Word of mouth marketing is a free marketing medium to spread the word about your business, brand, or products and services. In this post, we will discuss some effective ways to make the best use of Word of Mouth Marketing for your brand, business, and products.
You might have heard your friends and family bragging about a particular shop, restaurant, or place they love to go to. You end up visiting the same place to receive the same kind of experience as your friends had. That’s because of the Word of Mouth Marketing. Businesses usually don’t really have to pay their customers or anyone else for this type of marketing.
It is an organic way of spreading information about a particular product, brand, or company. It, however, uses some components of viral marketing. But, unlike viral marketing, it spreads in more natural ways. Let’s see in detail what actually is Word of Mouth Marketing.
What is Word of Mouth Marketing?
Actions taken by a company to motivate people to talk about their products, brand or company are called World of Mouth Marketing. In short Word of Mouth Marketing is called WoMM. Companies taking actions to motivate people to talk about their products, brands, etc., is one part of the Word of Mouth Marketing.
The next part is the people who recommend the brand’s products verbally while communicating in their friend circle. The Word of Mouth Marketers put their credibility or social currency at stake when they recommend a product or a brand. Because if the people whom they recommend a product or brand don’t find it valuable enough they won’t be listening to their advice next time.
Simply put it’s a free form of advertisement or promotion, but the most effective one. It is done by the customers who become your brand advocates. It is mostly triggered by an event the customer experiences with the product/service or the brand.
This could be both negative and positive. For instance, if a customer has a bad experience with a product, brand, or company he will outright tell his friends and family not to engage with that brand to avoid such an experience he had. In such a case the brand loses some potential customers because of the bad publicity.
But, if a customer had a good experience with your brand or product he would share that with his friends and family and they would also engage with your brand or use your products to have the same kind of experience as their friend had.
Hence, improving customer service, delighting customers, and building a good relationship with the customers is very important.
Some Statistics Prove the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing
We have pulled up some really insightful data with regard to the Word of Mouth Marketing. This will give you an insight into the potential of Word of Mouth Marketing.
- 41% of people trust a recommendation from someone they know more than a social media recommendation. (Talk Triggers – Chatter Matters)
- 49% of marketers believe that 20-40% of their leads come from referrals. (Referral Rock)
- 58% of online shoppers share positive experiences and seek advice from friends and family when they talk about brands on social media (SDL)
- 60% of marketers track their word of mouth referrals by simply asking customers how they found out about their business. (Referral Rock)
- 61% of people recommend a local business to someone they know by word of mouth (BrightLocal)
- 61% of IT buyers report those colleague recommendations are the most important factor when making a purchase decision. (B to B Magazine)
- 71% of people recommend a great experience. (Talk Triggers – Chatter Matters)
- 72% of people get news from friends and family, making word-of-mouth the most popular channel for sharing. (Pew Research Center)
- 74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision. (Ogilvy Cannes)
- 81% of marketers say that their exceptional service to their customers drives them, referral clients. (Referral Rock)
- 83% of Americans say that word of mouth recommendations from friends or family members make them more likely to purchase that product or service. (Talk Triggers – Chatter Matters)
- 92% of global consumers trust WOM more than advertising. (Jay Baer)
- 92% of people trust recommendations from friends over other sources. (Nielsen)
- Among Boomers, word-of-mouth (WOM) is the top influencer for financial products and big-ticket purchases. (Marketing Charts)
- Building an online community is most important to brand awareness and word of mouth referrals, with average rankings of 8.87 and 8.52 on a 10-point scale, according to marketers. (Referral Rock)
- Marketers rated the quality of a word of mouth leads to be 4.28 on a 5-point scale. (Referral Rock)
- Millennials are 115% more influenced by word of mouth than by traditional advertising. (Talk Triggers – Chatter Matters)
- The most valued source of information is from the personal experience of some they know personally. (Talk Triggers – Chatter Matters)
- When planning a wedding, word of mouth from friends and family relies on 331% more than regular advertising. (Talk Triggers – Chatter Matters)
- Word-of-mouth emerged as the leading purchase influencer (top-2 box score) in each category among Millennials. (Marketing Charts)
How is Word of Mouth Marketing different from Referral Marketing?
Marketing is all about creating buzz about the product or the brand. Referral marketing is useful in every business whether it’s an online business or an off-line business. Though it is easy to track the progress of referral marketing through the referral codes. In the word of mouth marketing, it is difficult to track the progress.
Companies and brands incentivize the customers who refer other people to buy from that brand with discounts, cash backs, or freebies in referral marketing.
Whereas, in Word of Mouth Marketing it is purely the experience of the customers that drives them to recommend the products, places, or brands to their friends and family.
Brands and companies don’t usually pay in cash or in any other form for Word of Mouth Marketing, but they do provide their customers experiences they can’t resist sharing with their friends and family.
Why is WOM Marketing Significant?
In the age of social media where communication is growing exponentially and anything can go viral in a matter of minutes and reach millions of people.
If a person shares anything (an experience with a product or brand) that evokes emotion in other people gets likes, comments, shares, and reaches more and more people. That means more and more people would know about that experience and would want to experience the same thing for themselves. And to do that they engage with the brand.
This could be both negative and positive. A negative experience shared by someone with a brand or product on social media can put off many people and they would probably never engage with that brand or product.
The word of mouth marketing is all about“Trust”. People trust other people and the experiences they have to report. That means when they hear from a friend or a consumer something positive about a product or brand, they are more likely to buy.
This makes word of mouth marketing the most valuable source of marketing. Word of Mouth marketing is like a chain reaction, one person tells others and it keeps going on and on.
It’s the best and most inexpensive way of spreading the word about a brand or product. It is evident from the statistics that people trust their friends and family more than they trust advertisements.
According to a Nielsen study, 92% of consumers believe suggestions from friends and family than advertising.
If 92% of consumers prefer suggestions from their friends then WOM marketing is obviously the most valuable and inexpensive form of marketing.
Do Reviews & Customer Testimonials Affect Word of Mouth Marketing?
The effectiveness of the Word of Mouth Marketing can be increased in many different ways. One of the best ways is to get your happy customers to write about their experiences with your products or brand. Positive customer experience can get people talking.
When people talk about your brand and products positively your brand’s online reputation increases. Positive reviews written by customers on sites like Yelp, Trust Pilot, Google Business pages, Facebook Business Pages, etc., are searched and shared and read by many people.
More positive reviews mean more trust in people in your brand and products. More trust means more customers for your company.
How to Do Word of Mouth Marketing?
The key success factor for Word of Mouth Marketing is to connect with the customers rather than just sell them. Having millions of followers you have acquired by running advertisements on your social media channels means nothing if they don’t spread the word about your products and brand.
You can easily and very effectively drive the Word of Mouth Marketing campaign on social media followers. You need to connect with your social media followers actively and engage them in conversation with your brand. If you won’t engage with your social media followers they are of no use to your brand, because they are just lying there.
Delight your customers and motivate them to share their experiences with your brand on social media. Your customers are more likely to share their positive experiences with your brand if you give them the best services and best customer experience. The word of mouth marketing is a powerful way of influencing others.
Brands That Ran Successful Word of Mouth Marketing Campaigns
Slack, CrossFit, Lush, Netflix, and Chipotle made the very best use of Word of Mouth Marketing campaigns.
Chipotle
Chipotle’s food safety scandal in 2015 spread like wildfire due to negative word-of-mouth. Because of that, it saw massive sales plummet.
But now it is trying to win back favour, it is focused on turning this around.
Chipotle is only just recovering from a food safety scandal that saw sales plummet. However, with a famously non-traditional advertising strategy, it has previously generated much of its success from clever and shareable online campaigns.
In 2013, it released an online video called ‘The Scarecrow’, depicting a dystopian world in which a scarecrow is forced to work in a fictional factory but eventually rebels to run his own. The Scarecrow video was also a trailer for downloading an iOS app that allowed players to earn codes for free Chipotle food items from its menu.
This campaign of Chiptole generated massive engagement. That’s because the campaign was combined with powerful and emotional storytelling and also helped users earn real-life incentives.
On YouTube, the video was viewed 6.5m views times in under two weeks, while the game went to the number one in-app store’s free category.
Most importantly, the campaign involved no paid media during the first four weeks, immediately gaining traction through social media and word of mouth marketing alone.
Similarly, another campaign ‘A Love Story’ was also loved by people and created a lot of buzz for the brand.
Offline, Chipotle also ensures word-of-mouth marketing by delivering a positive customer experience. Its employees are typically jovial and friendly, and help foster the brand’s unique ‘food culture’.
Netflix
Netflix is the best example of word-of-mouth marketing. It offered products like House of Cards which was an enjoyable and original experience that people naturally wanted to talk about. That series of House of Cards by Netflix was the talk of the town and it was mostly through word-of-mouth marketing.
However, Netflix boosts its Customer Experience by tapping into user data and sentiment – and delivers exactly what people want.
Similarly, Netflix strategically released all ten episodes of Making a Murderer in one go. It was released on 19th December in the US – a time when viewers would be well primed to hibernate during the holidays (Christmas).
Similarly, there are many other brands and products that made the best use of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
The Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy
The right word of mouth marketing strategy can help your brand get an uncountable number of referrals. Multi-Level Marketing Networks are mostly built through Word of Mouth Marketing.
For Word of Mouth Marketing, you can use partner programs, influencer programs, affiliate marketing programs, roadshows, reviews, and customer testimonials. But, the most important thing is to create a Word of Mouth Marketing strategy so that you can measure the performance of your WOMM.
Below are some of the strategies you can use for Word of Mouth Marketing.
Use Your Social Currency
People love to share and talk about the things and events they like. You can use your social currency and share with your customers and social media followers funny and interesting things about your brand and products that make you look good and your customers and social media followers will love to share that further in their network. This will drive more customers to your brand.
For instance, a magician plays a trick and surprises people. And that one trick which surprised people becomes the talk of the town. More and more people go to the magic show to see and experience that surprise moment themselves.
Do Something Worth Remembering
Nobody wants brands to approach them to sell their products to them. But, people love to engage in activities that make them feel part of something. As a brand, you should try to tie yourself into other things that people like, need, or do.
Linking yourself to other activities makes it easy to remember you, and thus talk about you. For example, IKEA not only sells furniture but rather creates experience centres where people can go and experience the products. They can also visualize how the products would look like when they buy them and set them up in their houses.
Offer Value to Consumers
People do remember the best experiences and often pay for them because of the value and experience they derive. Offer value to your customers, be it an excellent product, best-in-class customer service, or best services, you will be valuable to your customers.
Apple not only provides the best communication devices but also provides the best in customer services and customer experiences in its Apple stores. That’s the reason billions of customers love Apple products despite being more expensive than most of the other products in similar categories.
These are just a few WoM strategies to consider, but there are a lot more you can make use of.
Other Terms that Fall into Word of Mouth Marketing
- Buzz Marketing: The main focus of buzz marketing is to create and spread the conversation about a product. This grows brand or product awareness through the use of online traffic. In this type of marketing mostly the influencers on social media create the ‘buzz’. Usually, attention-grabbing tools like humour videos are used in buzz marketing. But, other ways like podcasts, social media images, etc., can also be used.
- Viral Marketing: Products and services of a brand are advertised through social media in Viral marketing. Usually, it is done through videos and images. It has elements that people like and share with their contacts, and similarly, it is shared further in their other circles. A recent example of Viral marketing is the death of George Floyd. The videos of the police brutality against George Floyd went viral and were circulated millions of times. Later American of African descent started the campaign #BlackLivesMatter to protect black people from police brutality.
- Blog Marketing: Bloggers having huge readerships become influencers and write about the products and brands. Their followers read and share that in their friend circles and social media to make it reach larger audiences.
- Social Media Marketing: It can be used as a medium for Word of Mouth Marketing. Content on social media has a way of reaching people outside of the original group following. Content shared by someone you know and trust has a higher value. Emotional and funny videos and images are shared and reshared millions of times on social media because people love them and want their friends and connections to see them as well.
Conclusion
If you have a positive experience with a brand, you might like to mention it to a friend or family member.
With 92% of consumers now trusting a recommendation from friends and family more than any other form of marketing, chances are they might then check it out for themselves.
With the word of mouth marketing, brands are able to get their customers to shout out for them by creating experiences that they naturally love to share with friends and family instead of overtly selling to the customers.
