Last week Marketing Charts posted the results of a study done by Rubicon Consulting that shows how online reviews are second only to word-of-mouth when it comes to influencing someone’s purchase decisions.

Per the article,
“Online reviews and comments written by users – often overlooked by marketers in favor of things they can control – are disproportionately influential to consumer buying decisions and are second only to personal word-of-mouth for purchasing influence for Americans, according to research from Rubicon Consulting.”

This is the whole reason we started FYIndOut.  We firmly believe that there’s a lot to be gained by both buyers and marketers in the B2B market in using social media and communicating directly with each other instead of at each other.

The article also stated,
“Many companies downplay the importance of online communities because only a few percent of all Internet users contribute to them heavily,” said Harry Max, a principal at Rubicon Consulting.  “What they don’t understand is that most other Internet users read those reviews and rely on them heavily when making purchase decisions.  Taking good care of online communities can be a huge money-saver for companies trying to get more marketing impact from limited budgets.”

We can’t agree more and we believe that FYIndOut will be a leader in helping to make this happen.