With Internet social networking sites and discussion groups on the rise, more business owners are harnessing the (inexpensive) power of word-of-mouth advertising, according to a recent story in The Wall Street Journal.

The story focused on small-business owners from myriad industries who are turning to word-of-mouth efforts instead of more traditional — and often more expensive — resources. Among the highlights: J&D’s Down Home Enterprises LLC in Issaquah, Wash., which launched its bacon-flavored seasoning, Bacon Salt, “almost exclusively through social-networking” sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LiveJournal.com.

“People just started taking it up like a holy cause,” Dave Lefkow, co-founder of the company, told the Journal.

The Journal isn’t the only media outlet noticing the uptick in word of mouth: An independent study highlighted in AdAge.com also found word-of-mouth advocacy is on the rise, and worth an estimated $1 billion to marketers. Overall, many small-business owners are looking for creative, cost-effective solutions, according to the National Small Business Association, which found more than half (54 percent) of the small-business owners it surveyed last spring plan to use “new advertising and marketing methods” in the next year.

Still, word-of-mouth isn’t without risk, especially when customers are using Web sites such as www.yelp.com to spread the good — and bad — word on businesses online. (Read more about Yelp in the July 11 issue of E-brief.)

“If you have things that are weak that you’ve done, it can have a large impact,” Scott Jacoby, owner of Scojac Music Productions LLC in New York City, said to the Journal. “I’m very careful to make sure that everything that goes out there is the best work that I can do.”

Are you using word-of-mouth strategies more today than you have in the past? We want to hear about it. E-mail your story to cfoster@safnow.org.

--Mary Westbrook
mwestbrook@safnow.org

 

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