A friend forwarded an article to me yesterday from Business Week covering the topic of this blog: http://tinyurl.com/2z76qw. I was surprised at how much education still needs to happen within the B2B market place to prove the value of social marketing much less how it should be applied. While worth reading, I also want to add a few statistics that I think will help organizations truly grasp the extent of loss and gains by not participating in this new form of conversation:
The economics of Social Marketing
- Companies enjoying higher levels of word of mouth advocacy such as HSBC, Asda, Honda and O2 - grew faster than their competitors
- Companies suffering from low levels of word of mouth advocacy and high levels of negative word of mouth grew slower than their competitors
- 7% increase in word of mouth advocacy unlocks 1% additional company growth
- 2% reduction in negative word of mouth boosts sales growth by 1%
- For the average company, a 1% increase in word of mouth advocacy equated to $16M extra sales
Source: London School of Economics, Harvard Business Review
When framed in the context of dollars and sense, it is hard to ignore the power of conversation. If anyone has additional statistics to share on the ROI of social marketing, please feel free to comment and share.
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