Are you ready to become the go-to source of expertise for your audience in your industry? If so, then you'll love this article where I share Word of Mouth Marketing tips to get you started!
Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) is essentially free advertising that takes place when a customer having a great experience with your Brand. The happy customer is so delighted, they can’t help but share their joy with anyone who will listen. Remember when your sister got a new coat and she kept dancing and twirling around when she wore it? And kept telling you that Burberry make the best coats? That's Word of Mouth Marketing. Those Tik-Toks you see where someone is proudly showing you their gleaming oven and the cleaning materials they used? More Word of Mouth Marketing. In fact, The Pink Stuff Cleaning company found it 10x their sales!
Three years ago, Mr. Pade said, sales of the paste totaled around 2 million pounds, or around $2.6 million. Last year, they exceeded 25 million pounds, or $34 million, accounting for half of the company’s total sales. “In the U.K., it has gone from being a niche product to widely stocked in retailers,” including the nation’s largest supermarket chains.
Word of Mouth Marketing means new people hear about how amazing you or your company are from a trusted friend, not an advertisement. This type of social proof is a highly powerful way to make sales. You can use word-of-mouth marketing to grow your customer base, make sales, and boost your business’s brand!
If you can harness the power of WOMM, you can get more out of your marketing efforts and grow your reputation using the oldest method of marketing known to humankind.
How Word-of-Mouth Marketing Works
The reason WOMM is so powerful is that people have gotten used to advertising hype. They’re savvier than ever before and they know online marketing when they see it. As a result, they’re likely to tune out your promotional content.
But with word of mouth, the message comes from friends who are giving an honest recommendation from their own experience. According to marketing research, people are much more likely to make purchase decisions based on what their friends say, rather than ads.
When was the last time you tried something because of a friend told you about it? If you think back on your own experiences, it’s easy to see how word-of-mouth marketing works.
Organic vs. Accelerated Word of Mouth
Word-of-mouth marketing is nothing new at all. People have been spreading information about products and services for as long as language has existed. One person tells two friends, they each in turn tell two more, and so on. It’s the pre-internet version of viral marketing.
This is also called “organic” WOMM. It’s organic because it happens naturally, with no action taken on your part. But you don’t have to rely on the hope that people will talk about you. Instead, you can make it happen by using “accelerated” word-of-mouth marketing. This is when you launch a campaign and employ tactics specifically designed to encourage word of mouth.
The idea behind accelerated WOMM is to create a buzz that gets people talking. Businesses create products and content with shareability in mind. They leverage influencers and brand advocates to help spread the word and may even offer incentives to their audience members for telling others.
There are strategies you can use that are guaranteed to get people talking and give them the nudge necessary to spread the word. All it takes is a little planning and effort.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Examples
There are many ways businesses are using WOMM to spread awareness. One example would be to run a contest or challenge where customers make videos highlighting original, unusual, or funny uses of your products. You choose the best ones and give them awards, sharing all the submissions with your audience. This works really well on Instagram.
Another example would be a coffee company that creates content teaching its audience about its ethically sourced beans and how it supports local communities and causes. The company’s customers support the business not only for the coffee, but also for the core values they share. This gets people talking and telling others about the coffee that everyone should be drinking.
Our last example is from one of our Agency clients. John was looking to promote office chairs in the summer of 2021. The world was slowly returning to work, and employees wouldn't tolerate uncomfortable chairs, not after 3 months of working from home. We were called in to help generate conversation about office chairs. We devised the #OfficeGames campaign, where visuals of racing chairs were shared on social media:
As you can see from the image above, instead of talking about the usual features of an office chair we spoke about them as if they were elite racing machines. The campaign increased visibility by 8000% and had new ideal clients engaging with the content and talking about their office chairs. Sales sky-rocketed, and the thought of racing chairs put a smile on everyone's faces.
Another simple WOMM idea is to gather reviews and comments from your customers and post them on your website. Tools like Thrive Ovation (part of Thrive Suite) make this really easy!
Best Practices for Harnessing the Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Ready to Make Word-of-Mouth Marketing Work for You?
Ready to get started? The first step is to identify some strategies you can use to get people talking about you. If you know your audience well, you can easily find some ways to build buzz over your products and services. Go ahead and pick from some of the ideas and examples in this article to start with. Then let your own creativity kick in.
Implement and refine, and soon you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get your customers talking about you and telling others.
Need someone to help you with this? Book in a Power-Hour and let's ignite Word of Mouth Marketing for your business!
