Google and Keller Fay Study Word of Mouth Conversations

Apparently there are 2.4 billion conversations every day in the US involving a brand.  What role do various types of media play in these conversations. Before, during and after?  Google and Keller Fay collaborated in a study to find out.

Interesting Findings

• They found that 82% of Word of Mouth conversations happened Face to Face.  With 12% on the phone that’s a massive percentage of Word of Mouth still taking place in very traditional and very person to person ways.  They found only 5% of these Word of Mouth conversations happening online.
• The Internet is now the leading source motivating brand conversations.  Surpasing even television. 
• Perhaps against the grain for Social Media commentators, searches are the number one initiator of brand conversations.  In fact, Search websites feature in 15% of brand conversations.  Conversations informed by search, vs social are more credible and have an increased likelihood to purchase.

Now you’ve got to look at the source here before swallowing this whole.  I’ve got to think that 94% of Word of Mouth conversations happening offline and only 5% online sounds wrong to me.  It makes me wonder how “Word of Mouth” and “conversation” are defined for the purposes of the study.

I’m guessing that the mini-referals of tools such as Facebook likes don’t count.

Still it’s interesting stuff and the complex interactions between search, social and Word of Mouth are without doubt the cutting edge of current marketing strategy.

Related posts:

1. Online Word of Mouth: How To Be Extraordinary

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 at 9:21 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

SiteStream SEO is a Dublin based online marketing consultancy. We bring more than 13 years of commercial Internet marketing experience and provide consulting services in organic SEO, paid search marketing, web strategy, and conversion. View our SEO services, find out about Pay Per Click and Adwords or contact us here to have a chat.

Learn SEO from experienced professionals: 1 Day SEO Training Courses