Word-of-Mouth Should Target Social Leaders, Not (Just) Opinion Leaders

Via the always illuminating Knowledge@Wharton, a study by two Wharton professors finds that when it comes to work of mouth "traditional targets may not be as influential as previously thought." Using an influencer map to chart word-of-mouth for a pharmaceutical company, the academics discovered that: "The medical community was actually divided into two sub-networks split apparently by ethnicity, with one sub-network dominated by physicians with mostly Asian names and the other with mostly European names. Connecting the two, like a spider suspended on a thread between two webs, was the dot for Physician No. 184--a doctor the company's marketing department and salespeople barely knew."

This is a story I have heard many times from public relations firms using influencer mapping to track word-of-mouth on behalf of a wide variety of clients, and speaks to the need for a greater level of intimacy and involvement with the target audience than traditional media relations ever demanded of us. The most influential journalists are much easier to identify than the most influential word-of-mouth influencers.

The K@W article draws another interesting conclusion: "The study showed that sociometric leaders like Physician 184 were quicker than the self-reported opinion leaders to use the new drug, and were also more likely to influence other physicians to try it. The study also found that sociometric leaders did take into account what their colleagues were doing. For marketers, this implies that word-of-mouth can affect opinion leaders as well as followers, in contrast to what is often believed and taught -- that only followers are affected by social influence."