What Is Word-Of-Mouth Marketing?

When you hear word of mouth, you probably think of a small-town grapevine. One person tells another person about a business or product, who then tells more people, and those people go on to tell even more people. This is essentially true of word-of-mouth marketing but on a larger scale. Any marketing done by word-of-mouth is done autonomously by customers in their everyday lives. When a customer speaks highly or lowly of your business to their peers online or offline, it is defined as word-of-mouth marketing.

Word-of-mouth marketing is considered the most valuable form of marketing there is. It is said that consumers trust the words of their friends and family more than any marketing a company produces. A lot of companies already know this, but only a few have mastered it. So, how can word-of-mouth marketing help your business?

Connect With Your Customers

Companies these days aren’t connecting with their customers as much as they should. Instead, they are focused on raising their numbers in terms of how many customers or followers they have. In order to connect with your customers, try following the three E’s.

Engage

Start with engaging your customers. No one likes a company that keeps to itself and never responds to feedback. Talk with your customers, respond to questions, make them feel heard.

Equip

Then, equip them with things to talk about. Keep up your social media posting with interesting things that they can interact with such as fun facts about your business, information about one of your products, or a thought-provoking question to get a conversation started.

Empower

Finally, empower your customers by letting them know you care about them. Ask them what they think of new products and get their opinions to show you care.

The Impact Of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing On Your Business

The truth is that word-of-mouth marketing has been around for a long time, and it’s worked for that long as well. Don’t believe us? The statistics show that word-of-mouth is among the highest indicators that consumers will buy a product or interact with a business at all. People are looking for others’ opinions before they buy something themselves.

According to BrightLocal, 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2020, which was an increase of 6% compared to 81% in 2019. Reviews have an integral link to word-of-mouth marketing. According to Trustway Marketing, 84% of customers trust reviews made by friends, family, and even strangers more than they trust any marketing a business puts out.

Customers leave reviews that can positively or negatively affect your business due to other customers seeing them and reacting accordingly.

Types of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

There are two types of word-of-mouth marketing: organic and amplified.

Organic Word of Mouth Marketing

Organic word-of-mouth is when consumers choose to spread the word about a business on their own accord. This can be by way of recommending the business to friends and family, posting about their experience on social media, or leaving a positive testimonial.

Amplified Word of Mouth Marketing

Amplified word-of-mouth comes from a company encouraging talk from their customers and followers through some sort of campaign, whether online or offline. These two types can be entwined with one another.

How To Encourage Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

There are ways you can encourage word-of-mouth to spread the word about your business. These are a few of them.

Become Known For Something

Whether it’s a slogan, a logo, or a concept, most businesses have that one thing that customers identify them with. Customers will naturally speak about your business if you have something memorable to offer them.

A logo identifies you, but it’s the memories and experiences people have with your company that make you recognizable to others. If you become known for something, consumers will be more likely to talk about you and spread the word about your existence and reputation.

Stand Out And Be Different

After years of enduring thousands of advertisements and marketing campaigns from companies, consumers often blend them together in their minds. Monotony and lack of variety are the enemies of a successful marketing campaign.

Standing out and being different is important now more than ever; with so many businesses saturating the market, you need to find something that makes yours unique. Try asking yourself “What makes my business different from my competitors? Why should people be interested in my content instead of theirs?”

How you market your business or product can be a way of standing out. See what your competitors are doing and do something different. You can also look back at a successful campaign and use that strategy with a new product.

Doing something unique that breaks from the cookie-cutter mold will increase your chances of organic word-of-mouth.

Showcase Reviews

Reviews are a prime example of word-of-mouth marketing. They provide customer insight into your business, and they are all over the web. We monitor and provide service for over 150 different review sites, but people have to go look for them at each site unless they have a service like ours that can place a live feed of all the reviews across the web in one place – on a client’s website.

Managing these testimonials and where they show up can highlight positive feedback while thwarting negative reviews. It’s best to add reviews anywhere you can, from your website to your social media posts and more.

Bottom Line

These are some of the ways you can make the most of word-of-mouth marketing. Overall, engagement and connection with your audience is the most important and crucial aspect of it. Customers like businesses that put effort into relating to them and considering their thoughts and ideas.

Kyrios makes it easy to amplify your word-of-mouth marketing using a done-for-you system to manage your reputation. We are dedicated to making you shine online.

For more information, visit our reputation management page or call us at (205) 451-1945.