Word-of-mouth marketing works better in some situations than in others. We should bear in mind that word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) is not an isolated island in a world where we look at marketing from a 360-degree perspective.
Just like social media marketing, WOM has its place in the entire marketing strategy and sometimes it doesn’t even apply at all.
A study from PQ Media has found that more brands are likely to compensate bloggers and social media users in an attempt to generate chatter about their products. The press release about the report doesn’t really say if in these practices clear and obvious links between the posts/tweets/whatever and the advertisers exist for the people who take the effort to tweet, buzz, share, bookmark, retweet, like or simply ‘read’ them.
Maybe the report tells more about it, but I don’t really feel like paying $1,295 to find out and I guess the relationships between the ‘social influencers’ and the brands that reward them are not always clear since PQ Media uses the word ‘controversial’. And, let’s face it, we all know business is business.