Word of mouth marketing – the future

Trends to look out for

I think the things to look out for from a word of mouth marketing point of view is very much around social networks. Social networks will continue to be the key way to communicate your message.  So from a direct mail point of view you have to think about how direct mail actually complements social networks, and I think DM plays a very important part in word of mouth marketing. It can actually plant a product in the hands of an individual and then we can actually engage with that individual through social networks. So it’s very much about hand-in-hand partnership, but DM does need to work effectively with social networks in the future because it will increasingly become the way that people actually share views and comments about individual brands. 

The second area I think to look out for in the future is that word of mouth marketing will become more strategic. I think word of mouth marketing has been deployed by brands in quite a tactical way previously and I think word of mouth will increasingly become really important in terms of the core strategic aims of an individual brand or business. Dell is a great example of this. They had some word of mouth activity going on but it wasn’t at the centre of everything they did.  And now they’ve changed completely and word of mouth is all about the strategy that they deploy.

Another area which I think will become increasingly important in the future will be the accountability of word of mouth in moving forward.  Measurement and evaluation will increasingly become important. Clients, brands will want to know that they can actually attribute an end figure to the word of mouth campaign that they’re actually delivering.  So this is something that agencies and brands need to work towards to actually refine the way that they measure these types of campaigns.