Given a chance to buy products you ‘feel’ are right or those recommended by friends or relatives; what would you choose? Many consumers tend to purchase products recommended to them by the people they trust. Word of mouth has some power in it that convinces the listeners primarily due to the trust that an individual instils in them. Once you give excellent services or products to your clients, there is a likelihood that they will spread the good news to other people.
Many brands have taken advantage of this technique whereby most of them can let their esteemed customers do the selling for them. You don’t expect people to shout your name if all you did is offer low-quality products at overrated prices. Through this, some known brands have already pioneered this method to increase their sales such as the likes of TOMS and Chipotle.
How to Build a Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy
If you think that you can use cookie tactics to develop a powerful Word of Mouth (WoM) strategy, then you have been wrong all this time. WoM involves using elements that are artfully and uniquely applied in each brand to work in their benefit. If you are to succeed by using this strategy, ensure that you do either of the below;
- Identify something about your brand that is likely to generate buzz
- Create something that produces the buzz you require
Advantages of Word of Mouth Marketing
- Grows your brand without spending money on ads. There are many brands such as Bangs shoes which use WoM to make sales instead of the common ways of paying for commercial ads on TVs and other social platforms.
- Helps build a community rather than a commodity. WoM aims at creating a whole family of fans rather than having a buy and bolt customer. Once you get loyal customers, they tend to buy more often and recommend many friends. This will create a long term relationship with many of them as compared to some who make a one in a lifetime purchase in your shop.
- More funding and freedom. Once you get loyal customers who are persistent in buying particular products, your brand shop gets more angel and venture funding.
Examples Of How Specific Brands Generated Their Word Of Mouth.
In life, the only way to make your brand is by referring to what successful brands did to get to where they are today. You need to familiarise yourself with the mistakes they did, how they handled every issue they came across, and how they remain in the top list. Here are some of the best brands in the world that have succeeded in using WoM to make their sales.
- TOMS
TOMS was just like any other business at the start until they started using the One-for-One business strategy to sell their shoes. Today, they are one of the most profitable shoe brands in the world. They plan that once you buy one shoe, another pair is always given to a needy child. A lot of people flocked in to buy them since it was a form of consumer-driven charity.
From a business perspective, the company used the buzzworthy of ‘the company donates the money to poor people in the world.’ In return, the media industry created headlines about TOM’s initiatives thus attracting more customers to them.
- Coca- Cola “Share a coke with friends.”
Coca-Cola created a whole buzz in the world when they allowed people to personalize soda bottles to share with their friends and families. In addition to this, the brand held events where they allowed their customers to create to have personalized bottles. Within a short while, a lot of people had already embraced the trend as a way of showing love and appreciation to the people they wished.
- Chipotle; through storytelling
This particular brand created a video and app by combining art and storytelling to generate a massive following. At the start, the app runs for four weeks with no paid media; therefore, getting millions of customers who wanted to experience the feel. While offline, Chipotle also ensure WoM as it offers fantastic services to its customers who later come back with their friends.
How to Create an Epic Customer Experience
Before you commence on creating a powerful Word of Mouth strategy, there are certain things that one ought to make straight. People rarely recommend their friends or family if your services or products were of poor quality. Average ones are also unacceptable since people tend to share the best of all. No one would embarrass their souls by recommending something to someone that would in some way question your taste of things. For you to create that perfect experience with the customers, here are certain things you can do;
- Sell quality products
If you sell something that is below standard, people will often doubt you and even warn people from trusting your products. Ensure that what you spread about your business is the exact thing you deliver. Never promise something that will fail halfway through since people will use that window to criticize. A single wrong will always overshadow all your rights. Remember that a single negative review can create a whole amusement in your page to tarnish your name. Take care!
- Consider the seamless visual appearance
More than 90% of customers will always consider visual appearance before making up their minds on whether to make orders. If something does not offer visual satisfaction, we often tend to disregard them with the assumption, “If their images are this low, how about their products?” The same applies to your e-commerce site. Ensure to make it slick and easy to use on all devices.
People make mistakes of making websites compatible with desktops and forget about being mobile-friendly. This is an era with people who depend on phones to make any order. You should, therefore, test it before you make it an official site.
- Have a tight operation
Many customers will make orders if they feel confident that you will make the deliveries as promised on your site. For this reason, if someone makes a purchase, have the item delivered on time. This will increase your reputation with other clients.
Word of Mouth is a two-way experience whereby you have to make a genuine and meaningful client engagement. With the right strategies as described above, you can attract your customers without spending money on ads. The best way to go about it is by conducting a thorough keyword research to generate traffic. For professional keyword planning, click here; https://keyword.com/.