Word of mouth marketing is the holy grail of the marketing world. It's the most attractive and effective strategy, yet it's also the least predictable and uncontrollable. If someone ever tells you they're going to develop a word of mouth marketing strategy for you, what they really mean is that they're going to develop something they hope people will talk about, thus resulting in word of mouth marketing. Whether or not people will talk about it is something you have no control over. If you're promised anything other than giving it the best shot to be talked about, someone is overselling their services.
The great thing about social media is that it allows any business to position itself well for word of mouth marketing. Here's why I say this: word of mouth marketing is people telling others about something. That's the core of social media marketing and a content promotion strategy. You want to use content that people will find valuable and then pass along. The social media tools simply let this happen exponentially faster than the old word of mouth marketing. Just think about how quickly something can spread on Twitter or Facebook for instance. It's still word of mouth...just at hyper speed.
Two years ago Ketchum released the findings of a study that verifies this. Here are two interesting quotes from the study:
"Advice from family and friends is the No. 1 source that consumers turn to when making a variety of decisions ranging from purchasing consumer electronics to planning a vacation."
"Communicators rank their company's own Web site as the most effective way to share corporate news or issue a response to a crisis, but consumers rank company Web sites sixth and seventh among places they turn to for corporate news and crisis response, respectively."
What we see here is verification that people telling other people about things is the best promotional tool and that despite any company's high regard for their own website, the people are looking many other places first. This isn't really new news, it's just more of validation. If you're a social media marketer or the champion for it in your organization...consider yourself validated.