Word of mouth marketing is what happens when someone who isn’t directly connected with your business talks about your business or recommends your products to other people. In other words, they advertise your product or service for you.
According to Nielsen research 92% of consumers said they believe what their friends and families told them over advertising messages. It just stands to reason – you are far more trusting of those people you know, than those you don’t. If a business can get good word of mouth, then it gets the results it wants.
So when businesses spend huge amounts of money on advertising, to get the results they want they must also look at word of mouth marketing. Whatever your business and wherever you are in the world, word of mouth marketing works and is the best thing since sliced bread for business owners!
Here is what you can do to get that good word of mouth spreading, some of which is just good business practice.
1. Provide Good Customer Service
It works both ways here. Deliver bad service and customers will tell their friends and family and live bad reviews on their social networks and platforms like TripAdvisor. Good customer service doesn’t cost your business more money, but makes all the difference when you differentiate from your competitors.
2. Engage Customers on Social Media
Word of mouth is all about getting people to say and share good things about your business. Your customers exist on social media and this is where they are communicating with their friends and family. Be part of that conversation by being active on social networks. Consider the various platforms your customers exist to be present there also. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to LinkedIn.
3. Use Online Tools to Support Your Word of Mouth Marketing
For effective word of mouth marketing your business must get people talking positively about you, 9 times out of 10 now this happens online on social media.
If a customer shares a promotion or positive post about your business on their social media, their friends and family will be receptive and be influenced by this. It is the best form of marketing you can do, but the trick is getting users to share your posts and messages.
There is a wonderful website that can very easily help you do this. It allows you to target social media users in your businesses region, and also target by age, gender and user interests. The site is called www.youaremia.com and was initially launched in Thailand.
Then very cost effectively and at the budget right for your business you can set a post on www.YouareMIA.com and it will be offered to those social media users you identified, for them to share it on their social media. Voila, you have word of mouth marketing – and furthermore it’s targeted to the customers you want.
It’s pretty much instant, so just like that you could have as few as 5 or as many as thousands of social media users sharing your business messages across their networks. Our testing showed fantastic reach and very low cost per clicks generated when we included URL (website links etc.) on our posts.
4. Thank Your Customers for their Business
Your customers are everything to you, as without them you don’t exist. Tell them how happy and grateful you are for them choosing you, it will go a long way and build loyalty towards your business.
5. Consider Your Promotions
People like to talk about a good offer and so have a promotional calendar and share it on your social media pages, on point of sale in your premises and through platforms like www.youaremia.com.
A good promotion drives new customer footfall and keeps existing customers interested too.
