Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful tool for making your business grow and thrive. It involves customers sharing their experiences, opinions, and recommendations about products or services with other people. In the past, word-of-mouth marketing was generally limited to a customer’s immediate circle – friends, family, or acquaintances. With the growth of e-commerce and digital marketing, it has now moved to online platforms and typically takes the form of reviews, social media posts, and influencer endorsements. But the principles remain the same, and that’s what I’ll be talking you through today.
Benefits of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Before we start, let’s look at the reasons why word-of-mouth marketing is so important.
- It gives you credibility. Research by Nielsen in 2021 showed that 88% of people surveyed trust recommendations from people they know more than any other form of advertising. This is called “social proof” and is key to a successful word-of-mouth marketing strategy.
- It’s cost-effective. Word-of-mouth marketing relies on building positive relationships with customers, not investing in expensive ad campaigns or strategies.
- It’s scalable. The more people talk about your business, the more others will hear about it. This is the snowball effect, where the rate of referrals increases rapidly with the number of happy customers.
As one of the oldest forms of marketing, word-of-mouth can sometimes be forgotten about – a crucial mistake by anyone who wants to make their business a success.
Credit: Jon Tyson via Unsplash
How to Make Word-of-Mouth Marketing Work for Your Business
So word-of-mouth marketing is good for business. Now let’s talk about how to make it good for your business.
- Customer service: customer service is the cornerstone of your strategy. Customers who feel satisfied, valued, and understood are far more likely to share positive experiences with others. If a customer reports an issue or gives negative feedback, you need to acknowledge their experience and offer a solution quickly.
- Feedback: this ties into customer service but deserves its own mention. Asking for feedback gives customers the opportunity to praise, complain, or criticize, all of which are important things for you to hear. Take all feedback on board and make changes accordingly.
- Social media: platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) give you a way to directly interact with customers, as well as being a means for customers to share their experiences of your business with others. By building relationships with customers online, answering queries or feedback, and being proactive and reactive about customer experiences, you can use social media to grow and nurture your customer base.
- Local business directories: local directories such as Google Business Profile, Superpages, Yelp, and Tripadvisor display important information about your business, including location and type of business, as well as customer reviews and ratings. Create profiles and monitor feedback so you can make improvements, address problems, and improve customer satisfaction.
- Incentives and reward programs: these are simple but effective tools to encourage word-of-mouth marketing. Offer discounts, free products/ services, or other incentives to make it more attractive for customers to recommend and refer your business to other people.
Word-of-mouth marketing works best with a multi-pronged approach. Some strategies require an established customer base, such as reward programs, while others can be implemented from day 1 of a business. Be proactive about creating your business profiles and social media accounts and make sure to stay tuned into what your customers are saying. If you want to learn more about using social proof as a marketing strategy, check out my blog post here.
Final Words
Customer satisfaction, high-quality products and services, and a strong brand presence/ awareness are all vital elements of any word-of-mouth marketing strategy. Your focus must always be on what your customers are thinking, feeling, and, most crucially, saying. Ask for feedback, make meaningful changes, and build relationships with your customers online to build trust, credibility, and accountability.
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