WOM Research #2.31
- Pharma Marketers Disregard Their Own Online Behavior
- Traffic to Custom Social Networks Up 11.5%
- Banks Get Double the WOM of Other Financial Services
- From the Archives:
Networks of Interpersonal Relations, Circa 1957
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1> Pharma Marketers Disregard Their
Own Online Behavior
Pharmaceutical marketers aren't informing their marketing decisions with their own online behaviors, according to research released last month from Digitas Health and CBI Research Inc. The research found a distinct relevance gap between what pharma marketers practice in their own lives and their online marketing investments. While the study shows that most of the pharma marketers surveyed use social media, two-way communication, personalized content, and product comparisons, fewer than half are offering those same options to their customers.
Other findings:
72% of pharma marketers use personalized content while only 42% incorporate it into their marketing plans.
82% use interactive tools, while only 20% offer them to their customers.
Learn more (Digitas Health)
Learn more (eMarketer)
2> Traffic to Custom Social
Networks Up 11.5%
MySpace still dominates the online social network scene, with 80.74% of the market share, and overall, visits to the top 20 social networking sites increased 11.5% from January 2007 to February 2007, according to a March press release from Hitwise. Compared to a year earlier (February 2006), traffic to this category was up 87%.
The study named Buzznet (up 148.4%) and iMeem (up 145.7%) as the two sites in the top 20 that demonstrated the most growth from January 2007 to February 2007. Hitwise also reports that the 19 leading social networks on their top-20 list receive 25.8% of their upstream visits from MySpace, demonstrating that MySpace is able to influence the growth of these niche social networks even as they creep into its market share.
Learn more (Hitwise)
Learn more (Hitwise Blog)
3> Banks Get Double the WOM of
Other Financial Services
Banks get twice as much buzz as any other financial services category, according to a Keller Fay Group TalkTrack survey released last month. Findings from the survey indicate that on a typical day 35% of Americans have conversations about financial services products or brands. Banks account for 44% of financial brand-specific conversations, while financial conglomerates make up 18%, investment firms 14%, general "stock talk" 10%, and credit cards 8%. Of the bank-related conversations, however, 36% contained no recommendation and only 26% contained a strong use or purchase recommendation.
Other findings:
Word of mouth about banks is 56% more likely to be positive and only 10% more likely to be negative.
70% of word of mouth about financial services happens face-to-face and 23% takes place over the phone.
Six in 10 of those who receive bank recommendations rate them as highly credible and approximately half are highly likely to pass the information along and make a buying decision based on the recommendation.
Learn more
4> From the Archives:
Networks of Interpersonal Relations,
Circa 1957
Advertising and personal selling are not the only ways to get product information to consumers, says Robert C. Brooks Jr. in his October 1957 Journal of Marketing article, titled "'Word of Mouth' Advertising in Selling New Products." Brooks -- then a member of the Marketing Department at the University of Georgia -- suggests that powerful "networks of interpersonal relations" that exist in the consumer market often are used to spread product information.
The research -- taken from new product data -- shows a correlation between interpersonal networks and product acquisition. For instance, though the use of air conditioning units might average 10-per-block, clusters are common and the pattern of the clusters follows the friendship patters of children and spouses of early adopters. A similar pattern in a study of new drug adoption suggests that doctors who are integrated into the medical community adopt new medications more rapidly than doctors who are more isolated.
Learn more
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