everything about your business.

Their position and the knowledge they have, make a powerful tool to attract customers.

Business partners: anyone who is afflicted with your business makes a good tool.

Customer Advocates

Customer advocates are similar to brand advocates.

The only difference is that customer advocate is not only satisfied with your brand but also with your customer services as well.

The word of mouth marketing strategies

Like every kind of marketing, WOMM needs well-studied strategies to make the best performance.

So let me shed a light on a few of them.

1- Research your competition

Being aware of your competitors is an important step to be the first.

You need to understand your business and what it has to offer.

In other words, researching your competition makes you have answers for the necessary question that u must have asked yourself like what can you do to be better than your competitors?

2- Find your uniqueness

There has to be something that reminds people of your brand.

Something that will help you to be unique and will attract customers to talk more about your brand.

If you’re just like any other name in your field, your audience might not even remember you.

3- Build a strong social media community

Understanding your targets will make you realize the importance of the audiences’ role.

You need to follow them on the online platforms.

For example, Instagram, once you figure out that they are active on it, don’t hesitate to post videos,
photos, and even stories in order to make them interact with you.

4- Encourage the(UGC)

The UGC is referring to user-generated content.

First of all, you need to know that UGC is content shared and created by consumers.

In order to achieve this step you have to create a unique hashtag to know the content created by customers,
incentivize creating and sharing photos, videos, and gifs on social media platforms,
offer a free gift or launch a sale on your products.

5- Share customers’ reviews and rate your products

Their reviews help in measuring your performance.

Allowing customers to do that me them more comfortable with your business’s policy.

When it comes to rating your products, this is a tip which only depends on your business’s plan.

Maybe your plan allows you to give your customers the ability to rate your products.

For example, a tech company that sells several products will absolutely need to rate its products.

6- Add a human touch

Marketing and customer service may have become easier nowadays,
with all the new strategies and methods, but don’t let these modern tools fool you.

The more people getting connected to your brand the more recommendations you are going to get.

We want these recommendations to be positive ones.

To build a strong connection with your audience, you have to let them know that they are dealing with
a brand that has a personality and not just a robot that has the answer to all the questions.

Your customers are real, and So Are You.

7- Invest in your customers

Word of mouth marketing is based on customers’ recommendations to each other.

The best way to get these recommendations is through positive brand experiences,
and that will only happen through a good customer service policy.

It is also a good step to turn your customers into loyal brand advocates.

You could give customers special offers, and always pay attention to their bad feedback,
and try to respond to it by solving the problem.

As a result of all of these reasons, Customer service is always an excellent investment.

How to improve your WOM marketing?

From the previous tips, you can easily analyze that WOM is so personal as well as being an organic
kind of marketing.

It is organic because people who promote your brand, they do that because of their passion for your brand.

So you need to ask yourself a very important question which is what do you have to do in order to
improve your WOM strategy?

I have the answer to it.

1- Develop your right message

Go after what makes your brand unique and different.

Figure out how you want people to be talking about your business.

Pick the right news and posts to share with your audiences.

2- Be whenever your followers are

By followers, I don’t mean those who are only following you on social media only, but also those who are following your brand in general.

You have to show them that your brand is caring about satisfying its customers.

Being active with them on social networks is so important, so is being active with them in the actual markets.

Your customers will appreciate your efforts and return the favor back by the good feedbacks and reviews.

3- Give your advocates the power

As you know and it is something that you must be sure bout, that your customers will talk about your
business whether with positive or negative things.

All you have to do is to encourage the positive side by getting to know your loyal advocates and thanking
them for supporting your business.

Also, you can value them by creating such groups on social media for your latest news, exclusive deals,
special offers, and the reviews about your different products.

The advantages and disadvantages of WOM marketing

Like everything in the business’s field, the word of mouth has its advantages and disadvantages.

Today, many business owners employ word-of-mouth marketing specialists to build their customer base.

So let me identify you with the most common advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages

It makes people understand: customers who always buy products from your brand and loyal to your site, are always having an idea of what they are doing and what you are offering them.

They understand everything because already someone told them before.

It builds trust: when it comes to buying products, people usually trust someone who gives, them a positive review about the brand because they believe that the person was satisfied
with the brand’s services or the products being sold.

According to Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report:

92% of buyers say that they go for recommendations from friends and family over other forms of advertising.

It is not expensive: It is an expected result of an organic method.

Compared to the amount of money being spent to run an ad campaign in print, on television or
even those ads on social media platforms.

It builds your brand: this is a huge advantage especially to small businesses that are trying to take place in the market.

Using WOM marketing helps to build positive recommendations about your business.

The disadvantages

It Spreads Slowly: today and with all of these digital marketing tools, the WOM marketing spreads
a little bit slower than other marketing strategies.

It takes time for you and brand advocates to tell others about your brand, the products, and the services.

Limited consumers base: with word of mouth marketing you only market to a limited base of customers,
which comes from you, your employee advocates, and your loyal customers.

Negative reviews Effect: the ugly truth is that WOM marketing suffers from bad reviews as much as it
benefits from the good ones.

People tend to believe personal experiences without even trying to check if they are true or not.

So pay attention to what negative comments are being told and try to solve this as fast as you can.

Word of mouth marketing in the future

Regardless of the current superpower for marketing on social media, starting from facebook likes, and the followers on Instagram, and yet we never know what is going to happen in the future.

Surprisingly, WOM marketing will be the only kind of marketing that will count.

According to a recent study,

Only 7% of word of mouth marketing is online, meanwhile, 93% of word of mouth is actually happening offline.

This is so logical because you take action on the social networks when you hear a good recommendation
about in from your friends, from your family, or from someone who has direct personal experience.

So all of the marketing forms owe their success to the WOM.

The conclusion

Word of mouth marketing is a kind of traditional marketing that we have been practicing for so long without even noticing.

It is completely an organic form.

WOM has three kinds of customers who support the process of its growth.

The strategies in WOM are so important and setting up a good plan for it really helps in the growth.

Improving your word of mouth takes a lot of time and patience.

Like every kind of marketing, WOM has advantages and disadvantages that you must put on your consideration
while planning for your brand.

WOM is the essential base for marketing in the future.