There is a lot of WOM about WOMM these days.

A study published by JupiterResearch suggests that advertisers under-spend on social media marketing. BuzzAgent has been stung by some bloggers for its recent campaigns to “prove” how WOMM works in social media. Advertisers complain that there are too many possible social media and other types of online outlets and no proof that any of these are especially effective.

Social media marketing, online WOMM, etc. is much like any marketing concept. It is an extension, not an alternative, to traditional advertising, market research, and PR. Successful communication with clients and stakeholders, along with customer engagement is as limited in methods of communication as are its customers.

Customers, clients, and stakeholders are online, generating social media as well as other forms of online content, so advertisers and marketers are too. And determining how to listen to and engage with different groups online is as multifaceted as it is offline. Online content and strategic involvement runs the market research and advertising gamut, from online focus groups to online billboards. Social media, however, is something different.

For example:

Synthetron, a neighbour or ours, identifies stakeholders and uses online formats to create targeted stakeholder conversations around an important issue. How? Synthetron first selects stakeholders for a study. Stakeholders must have an interest and a desire to impact a certain conversation. Invitation-only online discussions are then used to create an open forum for stakeholders to dialogue. Individual stakeholders included in a study remain anonymous; their ideas and concerns do not. This sort of online stakeholder forum aggregates and evaluates relevant stakeholder WOM, rather than target individual complaints and concerns. To me, it sounds like an online focus group, one in which stakeholders are invited rather than solicited. It permits incentivized stakeholders to be heard as a group without being hurt as an individual.

BuzzAgent is criticized for soliciting content in the manner of a traditional marketing focus group. As with any solicitation, the individuals solicited do not offer their information for free. They are not concerned stakeholders but paid informants–the information that they offer is rarely given for free. These individual informants want something for their time–free samples, extra influence, or face time with an influencer. This is not a new way of collecting ideas, and it can be quite useful in understanding why people are or are not discussing a particular brand or product. Focus groups can help stimulate conversation and generate new ideas. Holding a focus group online or offline involves parallel benefits and risks. Individuals can fib in person as well as in email.

And then there’s social media. Conversation. Buzz.

Creating a WOMM campaign online is not all that different from creating a WOMM campaign offline. But the means of measuring WOM online are more exact. That’s what the Attentio software targets.

Attentio does not solicit online content. Attentio measures and monitors spontaneous buzz as it emerges online. The tools size a social media conversation and measure it in comparison with other conversations. What generates more buzz, pharmaceuticals or automotives? In which online media are cars more popular, blogs or forums? Within the automotive conversation, do people talk more about Opel or Toyota? Do they discuss car design or price more? Attentio monitors the conversation around certain topics as new government regulations are implemented or tax systems are changed or general social opinion turns from red to blue. These trends show up online in numbers that can be quantified and, with a little analysis, qualified. Unsolicited, self-identified stakeholder/client/consumer/producer conversation filed and displayed for anyone interested in a particular market.

Knowing buzz numbers help a marketer—traditional, innovative, online, offline—plan an effective and efficient campaign. Knowing the buzz from social media lets a marketer know if a focus group might be useful, or a stakeholder discussion necessary, or an offline sale worthwhile. It is not a means of marketing; it’s a means of measuring the market and determining how to best engage.

Buzz Agency is looking to compare (compete?) WOM with traditional media through a “WOM Impact Guarantee” programme. The challenge requires a 300,000 US dollar investment in both traditional and word-of-mouth media. If WOM doesn’t outbase traditional competitors across four brand metrics–brand awareness, consumer opinion, purchase intent and actual sales, BzzAgent promises to refund the marketer the full cost of the campaign.

Maybe its because we’re Brussels based–and what is the EU if not a conglomerate of co-creation and (sometimes over-extended) collaboration?–but we just don’t know if this kind of competition is necessary. WOM and traditional media complement; they don’t compete. Successful media campaigns look to integrate traditional media and word-of-mouth, not to separate or isolate the results.

We measure mainstream media trends at the same time we meausure social media trends here. Comparisons demonstrate the efficacy of both WOM and traditional campaigns, as well as where the interests of both intersect. Analysis suggests which consumer profiles finds which types of media campaign most appealing.

This is the objective of online co-creation and collaboration. Allowing PR firms to create more effective and integrated campaigns that combine both traditional and WOM. Each industry, brand, product, and service requires campaigns modeled to suit the interests of the clients and the consumers–there is no one size fits all marketing campaign.

The concept of the long tail is that more effective marketing money is spent on more receptive markets. WOM is definitely a strong aspect in this, but WOM itself is multifaceted. What creates buzz and generate conversation is never easy to predict, but with the right tools and a little time, PR Agencies use software to analyse what works for clients or consumer and what doesn’t.

A lasting market is an environment in which consumers and producers look to establish long-term relationships. A market is collaborative. Shouldn’t marketing be too?

Philip Sheldrake has written a nice guide around Social media monitoring. There is a good analysis of the industry and he also positions free tools as well as the main players in the market. It seems Attentio’s coverage of European social media is still unique. I’d like to say thanks to him for making a few last minute adjustments after I read the first version!

Nathan Gilliatt and e-consultancy are also coming out with new guides, so it is a space that is getting more attention…

There are two central concerns in online marketing: creating attractive content and distributing that content effectively.  Both factors are dependent upon the industry, product or service and the relevant online market.

Rather, both factors require an accurate Q2 (quantified and qualified) assessment of said market. To address both factors, one needs a Q2 evaluation of the social media surrounding the target market.

Content is three dimensional. It should be visual, viral, and current.

Good content is visually appealing to one’s clients or consumers. The content must be viral in that the information is info that the consumers wish to share–it must infect the individual’s network and not just the individual. Current content is essential. Studies emphasise that WOM (word of mouth) in the chaotic market that is online social media has a “sensitive dependence on initial conditions“. That is, change one letter in the address bar and one’s entire audience is new.  Current content combines the past and the present.  Current content knows the real time concerns and considerations as well as the history of the immediate trends. Current content connects the initial “sensitive dependencies” to the modern market. It is that connection and timely awareness, cleverly and creatively communicated, that makes worthy content viral.  And zing, you’ve just infected a network of interested individuals, aka customers, clients, your market.

But wait.

Content requires effective distribution. Despite the chaos of the online market, or perhaps due to this chaos, esoteric communities and networks specialising in equally valid content remain entirely sealed off from one another. In quantum physics, this phenomenom of multiple realities is called the multiverse. In business, it’s called redundant.

Successful distribution online is also three dimensional.  Successful distribution needs to be authoritative, influential, and proactive. The distributor should have intimate knowledge of her market.  Her authority should be obvious in her engagement with the online community. Distribution needs to be influential. The method of distribution must be broad, connecting several different networks and always searching for additional networks to add to the growing spiderweb of interconnectivity.  This is why all distribution must be proactive, soliciting potential clients to access the content that will influence and create new markets.

Walter Carl from WOMMA is chairing a panel discussion on NPS on the 13th of November. I can imagine it will spark a lively debate. Tim Keiningham from IPSOS-MORI (there is no scientific research to back up NPS claims) will be there as well as Deborah Eastman from Satmetrix (Net Promoter is a disruptive approach to traditional research). Its a shame but I won’t be there but the discussion will be published after the event so at least I can get the results…

The Net Promoter has been hot recently. Simple to measure it is a loyalty score which is supposed to signal future sales and correlate to value creation. Defined, it is a simple sum of the number of people that promote your brand minus the number of brand detractors. Companies that use it, like it because it is straightforward and requires just one question to their customers - “Would you recommend us to a friends or colleague?”

Originally conceived by loyalty consultant Fred Reichheld and supported by Bain and Satmetrix it has whirlwinded into the minds of CEOs with companies such as GE and American Express using it and apparently on conference calls with analysts. Although it is intuitive that knowing recommenders and detractors has value, it does seem to ignore other factors for market success or value creation. What about slightly important issues such as context of recommendation, pricing, market timing, supply, competition, availability of substitutes, advertising etc. What is seems to suggest is that all of these factors cancel each other out or are set to zero?

Although I am sceptical of the value of the measure in isolation, I go along with the hypothesis that identifying recommenders and detractors is important (in our case finding this in an online context). However over at IPSOS-MORI, they are completely dismissive. Once they put the score to scientific scrutiny (with help from Vanderbilt University,Norwegian School of Management & Koc University) they showed the measure to be largely spurious and even less predictive of future value than the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) - this is especially controversial as Reichheld states their examination shows that ACSI has no correlation with firm growth…

Conclusions from “The Net Promoter Debate” - an interview with Tim Keiningham Senior VP, Ipsos loyalty (May 2007). Full version downloadable here.

1. “Simple put, we found no support for the assertions attributed to Net Promoter. Our research clearly shows that claims of Net Promoter’s superiority in predicting firm growth, or in predicting customers’ future loyalty behaviours are false. Based on the evidence we’ve compiled, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Net Promoter would be classified as a superior metric”

2. “As complaints about the effectiveness of Net Promoter have begun to surface, supporters argue that detractors are missing the point; Net Promoter is simple and gets companies to focus on customers. That may well be true, but the research used to support Net Promoter focused exclusively on growth… in particular, Net Promoter’s superiority in linking to growth. Few managers would adopt a metric just because it is simple. Simple and wrong is simply wrong.”

OK, so this debate is hardly new news, with plenty of heated discussion around the topic, but it is scary if the conclusion is that a score presented at calls with analysts is proven to be baseless. In my opinion it should at least get a more thorough review regards predictiveness and although companies should measure who is recommending them (and why) and who detracts them (and why) it may be prudent not to rely too much yet on just one number…