Word of Mouth Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Grow Your Business

Word of mouth has shown tremendous progress in recent times. It has given a boost to businesses through its promising strategies. Marketers are now including word of mouth marketing as a significant source to attract a large number of customers.

 Let’s imagine ourselves in the shoes of customers. For example, When we go shopping, we keep suggestions or advice from our friends and family in our mind because we trust them.

When we talk about trust, we consider the product’s quality, brand image, and their sales after services. Therefore, trust is the primary factor behind every product’s success. The main idea behind these recommendations is the word of mouth marketing.

Word of mouth marketing is a leading factor among the other forms of promoting or recommending anything. 

In this article, we are going to learn more about the word of marketing and how it works.

What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

In a layman language, word of mouth marketing means recommending or referring to a product or service that is used by the first person to the second person.

These two people can be anyone; it can be two friends, a family group, two neighbors, and many more.

Therefore, every business wants its customers to talk about them. But, not every customer needs to have a positive word of mouth. So, make sure that if you are planning to use this method, try to use positive word of mouth marketing. Someone has rightly said, if a positive word can influence ten people, then lousy word of mouth makes people dislike your products.

As we see, word of mouth is a powerful tool for every business, but the right guidance is the key to make it best for you.

There are some astonishing facts you should know about word of mouth marketing, and they will help you understand the effectiveness of word of marketing as a tool.

• According to Neilson, 92% of customers are more likely to follow their friends and family over the advertisement.
• Recommendations through word-of-mouth marketing lead to 20-50% decision making of the customers.
• Customers who joined after reference have a 16% higher lifetime value.
• People who got referred are  4 times more likely to buy those products that are recommended by their friends.

Why is Word-of-Mouth Marketing Important?

Here are some benefits that will give you a better understanding.

More Substantial Relation Between the Duo

As we have learned above, word of mouth is a relation between the customer and the business. It allows the company to understand the behavior of the customer.

Giving rewards makes them feel valued, and they are more likely to remain by your side for a long time. More definite relation with the customer is the essence of any business, and once you reward them for their efforts; they’ll eventually get motivated to promote your name.

It Goes Viral

Word of mouth or referral programs are viral in nature. The referral program instantly goes viral because of its simple sharing methods. One can easily forward it to friends and family. 

Since we all are digitized, it gives a boost to the word of mouth marketing as well, as one can use different social media methods to promote it single-handedly. People can quickly check what their friends are sharing or advertising, and that post influences their decision or choice.

Economical Way of Promotion

Not every business or brand has a higher budget to promote its products, but they all have an aspiration to expand their businesses. Word of mouth marketing has made it easy for them to spread their word too in a cost-effective way.

It not only helps to grow the company but also establishes in the market. It is economical because you don’t need a team to promote it, you can use your existing customer as your advocates to help your brand.

It can lower your burden as you don’t have to spend a large amount of money.

Works as an Advertisement

Established business doesn’t require advertisement as they already have goodwill in the market. But for small companies or startups, it is not possible to spend a considerable amount on an ad initially.

Therefore, word of mouth comes handy to support your business by encouraging your customer base. We can say that it acts as a boon for startups.

Trust Factor

It is the most important reason why one should try word of mouth marketing as it involves trust regarding the product. When a new customer considers someone’s recommendations, that means he trusts those words. 

People ask their friends and family for recommendations whenever they have to buy something new because they believe that they will give the best advice or suggestion. Therefore, it is the most powerful tool that can lead to conversions.

Let’s dive in, to learn about its methods.

Word of mouth marketing is not limited to referring to people while meeting or talking. Word of mouth can be anything or in any mode that helps people to connect more with the brand.

• Word-of-Mouth Referral Program

 

Word of mouth programs mean using referral programs to promote your business; in other words, we can say that word of mouth is also called referral marketing.

Any business can launch a referral program to make it’s brand worth remembering.

 In the referral program, your existing or loyal customers forward referral links to their friends and family, and in return, the business provides them freebies or incentives for their efforts.

 It is the most popular way to add a new customer to your customer base while making your existing customer base happy. It gives a win-win situation to all, a business, a loyal customer, and a new prospective customer.

• Online Reviews

Customers are getting smarter day by day; therefore, the business needs to have intelligent ways to interact with the customers.

 

In the era of the internet, it offers multiple features to customers and makes it easy for the customer to analyze a lot more products while sitting at home.

Think like a potential customer only then you can analyze the importance of online reviews.

Online reviews are those word of mouth that speaks for your brand. Today, the customer, before purchasing anything, read reviews of our customers, because it helps them to make a decision related to purchasing.

Every company should encourage their customers to write honest feedback of your brand. Honest feedback will also help the business to make them understand the key areas in which they are doing good and in which they need to improve.

• Social Recommendations and Sharing

Today, people use different kinds of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and many more.

Social recommendations are an easy way that can help you to get recognition among your customer’s peers. Ask your customers to recommend you on their social media accounts, and you should ask them at an appropriate time.

Recommendations and sharing of your product or service name on social media increase your visibility, and more people tend to purchase your product because of the trust factor on recommendations from their peers.

• Word-of-Mouth Through Email

Have you ever received an email from your favorite brand? Nowadays, it is very common to get an email from those companies that we have been using for quite long.

Email marketing is one of those useful tools of the word of mouth marketing.

It helps to connect the brand directly with the customer and improve their relationship.

Businesses can make a list to target these customers through emails. It is suitable for targeting a specific kind of customers. Customers feel privileged when their favorite brands send them personalized emails, as it makes them feel valued, and they are more likely to open it.

After reading these types, you might be thinking that we have come across these things in our daily lives and how they play such an essential role in our decisions.

• Run a Contest

People love to earn by winning contests. It not only encourages them but also makes them happy. Businesses are running a contest on their social media pages or on their website to engage more customers. Customers are more likely to participate if they get some exciting prizes. 

It is an attractive way to invite a lot of people to join and win some rewards. Companies can decide which kinds of rewards they want to offer their participants.

They can offer their products to new customers so that they can use them and become a regular customer in the upcoming time.

For existing customers, they can come up with new rewards since they are already using their products and new rewards will push them more to make more efforts for you. 

Conclusion 

In this article, we have seen how influential word of mouth marketing is, and how it can help you grow with time. It not only makes you understand the preferences of customers but also leads a path for your product where there is the scope of improvement.