The Talkable Brand video series continues every Tuesday with a new episode giving you knowledge and a nudge to make word of mouth marketing happen.
So far, eight episodes have been posted. Behind the scenes I’ve been busy prepping the remaining 42 episodes. (Yes, a total of 50 episodes will be posted in 2012.)
An upcoming episode details the digital/oral divide that exists between the conversations people have about brands online (digital) versus offline (oral).
The digital/oral divide, as it relates to the number of word of mouth marketing conversations happening about brands, doesn’t get enough attention from marketers.
This divide has my attention and below is the script for episode #31 of the Talkable Brand video series…
Talkable is Oral
You’ve seen the statistics. Study after study tells us online social media dominates our lives.
We know that nearly 25% of our time online is spent on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and on countless blogs.
According to Internet World Statistics, there are 245 million Internet users in the United States. It’s estimated, by a Nielsen NM Incite report, that social media sites and blogs reach 80% of all active U.S. internet users.
Facebook users are very active. They share 3.5 billion pieces of content each week on Facebook.
It seems everywhere you turn, someone somewhere is talking about how the online conversation is THE conversation that matters most.
Not so fast. Talkable brands are much more ORAL than they are DIGITAL.
According to a Keller Fay Group & Google study from 2011 (.pdf), 94% of conversations Americans have about brands occur in the offline world, either face-to-face or voice-to-voice.
This study surprisingly revealed only 5% of brand-related conversations happen online through social media.
Let’s dig deeper in this oral/digital divide.
Brad Fay, of Keller Fay, sheds light on this divide by saying, “It’s not that the online conversation is so small. It’s the other is so big.”
Keller Fay estimates 3.3 billion mentions of brands between people occur in a typical American day. If 5% of those mentions happen online, that’s 165 million mentions of brands by Americans every day.
That’s no small number. It equates to one billion one hundred fifty-five million brand mentions happening every week online in the United States.
But the bigger number, to Brad Fay’s point, is the offline conversation. 3.1 billion mentions of brands happen every day in person-to-person and phone-to-phone conversations. Weekly, that equates to twenty-one billion seven hundred million offline conversations about brands happening every week in American.
Twenty-one billion seven hundred million offline conversations about brands. That’s an unfathomable number.
The stats are clear — a brand’s talkability is much more oral than digital. Yet, social media and the online conversation opportunity preoccupies a marketer’s attention.
A social media-only marketing approach will not achieve word of mouth marketing success. It’s one way to get customers talking, it’s not THE ONLY WAY.
The oral conversation about brands dominates the digital conversation. It’s vital for marketers not to rely solely on the online conversation to increase awareness and preference for brands.
Marketers must remember… Twenty-one billion seven hundred million offline conversations about brands happen every week in America compared to the smaller, but still big, one billion one hundred fifty-five million brand mentions that happen every week online in America.
Talkable is so much more than digital. It’s oral.
