Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Your Strategy
Benefits of Word of Mouth Marketing
If you’re on the fence about whether or not to try increasing your word of mouth marketing, these benefits will help you consider trying it out.
- Free marketing: Unless you’re doing word of mouth advertising, word of mouth marketing is free. You’ll still need to put the effort in to get customers and build a strong enough relationship. However, their word of mouth promotion doesn’t come at a cost for you unless you’re paying for a loyalty app on the Shopify app store. For the most part, if you’re offering a shopping experience worth talking about, over time some customers may start raving about your brand to their friends.
- More Sales: You benefit from the additional sales from the free referral your customer made. But you also get a few sales from the customer who recommended your brand. Why? Because if a customer loves your brand enough to recommend your brand to their friends, they’ll likely keep shopping with you. Learn how I made $743.65 with a customer loyalty program.
- Grow brand at a faster rate: Word of mouth marketing has a viral marketing element to it. If you add enough hype around your brand or build an epic experience for your customers, it’s possible that a popular customer will help your brand go viral.
Why is Word of Mouth Important?
There are many benefits of word of mouth marketing but why is it so important? Well, according to SDL, about more than half of all consumers (58%) share their positive experiences with a company on social media.
What does this mean? It means that after buying from your store or interacting with your brand, your customers are engaging in word of mouth promotion online.
Word of Mouth Marketing Strategies
- Encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is content created and shared by consumers about brands or products. It’s honest, builds trust, and gives marketers extra collateral to work with.
How Can You Get Users to Generate Content?
- Have a unique hashtag to identify content created by customers
- Incentivizecreating and sharing pics, videos, and gifs on social media. Offer a free gift, discount, or feature.
- Create a sense of community. Showcase your user-generated content prominently on your website or main profile
- Share Customer Testimonials/Reviews
79% of people trust testimonials and online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
They help reassure the performance, quality, and/or value of your claims and make consumers feel more comfortable doing business with you. There’s a reason they call it social proof after all.
Testimonials can be written or video and can be hosted on your website or pulled from others. Depending on your industry, some popular review sites include:
- Yelp
- Angie's List
- Houzz
- G2 Crowd
- Clutch.co
Once you have your testimonials or reviews, repurpose them into your marketing:
- Dedicated site page
- Homepage & landing pages
- Relevant product/service pages
- Lead generation content
2. Get Product Ratings On Your Site
Depending on your business model, you may want to give people the ability to rate or review specific products, services, etc. directly on your site.
This is especially useful for eCommerce or if you’re a tech company that sells several products.
- 63% of visitors are more likely to buy when a website has reviews/ratings
- Reviews can produce an 18% increase in sales
- Customer reviews are 12x more trusted than descriptions from the brand
Brands That Do It Well:
- Amazon
- Apple: iTunes/App Store
- NewEgg
Popular Rating Tools:
- BazaarVoice
- GIGYA
3. Offer an Incentive:
Giving your customers a reason to share with others can skyrocket your word-of-mouth marketing as well.
Big or small, people are always more willing and likely to do something if they receive some sort of value in return. So, consider giving your consumers a discount or free gift in exchange for referrals.
Brands That Do It Well:
- Trello: Free Trello Gold
- DropBox: Free Storage Space
- BlueApron: Credit for BlueApron Products
4. Create a Referral Program
You can take this a step further by creating a formal referral program. A good referral program:
- Makes spreading the word easy and quick
- Makes it worthwhile for both parties (with an incentive or other benefit)
- Measures the results of your campaigns
5. Connect with Industry Influencers & Thought Leaders
Influencers are exactly what their name suggests; individuals with a strong following and power to influence the beliefs and behavior of those in it.
Because of their already established reputation, word-of-mouth marketing from an influencer is undoubtedly the most valuable.
- 40% of people say they’ve purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on Instagram, Twitter, Vine, or YouTube.
- 49% of people say they rely on recommendations from influencers when making purchase decisions.
- 73% of marketers say that they have allocated budget for influencer marketing.
How to Appeal to Influencers
- Quote them in your content
- Feature them or their products/services prominently
- Let them try your product/services for free
6. Offer a Unique, Shareworthy Experience
At the end of the day, the easiest way to generate word-of-mouth marketing in this digital age is to offer a unique, share-worthy experience.
If you give your consumers something memorable they cannot get anywhere else, they’ll want to share it with their friends and loved ones whether or not you ask them to.
Brands That Do It Well:
- ClassPass
- LuLuLemon
- Dollar Shave Club
7. Influencer Marketing
If you’re looking for a word of mouth advertising tactic you can have control over, influencer marketing is for you. With influencer marketing, you’ll need to pay an influencer to feature your products on their social media. Since you’re paying them, you can have some control over what they post, when they post and how they post it.
The best thing about word of mouth advertising is that you can pay to start creating conversations around your product and potentially gain some sales from it.
8. Surprise with Freebies
Shoppers love free stuff. And Sephora uses that fact to their advantage.
Multiple times a week Sephora sends emails with discount codes customers can use to get a free product. If a customer spends a certain amount of money, they can even use that money to get even more free stuff.
4 Great Word of Mouth Marketing Examples
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
In 2014 ALS released their ice bucket challenge as a fundraiser presented in the form of a challenge. Nominees poured a bucket of ice-cold water over themselves, capturing it in the form of an image or video, and donated money to the charity. The challenge was then posted over social media, and friends or family members were nominated to do the challenge. This campaign blew up with videos coming in from all over the world. The campaign was partaken by celebrities also. The biggest success for the campaign, of course, was the money raised which amounted to $115 million during the 8-week period in 2014
Dunkin’ Donuts
Dunkin’ Donuts is an important part of America culture. Locals and tourists alike enjoy the delicious treat and it has become a beloved brand to the US. Because of their great product, they have earned staunch followers across the world and Dunkin’ Donut’s have found great ways to utilize word of mouth marketing through these great people. Using social media to launch competitions and post unique content, followers engage with them regularly. They engage in different ways like liking content, sharing it or even creating their own content around the brand to portray their experience of it. Their hard work paid off with their social media profiles growing hugely – 15 million Facebook fans, 1.5 million Instagram followers, and 1.2 million Twitter followers.
Netflix
Using customer information to really understand what customers want on their platform, Netflix has not only been able to recommend shows to users but they have been able to create Netflix originals that are tailored to the biggest interests on the platform. Using this information in a smart way the company has been able to grow their customer sentiment positively creating an army of Netflix influencers who rave about the brand over the many social media platforms available to them. This free publicity has allowed the company to grow exponentially over its competitors like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and even YouTube.
Lush Loyalty
Lush, as a beauty brand, offer ethical products that have not been tested on animals. Fighting for both social and environmental causes like animal testing and fair trade the company has collected an army of cult-like followers who believe in their values. These young followers are comfortable on most social media channels and also have more disposable income than the generations before them. Using unique content and promoting gifting Lush products, the company has been able to grow its profits year on year without needed to splash out on any advertising.
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