Large brands are often able to create large buzz. They have big budgets, brand recognition, and teams of marketers. They also often have to deal with bureau- cracy, a slow decision making process, and cultures that tend to stick with traditional marketing. Small businesses can also create buzz. While lacking the budget, brand, and resources of larger companies, they can move fast, tend to be goal-oriented, and are more willing to take chances than their larger counter- parts. This paper examines why Word of Mouth Marketing makes sense for small businesses, examines our ap- proach to planning WOM episodes, suggests ways of tracking WOM episodes, and highlights our own case studies.

1. wommaWord of Mouth Marketing Association
Measuring Word of Mouth, Volume 4
195
Small Business and
Word of Mouth
Bill Balderaz, Founder
Chief Innovative Officer
Webbed Marketing
Large brands are often able to create large buzz. They
have big budgets, brand recognition, and teams of
marketers. They also often have to deal with bureau-
cracy, a slow decision making process, and cultures
that tend to stick with traditional marketing.
Small businesses can also create buzz. While lacking
the budget, brand, and resources of larger companies,
they can move fast, tend to be goal-oriented, and are
more willing to take chances than their larger counter-
parts.
This paper examines why Word of Mouth Marketing
makes sense for small businesses, examines our ap-
proach to planning WOM episodes, suggests ways of
tracking WOM episodes, and highlights our own case
studies.

2. Measuring Word of Mouth
196
Why WOM makes sense for small businesses
Small businesses are prime candidates for WOM because:
1. Small businesses are fast. What smaller businesses lack in brand strength and consumer familiarity,
they make up for in speed. Often the decision maker is directly involved in marketing decisions, allowing epi-
sodes to be executed quickly. For example, a large corporation may take weeks to approve a message to be sent
to participants. Legal counsel, “brand police,” marketing managers, and even IT executives may be involved in
approving the exact wording. At a small company, a single phone call to the president may be enough to get the
episode started. In generating online buzz, velocity is key. Today’s hot topic is tomorrow’s old news. By quickly
capitalizing on what matters to online participants right now, small businesses can reach participants looking for
fresh content.
We recently worked on a WOM episode for a household-name brand launching a new product into the retail mar-
ket. It took more than six months for the company’s IT department to approve the episode. By the time the epi-
sode launched, the product had already been on the market for a considerable amount of time, and the novelty
factor had worn off. Since timeliness is a crucial aspect of a successful WOM episode, small businesses sometimes
have an advantage.
2. Small businesses are flexible and willing to experiment. Large corporations are dedicated to pre-
serving a carefully controlled brand image, and rightfully so. For example, opening up a YouTube contest that
has consumers creating spots about a brand goes against the basic concept of brand preservation. Quite simply,
encouraging consumers to create content is the opposite of brand policing. It’s brand anarchy.
Smaller businesses are often more results-driven, prioritizing an increase in leads, sales, and awareness above
brand preservation. For a small business, having legions of consumers creating videos, blogging, or otherwise
creating content around the brand is not just a good thing, it’s a great thing. Smaller businesses often don’t have
the means to create content in the volume that large businesses do. By motivating consumers to create content,
the small businesses are essentially “outsourcing” marketing to consumers.
In addition, larger businesses often make the “round peg-square hole” mistake. They expect a “traditional” piece
of content to succeed in an online WOM venue, for example, repurposing a corporate commercial and expecting
it to go viral by posting it on YouTube or announcing an executive promotion and expecting it to go hot on Digg.
In order to generate WOM, content must be funny, compelling, useful, or emotional. Often big brands won’t en-
dorse this type of content because they are concerned it does not fit with their brand.
Conversely, small companies are more likely to embrace edgy humor, a tool that is useful to their customers or
emotional appeals. In part, we believe this is because the leadership at small companies tends to have more di-
rect relationships with their customers and clients. This relationship gives smaller companies the insight to un-
derstand what their market finds useful, and the courage to say “Appointing a new head of sales doesn’t matter
to our clients, but a photo contest involving their pets does.”
3. Small businesses are gutsy. Entrepreneurs tend to be natural risk takers. Before launching any WOM
episode, we look our client in the eye and warn: “At some point during this episode, someone, somewhere on-
line, is going to say something bad about you.” With 100 million participants online, negative polarity is a reality
of many episodes. Corporate public relations professionals tend to be highly concerned about this backlash. In
some cases, we’re asked for guarantees that no negative polarity will come from an episode. This expectation is
unrealistic. While many of our episodes are executed with no negative polarity, no episode should start without
a company being prepared for some bad press. The most altruistic, fun, and on-target episode can still generate
some form of negative polarity. Remember, participants have no legal, marketing, or brand filters. Catch one on
a bad day and you can find yourself on the wrong end of bad publicity.
Small brands tend to have a thicker skin when it comes to bad publicity. Often the company president is the cre-
ator of the product or service. In any case, he or she is the company’s strongest advocate. Criticism is typically

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met with the attitude of “I know I have a great brand, product, service, and episode, and I’m willing to face criti-
cism head on.”
The online conversation around brands is happening right now. Brands can choose to be painted into a corner
by an existing conversation, or they can listen to it, learn from it, and ultimately lead it. Smaller companies tend
to understand this.
4. Traditional media is often not an option for smaller brands. Pricing for traditional media tends to
follow a linear scale. That is, if a magazine advertisement reaches 50,000 consumers, it is priced less than an ad-
vertisement that reached 100,000 consumers and more than one that reaches 10,000. Each additional impres-
sion on television, radio, outdoor advertising, and print ads carries a price tag. WOM episodes tend to be more
exponential when it comes to cost versus inquiries, conversions, or relays. A WOM unity is only created once. The
unity is then distributed on x number of venues—for example, pitched to participants, uploaded to YouTube, or
promoted on MySpace. The distribution model then has the opportunity to grow rapidly, without additional cost
per outcome. For example:
X participants are pitched on a new service.
Y participants cover the pitch.
Each of the “Y” participants has an average of Z readers.
Cost per impression? Y x Z.
Now each reader Z influences has an average “A” consumers they influence, either via their own blog or via e-
mail. This exponential growth in impressions is perfect for budget-conscious small businesses.
An Approach to Planning a Word of Mouth Episode
In our experience, we have learned the following three ingredients are key in planning a great of WOM Episode:
1. Clear goals. “Creating online buzz” as a goal in and of itself does not allow us or our clients to determine
if an episode is successful. However a goal like “earn 16 media placements in our key industry publications” or
“attract 40 relevant links” or “sell 12% more dog food” are all clearly measurable goals. That is, after executing an
episode, we may not be able to get any two people to agree if an episode created “buzz” or a video “went viral.”
But we can definitively measure page views, sales, link visits, and other hard numbers.
We then take a baseline measurement of these goals. This is the foundation of our scorecard. Our scrorecards
serve as a way for us to explain the qualities and outcomes of a WOM episode to our clients through raw num-
bers. The scorecard uses a variety of tools for each customer, ranging from Google Analytics, which measures
inbound traffic, to Yahoo! Site Explorer, which measures inbound links, and our own Webbed-O-Meter, which
measures online consumer-generated content and media coverage. This baseline serves as the starting point for
setting and measuring goals.
The scorecard is customized for each campaign. We view one of our key roles as taking a campaign goal, translat-
ing it into a metric, and then tracking it via our scorecard. This scorecard provides ongoing “at-a-glance” data that
can quickly allow us and our clients to judge how effective a campaign is in reaching its goals.
Outlining the goals for a WOM episode is the most essential part of the planning process and should be done at
the start of the episode. We begin every episode by working with the client to create a “discovery document.”
This constitutes a list of questions and discussion points designed to familiarize our team, and the client, with the
objectives for the episode. Why do you need to reach these participants? If you could get them to remember one
thing about your company or product, what would it be? What will it take for you to consider this WOM episode
to be a success? These can be tough questions, but they need to be answered.

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Small business clients seem to have an advantage over larger businesses when it comes to creating specific goals
to measure a WOM episode. They usually have access to many types of metrics at their fingertips, and are able to
get information quickly. Larger businesses may have to contact multiple departments (for example IT may own
the log files and a Salesforce.com installation, marketing may own Google Analytics) in order to produce the nec-
essary figures. Since smaller companies can get both metrics and approvals easily (and sometimes from the same
room), they can quickly decide what is best, set the goals, and get started.
No matter what the goal, we break it down into smaller measurable pieces. If it is an episode about online aware-
ness, we will start by measuring how often a client is mentioned on industry blogs, on related Web sites, in dis-
cussion forums, social networks, and tagging sites, and in the online media. We set clear goals to each metric
individually and track the episode accordingly.
2. Determine the hook. Once we have established a clear set of goals, we work with the client to deter-
mine a relevant and creative hook. Many times a client will assume that a hook has to be a funny video. But these
hooks can take almost any form imaginable. They can be a free sample of the product, an application, a webinar,
a calculator, or an outrageous stunt. As general guideline, hooks must be true to a brand, easy to distribute, and
have genuine value. A press release about your new VP of sales is probably not a great hook. We always tell our
clients, If you wouldn’t talk about this to your friends or coworkers, it’s not a hook.
3. Determine the distribution plan. In traditional media placement, media planners pay by thousand
impressions (CPM) and are guaranteed placement in the magazines, on the billboards, or on the television sta-
tion where they purchased those impressions. With WOM, you have to earn your way into the distribution. We
tend to avoid the word “free” when describing this type of media. After all, clients invest time to pitch to par-
ticipants, they invest money to release to newswires, and they often retain an agency to manage their WOM
episodes. Rather, we borrow from the traditional public relations world and refer to this placement as “earned
media.” Earned media can take many different forms. Convincing a blogger to cover your product is one example.
Gathering a solid following on MySpace is another. Using tagging sites like Digg and del.icio.us are also tactics to
employ. Other venues include industry specific social networks, YouTube, Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia, and Craig’s
List. In short, there are thousands of outlets where consumers and the media look for, create, and distribute con-
tent. We work with clients to identify the right venues to reach the right participants for each episode.
Participants are everyone who is talking about your product or service, on- or offline. They can be participants,
product reviewers, reporters, MySpace members, or anyone with a voice. The quality of an influencer is difficult
to rate, and depends largely on the specific episode. Maybe they have a vast social network of 500 friends on
MySpace, or maybe they have 20 great followers on Twitter. Perhaps they are big-time participants with thou-
sands of readers, or small niche writers with the 50 readers you want to reach.
As a broad rule, small businesses tend to focus on narrower markets than large brands. For example, a large con-
sumer packaged-goods company may have such a broad demographic that it is difficult to focus on a subset of
participants. Small businesses tend to focus on specific demographics, or on a very targeted geographic area.
This makes the process of identifying participants more efficient. In addition, many brands may be pitching the
top tier, farthest-reaching online participants. But that one that reaches car buyers in Indianapolis? Or new moms
in Kansas City? Or buyers of business-to-business software to power document management in midsized mental
health hospitals? Those participants typically receive fewer pitches and are more receptive to those pitches, es-
pecially when the pitches are highly targeted. If a particpant writing for new moms in Kansas City receives a pitch
about a useful new service for new moms in Kansas City, she’s highly likely to cover it.
Matching the correct participants with a specific product or service is crucial to an episode’s success. If the hook
for an episode is on target and reaches the participants at the top of their fields, they will talk about it. These par-
ticipants are the ones our clients’ market reaches out to for information on the latest products and trends. Not
only do you land the top participants, you also land their masses of followers, and those followers feel that they
have received the information through a credible source. A hook will be better received by the market through
the top participants of an industry rather than through a company promoting its own product.

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Rating the value of participants for a specific episode can be challenging. It is also one of the most important
metrics of the episode. There are no comprehensive tools for measuring how large a blog community is, who
blogs the most, what community is the most trafficked, and who is the most credible in the industry. Instead, this
becomes a manual process. We use Google Alerts, and monitor who is blogging. We monitor industry trade as-
sociation sites to see who is keynoting a big conference. After the participants are identified in a space, we begin
to rank them with a variety of metrics, from their site’s Google PageRank to their Alexa traffic numbers and their
Webbed-O-Meter score.
Just as the goals for an episode are reviewed individually and the participants measured independently, through
unique metrics, the total effectiveness of a WOM episode is measured through the aggregate of its parts. We use
dozens of online outlets to measure our episodes. Each outlet represents a specific form of communication and
audience. For example, there are communities targeting baby boomers, moms, school teachers, cyclists, bio-
chemists—anyone an organization could want to reach. Over the course of an episode, we may vary our strategy
in using niche communities to help a client.
Small businesses are highly accountable for marketing dollars spent. Often the founder or owner still controls
most of the budget. Because of this, results are tracked closely and success must be proven. In our experience,
the mentalities of a marketing manager spending a budget and an owner spending her own money are very dif-
ferent.
An Approach to Tracking
There are different types of communications tools that add to a company’s buzz: news feeds, blogs, microblog
sites likeTwitter, business networks like LinkedIn, and sharing sites like Flickr. There are no tools that comprehen-
sively measure all of this. People talk about a business and its products and services using terminology other than
the company’s Web address. Names of other products produced by the same company, mentions of the names
of presidents and CEOs, and other possible names for a company all add in to the total picture.
Add the question of polarity—that is, is the content created, positive or negative—and the complexity increases
even further. This is a crucial area for small businesses. While most small business firms are more willing to engage
in WOM marketing than larger brands, they do not have the luxury of large budgets. So while they may approve
an episode quickly, it is still critical to measure and track the performance.
In order to help our clients get an understanding of this picture, namely how all of the qualities that make up an
episode come together to create their online buzz, we have created “buzz scorecards.” We use these scorecards
for all our clients, no matter what the episode. We have found that by measuring these dozens of communication
mechanisms online, we can get a good idea of where we need to focus our efforts. More important, we are able
to identify how successful the episode was in the end.
The buzz scorecard measures traditional search engine optimization metrics, such as pages indexed, Google
PageRank, total domains mentioned in Google, and inbound links to the Web site. Even though these Web sites
are not explicitly functions of WOM, each site still tells a story. For example, if participants like a white paper or
video, they will link to it. In the world of WOM marketing, links are not just about SEO, they are the online equiva-
lent of “earned media”.
The second part of the scorecard measures social media outlets, such as number of blog posts on multiple ag-
gregators, mentions on discussion boards, MySpace and Facebook mentions, relevant YouTube hits, traffic, digg
and delicious tags, and news results. Our episodes are about getting people to talk about our clients, and these
metrics are good ways to measure the conversation.
As mentioned earlier, tracking buzz is not simply finding data about a URL. It also requires finding the data around
a company’s name, nicknames, product names, and mentions of its executives. By measuring all these factors, we
gain a more comprehensive measurement of how much buzz is happening and how fast.

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Case Studies
The WOM episode that we ran for our small business client, Moochie and Company, provides an excellent study
for analyzing the effectiveness of the scorecards for showing WOM progress. Moochie and Company, a startup
retailer for specialty pet gifts, needed to promote their new products to media and reach consumers. Their prod-
ucts include dresses for cats, shirts for dogs, and playful Halloween costumes.
After leading Moochie through our discovery process, we were able to identify an online strategy completely
tied to sales metrics. Since the company launch, sales had been slow to start, and they needed to get visible to
the pet-lover community.
To begin the public relations, we issued timely press releases that were sure to grab headlines just when the me-
dia and other participants were looking for content. When search volume on Mother’s Day–related products was
climbing, we issued a press release announcing the availability of an “I Love My Mommy” doggy t-shirt. The press
release garnered more than 70,000 headline impressions.
Prior to “Take Your Dog to Work Day,” we issued a release debating the proper workplace attire for dogs. That
release served up more than 100,000 headline impressions.
Using research data that indicated that gay men were one of the company’s larger target demographics, we pro-
moted an “I Have Two Daddies” doggy t-shirt as part of a Father’s Day episode.
We also contacted a list of online participants who fit our criteria with the Moochie message and sent them a
free Moochie t-shirt. Before offering them free merchandise, we researched each influencer before sending them
a personalized e-mail. We read their blog, community, and news articles. In addition, we commented on their
blogs in the e-mails. Taking the time to get to know each influencer was time consuming, but proved necessary
for a successful WOM episode.
In addition to the press releases, an online community site for dog and cat lovers was built, a “MySpace for Dogs
and Cats.” Members are able to participate on the blog, share pictures of their pets, connect with other pets and
owners, and talk about Moochie and their products and causes. New members were sent a Moochie & Co. dog
bandana. The community was also promoted at dog adoption fairs and other offline pet-related events.
The site was launched on August 27, 2007, and to date there are 234 members, 596 photos, and active forum
discussions. All this has resulted in a 100% increase in traffic on the Moochie & Co. Web site, and Internet sales
have tripled. Other measurable results after the integrated WOM episode were an increase in traffic coming from
Google of more than 100% and nearly 1,000 new online media mentions.
Web site traffic to the Moochieandco.com site more than doubled following the launch of the community.

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Internet Sales tripled in the four months following the launch of the community.
The Propane Fairy
Grill-on.com is a site that allows consumers and small businesses to sign up for a service that allows business-
es and households to always have propane in the tank, avoiding the classic “we’re out of propane” panic that
all grillers have experienced. When a customer signs up for the Grill-On service, a technician from Suburban
Cylinder Propane will visit the customer’s home or business on a regular schedule, switching out the propane
tanks. Grill-On.com wanted to generate awareness of this service with business and home owners.
During our discovery process, we asked clients if there are any nicknames their customers refer to them by. In this
case, we found that that Grill-On service was known as “The Propane Fairy” to its customers.
We created a phony awards ceremony, “The Fairy of the Year.” It was announced that for the first time in 200
years, The Tooth Fairy had lost the award, to the Propane Fairy, of course. We recorded an interview with the dis-
gruntled Tooth Fairy, and announced the results in a press release. Dozens of media outlets picked up the release

8. Measuring Word of Mouth
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and podcast. We then created a MySpace page for the Propane Fairy, and connected with grilling enthusiasts on
the social networking site. We also e-mailed participants and other online participants who covered topics re-
lated to grilling.
The Propane Fairy soon became an icon with grillers. He has received fan mail, and was even added to
Urbandictionary.com. By the end of the episode, we were able to demonstrate increased WOM metrics across the
board. The Propane Fairy was mentioned on 474 Web pages indexed by Google, 501 in Yahoo, and 118 in MSN.
Blossom4Girls
The success of the Moochie and Propane Fairy episode demonstrated the power of metrics in small businesses
communicating with clients. While going to a client after an episode and showing an increase in sales, traffic,
and awareness was effective, we decided to expand our approach and develop a comprehensive scorecard. The
scorecard was built to achieve two goals:
Translate subjective goals, like “create awareness” or “generate media attention” into measurable num-1.
bers.
Customize a marketing plan that is built around influencing specific metrics.2.
Blossom4Girls provided an excellent opportunity to debut our new scorecard. The small company was started by
the husband-and-wife team of Chris and Brandi Wallace. The Wallaces, parents of five daughters, created a line
of beauty and skin care products for “tween” girls. The brand not only includes products that encourage girls to
take care of their skin, it also works to promote a family-friendly, community-minded image for girls. However,
the beauty and healthcare industry is a large and competitive field. It is extremely hard for a new company with
almost zero brand recognition to get noticed.
With summer fast approaching, we worked with Blossom to hold a “School’s out” contest. Girls were encouraged
to sign up on the site for a chance to win a “Blossom Party.” The party included a gift certificate for pizza and a
movie rental, in addition to a variety of Blossom4Girls skin care products. The winner would also be send a cam-
era to take pictures of the party, and would be encouraged to send those pictures to Blossom4Girls for use on the
Blossom site. Party attendees were also encouraged to email comments to Blossom, and those comments would
also be featured on the site.
In addition to issuing an online press release announcing the contest, we contacted more than 100 participants
who cover a variety of categories, including parenting, skin care, health, and contests and sweepstakes. More
than 600 sites covered the contest, resulting in more than 1000 entries. In one month, traffic rank for the site in-
creased from 2,905,495 to 602,403, and inbound links indexed by Yahoo increased from 7 to 84.
Table 1, Blossom4Girls Scorecard
As a new brand with a new message in a crowded market, Blossom4Girls needed to get participants talking
about their products and generating awareness with young girls and their mothers. For this project we translated
that goal into the following metrics:
Increase Alexa traffic ranking1.
Increased inbound links2.
Increased score on the Webbed-O-Meter3.
Created Web presence4.

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Metric May 2008 June 2008
Traffic Rank (3 month average)
This metric ranks Web sites in terms of overall traffic.
Note:Yahoo! is number 1 in the Alexa ranking.The lower
the number,the higher the traffic.
2,44905,495 602,403
Inbound Links Indexed by Yahoo!
This approximate metric tracks how many Yahoo!
indexed sites link to the domain.
7 84
Alexa Page views per user
This metric measures the average number of pages
viewed by visitors.
6.5 8.6
Webbed-O-Meter Buzz Measurement
This category combines mentions on blogs,forums,and
other consumer generated content sites to decide a site’s
“buzz”factor.The scale is 1 to 100,with 100 being the
highest score.
2.2 5.6
Web (IceRocket)
“Blossom4Girls”
“www.blossom4girls.com”
197
157
1,250
548
Web (Google)
“Blossom4Girls”
“www.blossom4girls.com”
1,260
555
Compete.com Traffic numbers
People
Visits
Insufficient
data
3,441
10,162
Quantcast numbers
US Reach
Rank
Insufficient
data
2,163
526,739
Based on these numbers, we were able to go back to the client and show in clear, measurable results that aware-
ness for their site, company, and products grew substantially in a 30-day time period.
Shizuka NY—the Bird Poop Facial
A final case study reveals perhaps the most interesting WOM result encountered thus far. Shizuka NY is a small
business and premium Manhattan day spa with a prestigious image and solid reputation. After some research,
we learned that one ingredient in their most premium service, the Geisha Facial, is nightingale droppings: yes,
bird poop. After some convincing, the owner of the spa agreed to rally around this incredible hook and promote
the service as the “Bird Poop Facial”.
Today, if you Google “Bird Poop Facial,” You will find more than 7,000 pages returned. http://www.google.com/
search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLJ_enUS261US261&q=%22bird+poop+facial%22

10. Measuring Word of Mouth
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How did this go viral so fast? First, we started with a great hook. The idea of spending $200 to have bird poop
smeared on your face is inherently worthy of conversation, no freebie or giveaway required. However, the chal-
lenge was taking this one-line hook and turning it into a productive marketing episode.
We created a mock interview, in which a Midwestern-dressed reporter spoke to the owner of Shizuka about the
facial. During the interview, the reporter sees images of bird poop run through her head. The thought of having
bird poop smeared on her face becomes more and more disturbing, and the short video ends with an “eeeeeee-
wwww” moment.
The participants loved it. We contacted participants in several categories, including Beauty and Skin Care and
Offbeat News. We promoted the video on YouTube, Blip.TV, and other video sharing sites. In addition, we worked
with a partner in location, New York’s SiteOptomized.
The Bird Poop Facial has since been covered by CNN, Reuters, Glamour Magazine, Good Day New York, and E!’S the
Soup, The Holiday Reporter, PerezHilton.com and dozens of other premium media outlets.
The end results of the WOM episode for Shizuka speak for themselves. In one month, Web site visits increased by
nearly 50%. Of the top 50 referring sites to ShizukaNY.com, 45.9% of the traffic was due to WOM and public rela-
tions efforts. In addition, Google news results for “Shizuka New York” increased from 2 to 50, and the term “Bird
Poop Facial” is being tracked on Google Trends.
Table 1. Shizuka NY Scorecard
For this episode, the clients’ goals were to generate widespread awareness for the site and Shizuka NY Spa. We
translated this into some specific measurable numbers:
Awareness of the site:
Increase in site traffic1.
Increase in inbound links2.
Increase in Webbed-O-Meter score for the ShizukaNY.com site3.
Awareness of the Shizuka NY Spa:
Increase in blog mentions for Shizuka NY1.
Increased mentions of Shizuka NY on the Web2.
Increased mentions of Shizuka NY on MySpace3.
Increased mentions of Shizuka and related terms on news outlets4.
Based on these goals, we created the following scorecard, showing baseline metrics of the above and final results
(Note: metrics were tracked weekly during the episode execution).
Metric May 2008 September 2008
Traffic Rank (3 month average)
This metric ranks Web sites in terms of overall traffic.Note:Yahoo!
is number 1 in the Alexa ranking.The lower the number,the higher
the traffic.
1,047,307 847,767
Inbound Links Indexed by Google
This approximate metric tracks how many Google indexed sites
link to the domain.
16 28
Inbound Links Indexed by Yahoo!
This approximate metric tracks how many Yahoo! indexed sites
link to the domain.
529 628

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Webbed-O-Meter Buzz Measurement
This category combines mentions on blogs,forumsm and other
consumer-generated content sites to decide a site’s“buzz”factor.
The scale is 1 to 100,with 100 being the highest score.
5.6 14.4
Blog Postings
Tracking the number of times a word or phrase is mentioned
on blogs is one of the metrics used to measure online buzz.This
metric reflects the generic term/phrase only and not the tone
used.
Technorati.com
“Shizuka New York”
“www.shizukany.com”
“geisha facial”
“bird poop facial”
Google Blogs
“Shizuka New York”
“www.shizukany.com”
“geisha facial”
“bird poop facial”
Ice Rocket
“Shizuka New York”
“www.shizukany.com”
“geisha facial”
“bird poop facial”
18
23
0
0
50
14
0
0
18
0
0
0
29
51
49
33
77
22
388
61
59
5
105
69
MySpace Targets
Search Criteria:
“Shizuka New York” 1 54
Web (IceRocket)
“Shizuka New York”
“www.shizukany.com”
“geisha facial”
“bird poop facial”
3,960
514
0
0
9,460
808
5,970
10,500
Blogpulse.com
“Shizuka New York”
“www.shizukany.com”
“geisha facial”
“bird poop facial”
23
15
36
34
30
18
46
36
YouTube hits
Shizuka Videos
Geisha Video Views
2 6
7,647
Compete.com Traffic numbers
People
Visits
326
326
2,985
2,985
News results from Google News 2 44
Based on this data, we were able to definitely state that consumers and the media are significantly more aware of
Shizuka NY than they were prior to this episode.

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Conclusion
While the metrics for each of these episodes provide an accurate and honest measurement of the productivity of
each episode, there are still effects that we are unable to quantify with data and numbers. This is one reason why
some businesses are uneasy about conducting a WOM episode. These effects are still making an impact of the
episode, whether or not they are even visible. The Shizuka episode provides an excellent example of this elusive
quality of WOM advertising.
Although we can measure the increases in page traffic and Google news hits, we can only take a guess as to how
many people heard about the Bird Poop Facial on CNN, The Soup, or any of the other various media outlets it land-
ed on. Even if we had an accurate number of how many people saw the coverage based on television ratings, we
could never know how many friends each of them has and how many people they talked to about it. We simply
know that the Bird Poop Facial jumped off of the blogs and into the mainstream media outlets, which one can
only assume provided a massive amount of exposure for Shizuka.
While the Shizuka example shows how the immeasurable WOM effects can sometimes be visible, how does this
help the vast majority of other episodes that don’t have the luxury of the “jackpot hook?” For every episode, no
matter how large, there are going to be people talking about the company, product, and service that we are un-
able to account for. Every marketing firm in the country would love to get their hands on some device or formula
that would account for this additional buzz, but there is no way to measure it.
Here the best example of why small and midsized businesses are prime candidates for WOM episodes comes to
light. Referring again to the Shizuka example, what if the Bird Poop Facial public relations were occurring for an
industry giant? Imagine if it was leaked that a mass producer of skincare items included bird excrement in their
products. Well, you will have to imagine it, because it would never happen. No massive brand would ever be able
to convince enough people up the administrative ladder to give a green light to such a risky episode. They have
too much to lose. Sure they would gain a considerable amount of “trendy public relations,” but their pristine
brand image would be at stake. The potential for existing customers to become repulsed by the idea and to dis-
continue using the product is too great.
With a less recognizable brand, however, the risk almost evaporates. Sure, some people will be disgusted with
the idea of a Bird Poop Facial. In fact, you could even measure how many through surveys and statistics. However,
the amount of people who had never before heard of Shizuka NY who will begin talking about it with their peers
and friends is invaluable. The fact that this kind of public relations cannot be measured starts to become a non-
factor.
The real truth here is that any recognition that did not previously exist will inevitably help a small business.
However, as stated before, not every WOM episode will be able to reach as many people as the Bird Poop Facial.
This is why the metrics we are able to measure and record are so vital. Knowing that people are going to be talk-
ing about a product is not enough to convince the owner of a small business to part with a significant chunk of
his capital, nor should it be. People are going to talk, regardless of whether you do anything about it or not. It is
only by breaking the episode into measurable pieces that you are able to reach in and direct the flow of conver-
sation. Metrics are truly at the heart of understanding both how to conduct a WOM episode and how to measure
its effectiveness. By breaking down an episode into smaller relevant pieces, a WOM episode can produce digest-
ible metric results.
Small and midsized businesses may sometimes feel shut out of traditional media. They may not have the adver-
tising budget for broadcast advertising. They may lack the household name needed to grab media attention.
They may not have the staff to manage and execute large-scale marketing episodes in-house. However, smaller
businesses have many advantages over large corporations when it comes to WOM marketing. Small businesses
can move fast, are driven by results, have the courage to take chances, and are willing to flexible. By outlining
clear objectives, appropriate distribution venues, and a compelling hook, small businesses can manage episodes
by the numbers and prove the results generated from WOM. We believe that by focusing on WOM marketing,

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small businesses can effectively compete against larger companies by outmaneuvering them, as opposed to try-
ing to outspend them.
Bill Balderaz, Founder, Chief Innovation Officer, Webbed Marketing. Bill
Balderaz is the president and founder of Webbed Marketing, where he
has grown the company from a one-man consultancy to a 12-person team
with over 40 established clients in less than two years. Prior to launching
Webbed Marketing, Bill accumulated over 10 years of traditional and on-
line marketing experience, focusing on advertising, public relations, and
media experience. Bill has worked with some of the largest publishers in
the world, including Standard and Poors, McGraw-Hill, and Thomson Gale,
to plan, execute, and measure Internet marketing programs. He began
working in the search-engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and
link-building world in 1998, prior to the launch of Google. He has spoken
on Internet marketing topics at events sponsored by the Public Relations
Society of America, the American Marketing Association, and the National
Fuel Funds Network. Bill holds a bachelor’s degree in public relations from
Bowling Green State University and an MBA from Franklin University. He
runs the BuzzSaw WOM marketing blog at http://buzz.ducttapemarket-
ing.com and is the creator of the Webbed-O-Meter, the first publicly avail-
able tool that measures online WOM. Recently he was awarded the Currier
Young Professional Award from Bowling Green State University.
Bill Balderaz
Founder, Chief Innovation Officer
Webbed Marketing
2695 Edgevale Rd.
Columbus, OH 43221
Tel: 1-937-215-6148
bbalderaz@webbedmarketing.com
http://webbedmarketing.com
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