Word Of Mouth Is Still The Best Advertising

It's been said in business classes over and over that word of mouth is the best form of advertising, and some new research from Nielsen backs the premise up yet again. In its most recent "Global Trust In Advertising Survey," the research company determined the following:

• 92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family above all else. This is up 18% from the last survey in 2007.

• Online consumer reviews were the 2nd most trusted form of advertising at 70%, which was an increase of 15% in the last 4 years.

• 47% of people say they trusted television, magazine and newspaper adverts, which were all down approximately 20% from the previous survey. Interestingly enough, the majority of advertising dollars are still spent on these traditional marketing sectors.

• 58% of consumers trusted what's termed as "owned media," which are things like messages on a company's website.

• 50% found content found in emails credible.

• 42% said they trusted radio ads.

• Only 40% found product placement in television shows credible.

• 36% said they trusted online video ads.

• 33% said they trusted mobile video or banner adds while 29% said they trusted mobile text adverts.

What this all boils down to is that word of mouth always has been, and still is the most trusted form of advertising available. And, as I've stated numerous times in my Music 3.0 book, "social media is online word of mouth." Unfortunately Nielsen didn't attempt to measure the effect of social media as a form of advertising, but it's likely they would've found it to be nearly as powerful as verbal word-of-mouth.

The bottom line, when it comes to marketing of just about anything (including music), make social media a priority, since it's an effective yet inexpensive platform for getting the word out that consumers deem credible.

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