“A person like me” becomes most powerful marketing tool

Recently, the website MarketingSherpa.com reported that 84 percent of online customer trust reviews from another customer over a critic. And last year public relations firm Edelman Worldwide released a survey that showed “trust in a person like me" increased from 20 percent in 2003 to 68 percent amongst consumers in 2006. That is a huge jump in a relatively short time, indicating the steady and powerful growth of consumers to influence online marketing.

What does this mean for your company?

It looks like Time Magazine got it right when they declared The Person of the Year is “You.” Successful companies are developing relationships with their customer base enabling them to reach those “persons like me” either via blogs, e-newsletters or podcasts. This outreach should be a key part of any PR and marketing efforts from now on.

Other interesting findings from the Edelman survey:

• Articles in business magazines is the most credible source of information about a company (66 percent), followed closely by "friends and family," which has grown very strongly (35 percent in 2003 vs. 58 percent in 2006)
• Trust has important bottom-line consequences. In most markets, more than 80 percent say they would refuse to buy goods or services from a company they do not trust, and more than 70 percent will "criticize them to people they know," with one-third sharing their opinions and experiences of a distrusted company on the Web.

Our take-away advice: It’s no secret that user reviews are a powerful marketing tool. If you are thinking about adding user reviews to your Web site, do it now. Positive feedback is as persuasive as close friends and much more effective than so-called expert critics’ opinions.

Source: “84 percent trust user reviews over a critic,” Sam Decker, July 3rd, 2007

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