Word of mouth marketing is the social media era’s version of easy word of mouth.
- Traditionally, word of mouth marketing was extended from one person to another established on recommendations.
- Modern word-of-mouth marketing represents both targeted endeavors and naturally occurring examples where users share their happiness with a brand.
In today’s hyper-connected world, a single suggestion can have a far more powerful impact – leading to word of mouth marketing or word of mouth advertising methods to capitalize on the possibility.
Many best practices, digital marketing services, and marketing tactics boost natural word of mouth, but campaigns — especially on social media — can explicitly boost an online business’ social exposure.
Why is WOM Marketing Important?
Consumers trust their friends. This is why word-of-mouth marketing is the most valuable source of marketing.
WOM doesn’t prevent it after just one interaction.
10 Word of Mouth Marketing Strategies
1. Influencer Marketing
If you’re looking for a word-of-mouth advertising tactic you can have control over; influencer marketing is for you.
You’ll be required to pay a digital marketing agency or an influencer directly to feature your products on their social media with influencer marketing. Since you’re paying them, you can control what they post, when they post and how they post it.
The best thing about word-of-mouth advertising is that you can pay to start creating conversations around your product and potentially gain some sales.
The downside? It’s not organic. Having real customers rave about your products is a fantastic feeling. And while you may get excited about getting sales this way, this word-of-mouth tactic can get expensive over the long haul.
2. Hashtag Effect on WOM
Customers and fans of the niche use the hashtag for their posts. Hashtags are a subtle but straightforward way to get your customers to do word-of-mouth marketing.
Consequently, it ends up making the hashtag more famous. While it can be difficult to track whether the sales came from the hashtag or another channel, this simple tactic helps build more vital brand awareness.
As the hashtag is the same as your brand name, you’ll be more likely to get found on Instagram.
3. User-Generated Content
As your store grows, customers will begin sharing user-generated content. What’s that? It’s the content they make. It could be an Instagram post offering them to wear your product or a blog post on their website where they yell about your products.
4. Get Reviews
Reviews work as an influential word of mouth method. The customer writes a product review on the product page for the purchased product. Then, store visitors see the post and may become influenced to buy the product based on the reviews they’ve read from genuine customers.
5. Create a Referral Program
A referral program can help you increase the success of your word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. You can offer perks for various levels of promotion. For instance, if your customer refers to a friend who purchases, you can provide a financial reward as a token of gratitude.
You can also deliver non-monetary bonuses for other levels of advancement, such as sharing user-generated content and posting product links on social media. But don’t forget to create and optimize landing pages for SEO. It is a great strategy considering all the backlinks and visitors you get.
6. Give People No Choice But To Talk
No brand can get people talking as much as Red Bull. They do these powerful stunts that go viral because of how insane they are.
When you accomplish something extreme to get attention, you will get people talking. As most brands don’t have the budget to do powerful and dangerous actions, you can still get a similar effect with easy execute ideas.
7. Surprise with Freebies
Shoppers love free stuff. And Sephora utilizes that fact to its advantage.
For instance, Sephora sends emails with discount codes customers can use multiple times a week to have a free product. If consumers spend a specific amount of money, they can utilize it to get even more free stuff.
On a customer’s birthday month, they can collect their gift from any Sephora location for free or with the purchase if buying online. But does it result in word-of-mouth promotion? On my birthday back in January, I posted about my gift online.
8. Word of mouth marketing on Social Media
Everyone uses social media, and there are always ways to entertain them on those channels to spark word-of-mouth marketing. It doesn’t need you to spend 6-figure sums on annual social media marketing ad spend or create a viral blue-or-white dress debate.
9. User-generated content
Inspiring and utilizing user-generated content (UGC) is a double curse. It may just be a triple curse. Here’s how it works:
- You influence your users to share their content with encouragement. That could be through free products, entries into giveaways, or just a possibility to be featured on your blog or social media channels.
- Users share their unique content on their social channels with their followers.
- You repurpose that great content and utilize it on your channels.
10. Experience marketing
One of the most useful ways to capitalize on word of mouth is to make experiences that get people talking. With the rise of social media, this has never been more related. People like to share their experiences on social media.
Final Thoughts
There is a critical temptation to fabricate word-of-mouth marketing. Accordingly, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has crafted a code of ethics for the industry; the best word-of-mouth marketing tactics are credible, social, repeatable, measurable, and respectful.
